Smithsonian Folkways has acquired songwriter and song collector Gordon Bok’s label Timberhead Music, which primarily released Bok’s musical and literary works. Having grown up around the boatyards of Camden, Maine, Bok has often focused his art on the coastal, oceanic environment. “I was brought up to pay attention to what’s around me,” he told Smithsonian Folkways. “Rote on the shore, sound of gulls, wind, and manmade sounds, of course, show up in the music compositions.”

Bok started the Timberhead Music label in 1986. There would be fifteen albums on Timberhead including two new titles by Bok and his former touring trio partners Anne Mayo Muir and Ed Trickett. Timberhead would also release albums by Helen Schneyer and Bob Stuart. One of the final issues was a concert performance of Bok with Bob Zentz from 1979.

Gordon Bok has continued to pursue music and writing in Camden. When we asked why it is important to him to keep Maine’s maritime music traditions alive, he reframed the question, explaining that traditional practices live and breathe with people: “I don’t think much about traditions. With any luck people’s ways will change as conditions change. I have only tried to honor those people I know whose lives and ways, born of their environment and their upbringing, I respect.”

Read more and purchase albums from the Timberhead Music collection here: folkways.si.edu/timberhead.