Carole King & James Taylor Bring Idaho's Wild Horses Nationwide

Elissa Kline's Photographs Join the Tour

Troubadour Reunion Tour, Tampa, Florida. The white mare was featured on the cover of Sun Valley Magazine's Winter 2007 issue.

Audiences at Carole King and James Taylor's international reunion tour this summer will see photos of one of Idaho's lesser known trademarks: wild horses.

Photographer Elissa Kline, who works at King's ranch outside Challis, is not only documenting the tour (since this March) but has been photographing central Idaho's wild horse herds since 2004. Her horse images first appeared in the Winter 2007 issue of Sun Valley Magazine with a follow up in the Winter 2010 issue in an article titled "Horse Power" (see also Local Buzz blog posting "Not So Free to Roam"). This summer, a selection from her collection of wild horse photos, entitled "Wild Ones," will be viewed by more than 800,000 people—the great collective fan base of two of America's most celebrated singer-songwriters.

The 70's folk-rock duo's tour, dubbed the "Troubadour Reunion," celebrates the 50th anniversary of the famed Troubadour nightclub in Los Angeles, and includes members of their original band: Danny Kortchmar, Lee Sklar, Russ Kunkel as well as Robbie Kondor on keyboards and background singers Kate Markowitz, Arnold McCuller and Andrea Zonn. Stops in Australia, New Zealand and Japan preceded the much-awaited American tour. At the big arenas around the country, like New York City's Madison Square Garden where they played in mid-June, massive screens project images that accompany the often three-hour shows. Kline's horse images provide the provocative backdrop to the song "Way Over Yonder" (see video above right).

King is a vocal advocate for the wild horses not only in her own backyard but throughout the West. Since living in Idaho, the native New Yorker has become involved on many issues pertaining to land use, conservation and animal rights. It was Kline's photographs that introduced her to the nearly century-old struggle between the horses and a government that controls their populations through often-brutal measures.

In November 2009, she met with Secretary Ken Salazar and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Director, Robert V. Abbey. In a lengthy meeting with Abbey, King was told that the government was working to promote less traumatic methods of wild horse management such as adoption. As for the additional measures that the BLM could pursue as an alternative to roundups, such as sterilization, King was given no assurances.

The U.S. government has been gathering wild horses on Western lands, often with low flying helicopters, dating back to the mid-1930s. Today's horse advocates, who have found the government agency averse to change, are fighting policies that have been in place for more than 70 years.

For King, the time for such brutal practices to evolve has come. She donates time and money to groups who work to rescue and adopt wild horses. She continues to engage with the government on the issue, and in the meantime, she is bringing the power of Idaho's wild horses nationwide through imagery and song.

Additional Resources:

Click here and scroll down to Carole King's "Help Save America's Wild Horses" post where there are links to Act Now!, Contact your U.S. Senator and for Events in Your Area.

Silent Voices — Idaho Wild Horse Connection
http://www.silentvoicesrescue.org/Wild_Horses.html

American Wild Horse Preservation
www.wildhorsepreservation.com/index.html

To Sign the Petition to Protect America's Wild Horses
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/991/573/141

Carole King News
http://www.caroleking.com/index.php?p=news

The Cloud Foundation
http://www.thecloudfoundation.org/index.php/news-events-a-media/events

 U.S. Department of the Interior — Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
http://www.blm.gov/id/st/en.html
http://www.blm.gov/id/st/en/prog/wild_horse_and_burro.html

The TROUBADOUR REUNION TOUR will be in Sun Valley on July 12, 2010. The performance is to benefit Sun Valley Center for the Arts and the Alliance for the Wild Rockies.

Click here to check out this blast from the past from LIFE magazine's July 4, 1938 issue. Proof that wild horses have had a long and troubling past.