Barking Dog: October 17, 2024
This Week’s Theme: Dream Folk Fest Lineup
Today we thought we’d play a bunch of living artists who we’d love to see on the lineup for next year’s 50th Winnipeg Folk Festival. We’ve narrowed our list down to fit on the show, so if you don’t hear one of your favourites, just know they’re probably on our longer list.
Eric Bibb, Taj Mahal - Goin’ Down Slow
Bibb is an American musician who grew up around well-known musicians like Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson, and Bob Dylan, because his father, Leon Bibb, was a musical theatre singer who was part of the 1960s New York folk scene
Taj Mahal is a Grammy-award-winning blues musician from New York City whose career has spanned over 50 years
Bibb has performed at Folk Fest once in 2004, and Taj Mahal has performed 3 times, the last also in 2004
This is from Bibb’s 2004 album Friends
It’s a blues standard by American blues artist St. Louis Jimmy Oden, who recorded it in 1941
Jake Xerxes Fussell - Rabbit on a Log
He’s a North Carolina artist who was raised in an artistic family and apprenticed with the blues musician Precious Bryant from a young age
This comes from the “Alabama bluesman, black rodeo rider, rye whiskey distiller, and master dowser” George Daniels of Macon County, Alabama
It was the first song Daniels learned on guitar
Fussell’s version is from his 2015 self-titled album
Michael Hurley, Jon Neufeld - Pastures of Plenty
Michael Hurley is a member of the 1960s Greenwich Village scene who is still active, and is also a cartoonist and painter
Neufeld is an artist based in Oregon but originally from Winnipeg
A Woody Guthrie song off the album Roll Columbia: Woody Guthrie’s 26 Northwest Songs
Guthrie wrote the song after he was commissioned by the Bonneville Power Administration to write songs promoting the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River in 1941
Fiver - Past the Sun
Stage name of Toronto-based artist Simone Schmidt
This is from their 2013 album Lost the Plot
Kaia Kater - Ti Chagrin
Grenadian-Canadian artist based in Toronto
Off her 2016 album Nine Pin
Nora Brown - Am I Born to Die
She’s a contemporary singer and banjo player from New York
This is from the 2023 compilation album I Am a Pilgrim: Doc Watson at 100
Watson and his family recorded the song in the mid-1960s
This is a standard Sacred Harp hymn written by Charles Wesley and first published in 1788
Florent Vollant - Tshiam Tshiue
He’s an Innu musician from Quebec who was part of the popular folk duo Kashtin
This is from his 2018 album Mishta Meshkenu, which means “The Great Road” in Innu and references Route 138, a road that stretches across Quebec
The title translates to “Come Back to Me”
Si Kahn, The Freight Hoppers - Doublin’
Kahn is a community organiser and musician from Pennsylvania who moved to the south as an activist during the Civil Rights Movement
He’s performed at Folk Fest 7 times, the last in 1998
The Freight Hoppers are an old time string band that formed in North Carolina in 1992
From the 1998 compilation album Where Have All the Flowers Gone: The Songs of Pete Seeger
Seeger wrote the song in the 1960s after reading The Population Bomb, a book by Paul Ehrlich
Neil Young - Ohio
This was recorded live at Carnegie Hall in 1970
Young wrote the song that year, following the Kent State Massacre, when the Ohio National Guard killed four unarmed college students and wounded another nine during a rally opposing the United States’ increasing involvement in the Vietnam War
The first studio recording of the song was included on Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 1974 compilation album So Far
Téada, John C Reilly, Seamus Begley - Eileen Óg
Téada is an Irish band that plays traditional music, and their name is Irish for “strings”
They performed at Folk Fest in 2005
You may know John C Reilly better as an actor and comedian who’s starred in movies like Boogie Nights and Step Brothers, or from his character Dr. Steve Brule on Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job, but he’s also a really skilled musician with an interest in traditional music
Begley was a traditional musician known as one of the greatest Irish accordion players
This is from Téada’s 2022 album Coiscéim Coiligh
It’s a piece written by Irish songwriters William Percy French and Houston Collisson
Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer, Chao Tian - Three Rules of Discipline and Eight Points for Attention
A married duo that has been performing together for over 35 years
Cathy Fink is from Maryland, but began her career in the early 70s, busking and playing folk music in Canadian coffeehouses
She met Marcy Marxer, originally from Michigan, in Toronto in 1980, and they started writing songs together in 1983
Since then, they have released about 35 albums and received 14 Grammy nominations and 2 Grammy awards
They’ve also performed at Folk Fest 5 times, though not since 2006
Cathy Fink was also at the very first Folk Fest in 1974, so it would only be fitting to have her back for the 50th
Chao is a Chinese hammered dulcimer player, sound designer, and visual artist who has performed in over 30 countries and has been fostering cultural exchange between the United States and China since 2015
This is off their recent album, From China to Appalachia, which came out in August
The lyrics are a military doctrine issued by Chairman Mao in 1928 during the Chinese Civil War, and the rules were generally followed by his Red Army
Pete Seeger recorded it for his 1974 album Banks of Marble
Uncle Sinner - Glory in the Meeting House
From Winnipeg
From his 2020 album Trouble of This World
Old-time breakdown from the Kentucky River basin that was a popular tune to play at fiddle contests
Wilco, Roger McGuinn - James Alley Blues
