THE MAINE WOODS MUSE In ‘The Fable True,’ folk singer David Mallett puts music to the haunting words of Henry David Thoreau

Folk singer David Mallett is no slouch when it comes to the lyrics he pens for the slew of songs he has written over the course of his more than 30-year career.

But Mallett tips his hat to the words of Henry David Thoreau, whose writings have been literal showstoppers during Mallett’s live performances.

Mallett’s new CD, “The Fable True,” includes 22 selections from “The Maine Woods,” Thoreau’s account of three mid-19th century journeys to Maine, where he traveled up the Penobscot River, to Greenville, down the West Branch of the Penobscot, and scaled Mount Katahdin. Mallett’s fine, strong voice is well-suited to the material, which he reads on the CD, backed by acoustic instrumental music he composed and thematically matched to the selections.

The project began, Mallett said in a recent telephone interview from his Sebec home, when an environmental group, The Maine Woods Forever, began preparing a documentary film and wanted Mallett to read Thoreau’s writing on it, as well compose and perform instrumental music.

The film never came to fruition, but Mallett concluded that the words and music would stand on their own as a CD.

“Everyone living in Maine should listen. It’s a journalistic masterpiece,” Mallett said of Thoreau’s essays.

“He was the first visionary, and maybe the greatest, that ever came to our state,” Mallett said of Thoreau, who lived in Concord, Mass.

And Mallett believes Thoreau’s writings, which many believe launched the environmental writing genre, which later included John Muir, John James Audubon and others, are important today, as Maine considers development projects that would alter the region he visited.

“Thoreau was kind of the father of the environmental movement in a way,” he said.

Before recording the CD, Mallett began including some of the selections in his live performances. The audience response was so strong, he had to move the selections to the encore portion of the show.

“It’s my favorite part of the show,” he said.

The 22 selections are each two to five minutes long, and are arranged in a kind of chronological order.

“They are kind of songs,” Mallett said, and he worked to compose tunes that matched the content, so a lively piece accompanies a section where the words conveyed adventure.

“I was a theater major in college,” he said, and had done some acting, and he worked at bringing a dramatic but conversational approach to the spoken parts.

Thoreau recounts his stop at the White Canoe shop in Old Town, and describes the bateaux, or “white man’s canoe,” being built there. There’s an account of how land is cleared and potatoes planted, of fish caught and cooked, and of scrambling over rocks above bear dens.

The prose is that of an intelligent, curious tourist, almost like a contemporary travel writer. On his first foray into the white water, Thoreau writes:

“We shot up the rapids like a salmon, the water rushing and roaring around, so only a practiced eye could distinguish a safe course, or tell what was deep water and what rocks … I, who had some experience in boating, had never experienced any half so exhilarating.”

Mallett said the writing was so rich, “I could have gone on and on.”

Standouts for him were sections on Moosehead Lake, on the loon.

“He had a lot of regard for the loon and the moose,” he said.

“Thoreau talks about a mighty white hunter he met on the stage coming into Greenville,” he said. “Turns out [the hunter] lived in Sebec,” which is where Mallett’s family has lived for several generations.

Mallett wonders whether his great-great-grandfather, who lived in Sebec in the 1850s, met Thoreau during the writer’s visits, and likes the idea that his ancestor might have sold the writer some pork or beans.

While recording the music, Mallett wondered whether the transcendentalist would approve. He finally concluded Thoreau would have liked it.

Recently reading some of Thoreau’s journals, Mallett came across a passage in which Thoreau describes his love of music, saying “it made him fearless, and connected him to all things present and all things past,” Mallett said.

In addition to his strong fan base, Mallett envisions schools using the CD, perhaps as part of a Maine curriculum, or “people who don’t normally read could put that on and get a smile,” he said.

To order the CD “The Fable True,” visit: www.davidmallett.net, or www.davidmallett.com.