Profile: Have Guitar, Will Travel | Bob Bovee’s Musical Journey

SPRING GROVE, MN – In 1971 a young man from Bellevue, Nebraska, named Bob Bovee, then 25, who had dreamed of being a veterinarian, discovered a new lifegoal.

“I loved old-time music,” Bob says. “My goal became to travel around playing and singing that music for people, just making enough money to live on.” Guitar-in-hand, he set out.

“I found I was able to do that,” he says. In fact, Bob Bovee has been “able to do that” in an extraordinary career as a full-time, professional musician for the last 53 years. And counting.

“The future of old-time music looks bright,” says Bob Bovee, who is still doing more than 150 performances a year.” (Photo submitted by Bob Bovee)

After meeting a group of like-minded old-time musicians in the Twin Cities, Bob decided to settle down there before traveling to southeastern Minnesota in 1988 to make his new home in the rolling hills and farmlands of Houston County, near Spring Grove.

Just thirty miles away, in the even smaller town of Lanesboro, Bob and his late wife, Gail Heil, established the popular Bluff Country Gathering and regular Lanesboro Barn Dances.

He’s also performed nationally on radio and television and was a frequent guest on Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” radio show.

“I’m slowing down a bit these days,” Bob, now 78, admits, “but I’m still doing around 150 gigs each year.”

The Heart Of Old Time Music

Traditional song – played mostly on string instruments to accompany simple, heartfelt singing and sweet harmonies – comprises the heart of old-time music.

“I’m drawn to pre-commercial country music first recorded in the 1920s-1930s,” he says, “that originated mostly in the south, featuring singers like Uncle Dave Macon and groups like the Carter Family. I liked the folk revival of the 1960s, including early Bob Dylan, but it was the older music, sometimes called old-time country, that I wanted and still want to share. At one point I had a working repertoire of around 500 songs, not counting dance tunes.”

Bob came upon what he calls his “lifelong passion” very early. “My family weren’t performers, but music was always part of our gatherings. Dad played the harmonica, Grampa the banjo, and Grandma the mandolin, among other instruments. She’s the one who taught me many old songs that had passed down for generations.”

Bob Bovee and Gail Heil performed old-time music together for 35 years. (Photo submitted by Bob Bovee)

And then came Gail

Bob’s musical story isn’t complete until you add Gail Heil. “We met under the Gateway Arch in St. Louis at a music festival,” Bob remembers. “We discovered we both loved the same kind of music and eventually discovered we loved each other.

“Gail was a great fiddler,” he continues, “but she also played the banjo, autoharp, guitar and dulcimer. She was a wonderful singer, too, either lead or harmony, a square-dance caller and a clog dancer. Gail could do all that and taught many others to do them, too.”

Gail’s decision to make a new life with Bob came with stipulations, he remembers. She agreed to move to the Twin Cities only if he promised they’d organize a regular barn dance there. The “Monday Night Square Dance,” now held twice monthly at the Minneapolis Eagles Club, is in its 45th year.

When they considered buying property near Spring Grove (“she loved it here because she was from Missouri and it reminded her of the Ozarks”), she said they needed to start a local square dance. So began the Lanesboro Barn Dance, now in its 30th year.

“The Midwest needs a fiddle camp,” she later told Bob. That idea birthed the Bluff Country Gathering, a four-day celebration of old-time music, with workshops, a barn dance, a concert and informal jam sessions that draws more than a hundred old-time music lovers to Lanesboro every May.

Dancers attending the Bluff Country Gathering Barn Dance in 2023. (Video by John Gaddo)

Bob says one of Gail’s stipulations didn’t last. “She said we could be together but wouldn’t play together professionally. Less than a year later we were sharing a stage and did that for the next 35 years.”

Sadly, Gail Heil passed away in 2013 at the age of 67. “Our friends organized an amazing memorial service at the Celtic Junction Arts Center in St. Paul,” Bob says.

“At one point fifty fiddlers gathered on stage to play ‘Ragtime Annie,’ Gail’s favorite fiddle tune,” Bob says. “I got back on the road fairly quickly – I needed to do that – but I struggled for at least a year.

“After all that time performing together, I had to re-learn how to be a solo performer. I couldn’t remember words to certain songs and struggled with guitar pieces. There are songs we sang together I still cannot do. I don’t sense her presence on stage now as much as I feel her absence.”

Bob Bovee (right) playing at the July 2024 Lanesboro Barn Dance at the Sons of Norway Lodge. (Photo by Steve Harris)

On the road again

Bob carries on with his music and traveling. Earlier this summer he drove to West Virginia for the “Appalachian String Band Music Festival,” enjoying a week of music “…with 4,000 of my closest friends.” He performs as much as 3 to 5 times each week at local care centers in Caledonia, Cresco, La Crosse and Houston. He’s doing all that and feeling very optimistic.

“Not that many years ago there were concerns about the future of old-time music,” he says. “Was this music, in some ways already a hundred years ‘out-of-date,’ going to fade away? The answer is no! In the last 20 years we’ve seen many great young musicians taking to this music. The average age of people coming to barn dances is getting younger. Old-time music is still alive and its future is bright.”

Why is that?

“I think it has to do with popular music today being less real, often over-produced, even mindless at points. Many young people are looking for music that’s more honest, hands-on, straightforward,” Bob says.

“Old-time music isn’t something you produce in a studio with technology and auto-correct buttons. It’s more real. People of all ages sense and enjoy that.”

Square dancers of all ages enjoying the July Lanesboro Barn Dance. (Photo by Steve Harris)

Bob Bovee is still on the road playing, listening to and enjoying that music himself.

“Most of that happens when I’m driving in my car,” he says. “I’ve been digitizing my old-time music collection. Lately I’m playing Bessie Smith, Bill Monroe, Hank Williams and older string bands.

“I like early jazz, too, like Fats Waller and Bix Beiderbecke. No Taylor Swift, although I admire aspects of her life. I’m still learning from and enjoying old-time music. I guess I always will.”