They’re a band from Chicago that’s been active since 1994
Their only time at Folk Fest was in 2015
McGuinn is a musician who’s best-known as the frontman of the Byrds
This is from the 2014 compilation album Alpha Mike Foxtrot: Rare Tracks 1994-2014
Bruce Cockburn - If a Tree Falls
Singer-songwriter and guitarist from Ottawa who’s been playing professionally for over 40 years
He’s played Folk Fest 8 times, the first in 1974 at the first Winnipeg Folk Fest, and the last in 2019
He originally included the song on his 1989 album Big Circumstance, thought this is an acoustic version from the 2005 deluxe edition of the album
Tinariwen - Takest Tamidaret
They’re a Grammy-award-winning group of Tuareg musicians from Mali who formed in 1979 and are considered one of the pioneering forces behind desert blues
They included this one on their 2011 album Tassili
The title translates to “Scorching Afternoon”
Ellen Froese - All in Its Own Time
Contemporary artist who grew up on a dairy farm in Saskatchewan
From her 2022 album For Each Flower Growing
Ferron - I Am Hungry
She’s a musician and poet from BC, and her last time at Folk Fest was in 2018
This one’s off her 1992 live album Not a Still Life, recorded at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco
Smog - In the Pines
Smog is the name that Bill Callahan recorded under between the late 1990s and early 2000s
Callahan is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist
This one is off his 2005 album A River Ain't Too Much to Love
It’s an old American folk song that likely came from the Appalachian region of the United States
David Francey - Torn Screen Door
Scottish-born Canadian folksinger who worked manual labour jobs for 20 years before pursuing folk music at the age of 45
He’s played Folk Fest 3 times—the last time was in 2013
This is the title song from his first album, from 1999, though this recording is off his 2006 album The First Set: Live from Folk Alley
David Rovics - Rent Strike
He’s a topical singer-songwriter based in Oregon who’s been playing since the 1990s
This is from his recent album Ministry of Culture: Live at Ecosocialism 2024, which was released in July
He writes that the song is “for the notion of a collective rent strike, and how it might work”
Joni Mitchell - Talk to Me
This is from the 2024 archival album The Asylum Years (1976-1980)
Mitchell apparently wrote the song after she joined Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Review and noted that Dylan only spoke to her twice
Sam Amidon, Beth Orton - Sundown
Amidon is a contemporary folk artist from Vermont, now based in England
His only time at Folk Fest was in 2012
Orton is an English musician who’s been performing since the 1990s, and the two of them are married
From Amidon’s 2020 self-titled album
He learned the song from the fiddler Bruce Greene, and it’s likely the only recorded version of the song
The Mountain Goats, Midtown Dickens - Little Boxes
The Mountain Goats are a contemporary band formed in California in the early 1990s and currently based in North Carolina
Midtown Dickens are a Durham, North Carolina folk band
This song was written by Malvina Reynolds in 1962 and popularised by Pete Seeger through his 1963 recording
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott - Ladies Auxiliary
He’s a folk singer from New York City who was a protege of Woody Guthrie, a collaborator with Derroll Adams, and a major influence for Bob Dylan
He’s played Folk Fest five times over the years, the last in 2005
This one was written by Guthrie in 1942
Gordon Bok - Jim Jones
Bok is a folklorist and musician from Maine who’s released almost 40 albums since the mid-1960s
He’s only played Folk Fest once, in 1979
This one is off his 2023 album Windcalling
It’s a compilation of archival recordings made in “studios, concert halls, and homes from Rockport, Maine to Stanthorpe, Australia”
It’s cited as a traditional Newfoundland folk song
Jerron Paxton - Catfish Blues
Contemporary Los Angeles musician whose style draws from recordings made before World War II
His only time at Folk Fest was in 2015
The song is credited to Robert Petway, an American blues musician, based on the fact that he was the first to record it in 1941
Paxton recorded it at the 5th annual Brooklyn Folk Festival in 2013
Peggy Seeger - Country Blues
Peggy is an American folksinger and member of the Seeger family who’s been living and performing in the UK for over 60 years
She’s been at Folk Fest 3 times, but the last was in 1997
This is from her 2012 album Live, which was recorded in 2010
“Country Blues” is related to the songs “Little Maggie” and “Darlin’ Corey,” and was first collected in the Appalachian region of the US in the 1800s
The McIntosh County Shouters - In the Field We Must Die
This is from a 2017 album of slave shout songs, a tradition that’s localised largely to the coast of Georgia
Many elements of the slave shout tradition come from West Africa, though the tradition is also related to other African diasporic traditions from Brazil and Cuba
The word “shout” in this case comes from an Afro-Islamic term for a sacred dance, and doesn’t refer to the vocalisation present in the songs
The McIntosh County Shouters have been performing since 1980, though the slave shout tradition has been passed down since the time of slavery
One of the older singers, Lawrence McKiver, understands the “field” as the world, the “field of your trials and your life”
Richard Inman - What I Did Wrong
Folk and country artist from Winnipeg
He’s played Folk Fest once, in 2017
This one comes from his 2019 album Hasta La Vista
Pharis & Jason Romero, John Reischman, Patrick Metzger, Trent Freeman - The Old Steeple
Reischman is a Grammy-winning mandolinist, composer, and educator based in Vancouver
This is from Reischman’s 2021 album New Time & Old Acoustic
