Farewell, Dakota Chautauqua

 

Sunday, August 15, 2021. It was a fairly-pleasant afternoon with a sunny sky and low-ish humidity. There was just enough breeze to keep a stage performer from demonstrating spontaneous human combustion.

It was also, as much as it is in my power to foretell, the last time I will perform in the Dakota Chautauqua at the Dakota County (MN) Fair.

It started as a one-time celebration of Dakota County's sesquicentennial (look it up) in 1999. Just a collection of short scenes and original songs, it managed to educate, amuse, and stir the heart all at the same time.

It went so well, someone got the bright idea to make it an annual event, and for the following six summers, with new material being added each year, I got on stage with a slightly-varying group of friends and sang about pigs getting shipped to the stockyards, onion-producing towns sinking into a peat bog, and Ignatious Donnelly writing wacky books and trying to make Nininger a utopian village.

After a three-year run by a different production crew and cast, and a three-year gap with nothing happening, the original writing/directing team of Pete Martin and Eric Peltoniemi cranked things up again in 2012 and, other than the silent summer of 2020, has been making Minnesota history hysterical ever since.

Over the course of 22 years, there have been 16 productions in which I've sweat gallons, sung myself hoarse, eaten enough fried food to KILL a horse, and made some rich friendships.

But now?

Now it's time to close this chapter. Maybe some other fools will pick up the gauntlet and take the tradition further down the road, and if they do, I wish them cool weather, just a few mosquitos, and audiences that laugh loudly and applaud with exuberance.

https://youtu.be/mC2aU_MaTV8