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danhltz59@gmail.com

402-713-9600

STORYSINGER DANHOLTZ

Nebraska Historical Songteller

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SOUNDS OF STORYSINGER DAN HOLTZ

The German poet Heinrich Heine wrote, "Where words leave off, music begins." As an English Professor and history-lover, I've always been interested in stories and how they're told. I've also known since I was a teenager that music can sometimes help people experience some stories better than thousands of words or, even, scores of pictures. That's why I took to writing songs--to tell stories I want to tell.

Nebraska Historical Songteller

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BIO

Photo: Dan Holtz performing at Dobby's Frontier Town, Alliance, NE

Dan Holtz has spent his career telling Nebraska's stories in songs. He has presented his musical, historical, story-telling programs hundreds of times all across Nebraska, including performances at the State Capitol, the Governor’s Mansion, the Bob Devaney Sports Center, Homestead National Historical Park, the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument, Chimney Rock, Scottsbluff National Monument, and Ft. Robinson. He has also performed at Fort Laramie in Wyoming and on the Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., for Nebraska State Day in 1999. In 2016, along with the band Flatwater Highway, he released a second CD titled All Original, All Nebraska. In 2023,he released a third CD titled A Nebraska Tapestry. (These CD's feature historical narratives that are not in the online albums and are available for $15 each, which includes postage and handling.)

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Trials and Triumph

00:54

Trials and Triumph

Winter Was All We Knew

03:30

Winter Was All We Knew

This song tells about the winter of 1948-49, one that many recall as the worst ever. It wasn’t a single storm that carved its way into people’s memories but rather a series of storms that blew in before Thanksgiving in ’48 and didn’t end until April of ’49. Drifts piled 20 and even 30 feet high, and snow in some shelter belts didn’t melt until well into the summer. To help hundreds of farm and ranch families cut off by snow-clogged roads, the government supplied military aircraft and equipment for Operation Snowbound and Operation Haylift to drop hay to stranded cattle and food and medical supplies to imperiled people who sometimes had to chop up furniture for firewood. Private pilots across the state also joined in the airdrop and rescue efforts.

Coming Up

02:38

Coming Up

This song tells about Robert Ball Anderson, a former slave from Kentucky, who rose to become the African-American with the largest landholding in Nebraska around the turn of the 20th century. Tenacious and intelligent, he hung onto his land near Hemingford during the drought-ridden early 1890's, using his first homestead to borrow funds to grow his holdings to more than 2,000 acres.

Coffee, Sandwiches and Love

02:57

Coffee, Sandwiches and Love

This song tells the story of the North Platte Canteen during World War II. With a population of little more than 12,000, North Platte served as a 10 to 15-minute oasis for more than six million service men and women who rode the Union Pacific rail lines through North Platte to far-away destinations for the War effort. Spearheaded by female volunteers, the North Platte Canteen quickly gained steam, and women (and some men) from more than 125 communities, some as far as 200 miles away, enlisted to make sandwiches and fried chicken and to bake cookies, cakes, donuts and pies to serve with hot coffee.

Prairie Abundance

03:33

Prairie Abundance

Before Nebraska was opened to non-Indian settlement in 1854, approximately 93% of its land, about 46 million of its 49.5 million acres, was blanketed by more than 300 species of prairie grasses and wildflower forbs. By 1910, most of this native prairie had vanished through the efforts of homesteaders and the steel plow. The patches of native prairie that do remain, however, testify to the heartiness and diversity of a prairie landscape. A square foot of prairie sod, for example, can contain up to 55 linear feet of roots and rhizomes. This song is called “Prairie Abundance.”

Most Honorable Son

02:28

Most Honorable Son

This is a clip from "Most Honorable Son," which tells part of the story of Ben Kuroki, a native Nebraskan, and the only Japanese-American to fly in bombing missions over Tokyo in World War II.

The One Who Had the Dream

02:18

The One Who Had the Dream

This song tells a little bit of the story of Solomon Butcher, an itinerant photographer who made thousands of glass photographic plates documenting sod-house life in central Nebraska in the late 1800's. He came to Nebraska to homestead but soon discovered that the homesteading life wasn't for him.

Sometime's It's a Crazy World

03:56

Sometime's It's a Crazy World

This is part of a song about one of the most improbable incidents in Nebraska history—an event which would connect what was, in 1940, a small town in Nebraska with a city in Japan and which would change the course of world history. That’s because the two B-29 Superfortress aircraft, the Enola Gay and Bockscar, which dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were built at the Martin Bomber Plant in Bellevue, Nebraska. Much of the labor to build these aircraft was supplied by women who had entered the workforce to do their part in the war effort. The song is called “Sometimes It’s a Crazy World.”

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CONTACT

Want to learn more about StorySinger Dan Holtz, his music, and his performance dates? Don’t hesitate to get in touch. To book a performance, go online to the Humanities Nebraska Speaker's Bureau catalog to learn more about his programs.

2315 Park Lane
Nebraska City, NE 68410

dholtz@peru.edu

402-713-9600

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