Astoria’s Bar
(Song by: Mary Garvey – Performed by: Brownsmead Flats – Song Notes: by Alice Winship)
LYRICS
It’s not very far to Astoria’s bar
But a very long journey it can be
It can start at the mouth of the mighty blue river
And end at the bottom of the sea.
And the river still shines and shimmers in the light
As it did in my grandfather’s day
When they rowed all night and fished in the morning
And lived in Willapa Bay.
When the tide is rough, so very, very rough,
So rough that you cannot stand;
It drives the little fish right into the nets,
And the boats right into the sand.
In the mist and the rain, the labor and the pain
We know what the fishing here is worth
It is worth more than gold as we suck ’em from the hold;
It is worth all the treasures of the earth.
It’s not very far to Astoria’s bar
But a very long journey it can be
It can start at the mouth of the mighty blue river
And end at the bottom of the sea.
And the river still shines and shimmers in the light
As it did in my grandfather’s day
When they rowed all night and fished in the morning
And lived in Willapa Bay.
NOTES
Astoria’s Bar was written by Mary Garvey, and has been recorded by Gordon Bok. It was also recorded by Brownsmead Flats and can be found on their CD “Strings and Yarns” and the compilation CD “Tales from the Bar: Songs of the Lower Columbia River”.
The Columbia River Bar is one of the most dangerous, if not the most dangerous, river bars in the world. There is a long history of fishing in the area.
Regarding rowing all night, Mary Garvey said:
“I wish I could find out who said that. I think it was in the Vancouver paper in an article about the old Finns. I can’t figure out exactly what the woman meant, but her grandfather did it. The only thing I can think of is they rowed all the way down the Long Beach Peninsula, because I don’t know of anything that runs from Willapa Bay to the Columbia. There are rivers that have portages though, that Indians used.”
In the liner notes for Gordon Bok’s album, Herrings in the Bay, on which he recorded this song, Mary says:
“This is just a fisherman put-putting down the river in a small boat on a day when the weather is very beautiful and the river is very blue. I remember as a child in Astoria seeing these massive quantities of fish going up conveyor belts from the ships and almost being spat out. The bit about rowing all night from Willapa Bay is straight out of a comment in a newspaper story… some woman said her grandfather had done that. Sturdy people in these parts… still are; but the Finns were legendary.”