What happens when a COMPAS Teaching Artist, who also happens to be a singing ranger, revered folk musician, master storyteller, and true Minnesota legend, hits the road for a tour of Greater Minnesota? In the latest episode of the COMPAS Creativity on Tap podcast, COMPAS TA Charlie Maguire chats with host Frank Sentwali about his recent tour of northern Minnesota for his show Going to Bartalina. This blog post shares a few highlights from their conversation. Check it out, and then listen to the podcast for all the music, memories, and meaning. (Also on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.)
What does it mean to carry history in your guitar case?
For Charlie Maguire, it means traveling 2,000 miles across northeastern Minnesota to honor Great Lakes sailors, shipwrecks, and the voices of working people through story and song.
“I went to Katie at COMPAS,” Charlie recalls, “and I said, ‘Why don’t we put something together to commemorate two anniversaries: the 50th of the Edmund Fitzgerald sinking, and the 120th of the Mataafa Storm?’ That’s how the tour started.”
A Tour Fueled by Legacy
Charlie’s performances weren’t just concerts. They were living history lessons. In towns like Cook, Silver Bay, and Buhl, some of which have populations under 1,000, people filled libraries to hear stories of the Edmund Fitzgerald’s lost crew, the storm that birthed Split Rock Lighthouse, and Charlie’s own time aboard Great Lakes freighters.
“People came with connections,” Charlie says. “One woman told me, ‘When you mentioned Nolan Church [a sailor from the Edmund Fitzgerald], I thought of his daughter. I went to school with her.’ These weren’t just names in a song. They were neighbors, classmates, fathers.”
In fact, Charlie rewrote and updated Gordon Lightfoot’s classic “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” to include all 29 crew members by name. “People knew the song,” he says, “but to hear it fresh, with the facts, with the names, it really brought the program home.”
Bartalina: A Job You Can’t Get Out Of
The tour’s title, Going to Bartalina, comes from a Tagalog slang term Charlie learned aboard a ship crewed by Filipino sailors. “It means doing a job you can’t get out of,” he explains. “That’s what sailing is. And honestly, that’s what this tour felt like, something I was called to do.”
Charlie didn’t just show up and play. He and his wife, Linda, meticulously planned every detail: miles between towns, campground power hookups, local Anytime Fitness showers, even what to do if wildfire threatened evacuation.
“Touring seems like fun, and it is, if it’s planned well,” he says. “But every night, I knew where we’d sleep. Every morning, I knew where I had to be, what time I had to play, and where we’d find food.”
That precision paid off: over 700 people attended the tour’s library performances, many in towns with fewer residents than the size of Charlie’s average audience.
The Library as Stage, Classroom, and Campground
Charlie chose libraries intentionally. “Libraries are in the history business,” he says. “They’re places where people can get close. Where they know the librarian’s name. Where they feel safe to ask questions or share stories.”
In one town, a man brought in his entire personal Great Lakes collection, ranging from photos to posters and even clothing, and displayed it on an 8-foot table after the show.
In another, a woman in her 80s hitchhiked ten miles to attend the program after her ride didn’t show. “When I found out, we extended the show,” Charlie says. “How could we not?”
Teaching Artists as Culture Carriers
Charlie also reflects on his decades as a COMPAS teaching artist: “Folk music is people teaching people. Pete Seeger, Lee Hayes, and Marjorie Guthrie all passed their knowledge to me. And now, it’s my turn.”
“You can’t learn what I know in a university (i.e. institutional) setting,” he says. “But you can learn it in a classroom, library, or school. Or in a song.”
What’s Next?
Charlie is currently recording an album of the updated songs he performed on the Bartalina tour, slated for release within the next year. His hope? To keep bringing Minnesota’s overlooked stories to life, perhaps next time with a focus on farming and southern Minnesota.
For Charlie, this work is a mission. A calling.
“You get up and perform every day,” he says, “you get good. It’s like working out. Once a week is fine. But every day? That’s when the magic happens.”
And on the Baralina tour, for the communities Charlie reached, for the places where music became memory and history came alive, the magic of his mission echoed in every story, every song, every shared moment.
Want to bring Charlie to your library, school, museum, organization, park, or anywhere else? We got you.
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