Mulhollans Bring Cane Hill To Life Through Music

SILOAM SPRINGS — Kelly and Donna Mulhollan use music to take their audience back in time to the early days of Cane Hill with story-songs such as, “Doc Bean’s Right Hand Man,” “Cane Hill Orphan Train Rider,” and “Main Street.”

The couple, who make up Still on the Hill, recently performed their final concert of a 13-concert series at the Siloam Springs Public Library. The music and concert series was commissioned by Historic Cane Hill and the Mulhollans will continue to perform a series of educational concerts about the community at local middle schools to teach students about the community.

Historic Cane Hill is a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the history of the town, located in western Washington County. The idea behind the concert series is the hope that people will hear the music and be inspired to visit Cane Hill, Kelly Mulhollan said.

“Cane Hill slipped away and is now just a remnant of its former past, it’s just a few miles south of Lincoln,” he said. “Cane Hill, believe it or not, was the population center of Northwest Arkansas around the time of the Civil War and even up until 1910 or so. It was a very, very vital town and those folks, they actually commissioned us to write their story.”

Many of the buildings, including the Cane Hill College, have been restored, he said. The town also features a museum, a walking tour, trails, a farmers market and an annual Harvest Festival, according to the organization’s website historiccanehill.wixsite.com.

Cane Hill offered many firsts in Arkansas, including the first library, the first public school, the first college and the first college to accept women, Kelly Mulhollan said. However, there are some elements of Cane Hill that offer a peek into life in any small town during the time period, he said.

Some of the Mulhollan’s songs highlight the bright side of life in Cane Hill during the turn of the century. For example, “Main Street,” follows a young boy as he makes his way up and down the shops on the town’s Main Street, telling a little bit about his favorite thing at each one. “Cousin Annie’s Apple Pie” tells the story of the fall harvest and the fine apples that were grown in Cane Hill, including the time the town’s apples took first place in the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

Other songs share about sadder moments in the town’s history, such as “The Cane Hill Hanging,” which brings to life a story of Union soldiers hanging three elderly men who were, according to lore, scapegoats for a mystery person who fired potshots from a roof at the troops during the Civil War.

Still another song, “Remembering Alsey Timberlake,” based on a receipt that was preserved from a local business, tells the story of a Cherokee family who stopped in Cane Hill to purchase a coffin for their 13-year-old daughter, who had died along the Trail of Tears.

To research the songs, the Mulhollans interviewed people who grew up in Cane Hill and collected oral history. Some of the songs, such as “The Charm,” are also written about artifacts in the Historic Cane Hill Museum. The lyrics to one song, “Good Bye My Honey I’m Gone,” is even by a Cane Hill musician of the era — Booth Campbell.

The Mulhollans use colorful presentations with a theater backdrop and visual aids, such as the handsewn picture quilts that Donna Mulhollan calls her “low-tech Power-points.”

Still on the Hill has been together for 23 years and their last four projects have focused on the history of the Ozarks, she said. The couple has done projects focusing on the history of the Ozarks, the Buffalo River and the Beaver Lake Watershed. She described their music style as “folk-grass” — they use many of the same instruments used in bluegrass such as fiddles, banjos and scrub boards, but their music also has the storytelling elements and unique and homemade instruments of folk music.

More information about Still on the Hill is available on their website, stillonthe hill.com. More information about Historic Cane Hill is available at historiccanehill. wixsite.com.

JANELLE JESSEN HERALD LEADER Donna (left) and Kelly Mulhollan of Still on the Hill performed their final concert about the history of Cane Hill at the Siloam Springs Public Library in late March. The couple was commissioned to write songs about Historic Cane Hill and perform them at a series of 13 free concerts.

Audience members Yein (front, left) and Alex Reeves helped Kelly (back, left) and Donna Mulhollan of Still on the Hill with their performance at the Siloam Springs Public Library by operating limberjack puppets in time with the music.