The 11th annual Trailing of the Sheep Festival will present "Sheep Tales Gathering: Songs and Stories of Sheep Herding—Remembering When ..." with guest host Hal Cannon and his longtime friend, legendary Idaho singer-songwriter Rosalie Sorrels, at 7 p.m. Oct. 10, at nexStage Theatre, in Ketchum.
Cannon is founding director of the Western Folklife Center and the annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nev.
Navajo storyteller and weaver Roy Kady, Irish musician and storyteller Mick Lucey on the button accordion and Wyoming poet and rancher Sharon O'Toole will join Cannon and Sorrels. Doors open at 6 p.m. Tickets are $20, available at the door or in advance at D.L. Evans Bank, at the Ketchum Sun Valley Heritage & Ski Museum and at Iconoclast Books, all in Ketchum.
Sorrels will perform at Iconoclast, at 671 Sun Valley Rd., at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 12, after the Trailing of the Sheep Parade on Main Street.
Known as the Travelin' Lady for one of her signature songs, Sorrels was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2004 for the album "My Last Go Round."
Today, Sorrels, 72, lives in a log cabin her father built at Grimes Creek, not far from Boise.
She moved far beyond her Idaho roots, however. For more than four decades, Sorrels has been a part of the traditional folk music scene. She's played with everyone from Mimi and Richard Fariña and Dave Van Ronk to Christine Lavin, Terre Roche and Louden Wainwright III, as well as her frequent musical partner, Bruce "Utah" Phillips. Her most recent CD is dedicated to Phillips' music: "Strangers In Another Country—The Songs of Bruce 'Utah' Phillips."
She played the Newport Folk Festival in 1966. The University of California at Santa Cruz has a Rosalie Sorrels archive in its Beat Generation Archives. And one of her biggest influences in the early years, singer-songwriter and activist Malvina Reynolds, called her a "rollicking anti-hero, a first-rate poet-songwriter and a genius storyteller."
In the 1970s, she played at the Leadville Espresso in Ketchum, which was owned by her friend Millie Wiggins. Coincidentally, her grandfather, Robert Stanton Stringfellow, used to preach in the same building when it was Ketchum's only church. Over the years, she's returned often to the Wood River Valley. In 2005 she played a concert at the Liberty Theatre, and in 2007 she returned to sing at Wiggins' memorial service.
In 1990, Sorrels won an award from the World Folk Music Association, named for one of folk music's most beloved practitioners, the late Kate Wolf. In 1999 she was awarded a National Storytelling Network Circle of Excellence Award for contributions to the art of storytelling. Sorrels has recorded more than 20 albums and written three books, including "Way Out in Idaho."
