MENTOR BIOGRAPHY
 | Traditional Skill/Art: Folklore, Songwriting, and Music Years Won: 2026 Heritage Arts Apprenticeship Awardee with WA Cultures; Co-sponsored with the Oregon Folklife Network 
Contact Information: Phone: 503-325-0278 Email: kytrfam@charter.net |
Hobe Kytr is a folklorist, songwriter, and musician. "I’ve been interested in traditional music, and the songs that tell the stories of the people and the places that I grew up with here in Northwest Oregon and Southwest Washington," he explains. This frequently means interpreting the social history of occupations like fishing and logging. Kytr has worked to identify and reanimate songs in archival texts and other discovered sources. These include "Old Miller Sands," a song text that an Irish fisherman had written about working on the Columbia River seining grounds, and "Logging at Butler’s Camp," a moniker song about the life at a Northwest logging camp. "It clearly was a song," Hobe says of "Old Miller Sands." "It deserved to be put back in song format." In addition to performing regional Oregon folk songs, Hobe frequently plays the banjo for Astoria-area contra dances and square dances. He was also one of the founding members of the annual FisherPoets Gathering, where he performs each year and gives songwriting workshops.
APPRENTICE BIOGRAPHY
 | Joe Seamons Traditional Skill/Art: Folklore, Songwriting, and Music Years Won: 2026 Heritage Arts Apprenticeship Awardee with WA Cultures; Co-sponsored with the Oregon Folklife Network
Website:https://www.joebanjo.net/ |
Joe Seamons is a musician and educator based in the Pacific Northwest and dedicated to helping people connect with their heritage through music and storytelling. As co-founder of The Rhapsody Project, he builds communities that serve and center young people while establishing cultural equity.
Born and raised in Columbia County, Oregon, Joe interprets the songs and stories of sawmills, logging camps, and commercial fisheries composed by workers and folklorists of that community. Many of these songs are included on the 2016 album, Timberbound, the story of which is detailed here. In the same vein, Joe served as an executive producer for a Smithsonian Folkways album entitled, "Roll, Columbia: Woody Guthrie's 26 Northwest Songs."
Q&A WITH THE MENTOR ARTIST
I’m a native Oregonian, and a traditional musician, playing guitar and old-time banjo. My specialty is songs and stories of the Northwest, with a focus on the lower Columbia River and adjacent environs in northwest Oregon and southwest Washington. Traditional songs from this region are rare, but there are wonderful stories to tell. So I have been writing songs in traditional style for most of the past fifty years to share these stories. I see my role as a collector, transmitter, and sharer of community memory, whether the songs are old or new, and have been sharing them at the annual FisherPoets Gathering in Astoria for the past 27 years.
When I began focusing on the songs and stories of the Northwest more than fifty years ago, to say it was a lonely field would have been an understatement. The only way to proceed was to undertake the study and fieldwork necessary, while engaging in work that afforded me the opportunity to pursue my interests as a sideline. I found a ready audience in the FisherPoets Gathering, as well as a group of kindred spirits engaging in occupational poetry. Joe’s apprenticeship proposal will help document and transmit this work to a wider audience.
My experience teaching others about being a keeper/transmitter of cultural tradition might at first glance seem limited. However, Joe began expressing interest in my songs and music as a teenager, which helped shape his educational and career path ever since. This apprentice program will give us an opportunity to delve into this subject matter more deeply than ever before. I have a background in education, served as museum educator at the Columbia River Maritime Museum, and taught multiple Elderhostel courses in years past.