“The Lord God Bird” and the Tourism Boom in Brinkley, Arkansas

Travel Blog  •  Jim Benning  •  07.06.05 | 6:16 PM ET

NPR’s “All Things Considered” featured a terrific, unorthodox segment this afternoon on Sufjan Stevens, a singer-songwriter who plans to explore each of the 50 U.S. states in song. The segment focused on the small Arkansas town of Brinkley, imagewhere the ivory-billed woodpecker, once thought extinct, was recently rediscovered. A tourism boom is now reinvigorating the town’s economy, and woodpecker chachkis are suddenly in great demand. In the segment, townspeople are interviewed about the big changes that have come to Brinkley, and Stevens’ song about the town and the woodpecker, entitled “The Lord God Bird,” is played. The song has the elegant, spare sound of an Elliott Smith tune, with an equally seductive melody, and it’s available for free download at NPR.org, where the segment can also be heard.

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