by Larry Magrath
For Granite Falls tenor and former power plant worker, Dallas Iverson, storytelling and musical entertainment have long been a part of his life. Although he has performed in other areas of the country, nowadays, he’s sticking closer to home and regularly shows up to entertain residents living at independent and assisted living homes in the region.
Iverson said he’s gotten over any shyness performing in front of people thanks in part to a friend he met in Arizona while wintering there for 17 years.
“It’s fun. I love it,” Iverson said. “I only do what I call classic country, all the things from George Jones to Merle Haggard and things like that.”
The numbers he’s comfortable with are strum-along country tunes. They tell a story and relate themes in understandable and discernible lyrics that people of all ages can relate to.
Take Vince Gill’s “Look at Us.” The song could be about an older couple or any couple that has stood the test of time as the music video so aptly captures. Iverson can relate as he and his wife Norma recently celebrated their 65th anniversary. The couple has five grandchildren and two sons living with their families in Bloomington and Waconia.
The song is a tribute to long-married couples who have seen a lot over the years and stuck together. It’s an unapologetic and evocative trip down a sentimental lane.
“Look at us. After all these years together. After all that we’ve been through. Look at us. Still leaning on each other. If you wanna see how true love should be. Look at us. Still believing in forever.”
“I never do the same ones right away. I write ‘em down what I do and then I don’t do ‘em again. I have, I suppose, 150 songs. They wouldn’t remember it anyway, but I do, you know.”
“Actually, sometimes they’ll say, ‘Say do you know how to do this song,’ and I’d have to come home here and look it up and learn how the chords go and come back and sing it for them the next month. I’ve done that quite often.”
At 86, he said he’s still learning new songs all the time.
“I’ll hear one and think, wow there’s a nice song I haven’t done before, so I look it up on my iPad and copy it down and find a key that will fit my voice and, yeah, that’s what I do.”
He’s using a guitar he acquired when he was 68. He started playing guitar for himself and his family after getting an earlier guitar in 1963 and later grew more confident in small groups and at Granite Falls Lutheran.
His covers come from the Nashville-knowns Jimmy Dickens, Marty Robins, Hank Williams, Elvis, George Strait, Mel Tillis, Kenny Rogers and many others.
In Arizona he met Albert Friesen and ended up performing three times a week in front of a variety of audiences. Fellow snowbird Friesen, a large-scale pork producer from Steinbach, Manitoba, has since visited Iversons here in Granite Falls, and the Iversons have also spent time going north. His Arizona life also included woodworking and carving toys and keepsakes with an organized group of friends.
“That’s how I really got to be able to get up in front of somebody and sing was being with him,” Iverson said. “He always was daring but I wasn’t. We started going to these jam sessions all over. I owe it all to him, to be able to get up in front of people.”
Having retired from Northern States Power plant as a boiler operator in Granite Falls 30 years ago, he started performing with some fellow retirees at The Rock: Dining and Events in Granite Falls.
“A gal come up to me and she said: ‘Dallas, you got to take that guitar and start playing in church.’ So, I played every other week. We had a celebration of service and I played for 15 years in church.”
As an entertainer, he’s a conversationalist, and likes to relate a little history and background to the song he’s about to perform or about the singer who made it popular.
In Willie Nelson’s “Pretty Paper” he relates to an article he read about the story of the song’s origins. The song tells the story of a physically disabled man who made a living by selling paper and pencils on the street.
“He’s sitting there hoping you wouldn’t pass him by,” Iverson said. “It showed a picture of the guy, and I think he was married eight times, and did have one child and she was in her 80s when she finally found out that song was about her father.”
Recently he performed a 22-song Christmas set for 20 residents at Avera Granite Ridge Senior Living near his duplex where he lives with his wife. He introduces the well-known Dean Martin Christmas song “Silver Bells” but stops to tune his guitar. He notes with a smile that the performance is free to the forgiving audience of his peers.
He likes entertaining people with his talent and the way music brings people together.
He’s seen firsthand how music has the ability to reach people experiencing dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and memory loss.
“That’s the last thing that leaves you is music,” he said. “I’ve been doing it and people are sitting in a wheel chair and I saw on their face. I go back to the old gospel hymns from our hymnals that we sang ever since we were young people. Their head will come up and you can just see them, all of a sudden they wake up and listen to that.
“It just kinda makes you almost wanna cry to see that happen.”
Comments