Barking Dog: July 25, 2024
Jake Xerxes Fussell - Cuckoo!
He’s a musician from Georgia who was raised in an artistic family and apprenticed with the blues musician Precious Bryant from a young age
This is from his new album, When I’m Called, which came out on July 12
The text for this song is by English poet and novelist Jane Taylor, who also wrote the words for “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”
The music is by the English composer Benjamin Britten, who set the poem to music in the 1930s to teach children about music
Kate & Anna McGarrigle - Swimming Song
They’re sisters who learned piano from village nuns when living in the Laurentian mountains as children
They started writing and performing their own songs in Montreal in 1960s
This is from their 1974 self-titled album
The song is by Loudon Wainwright
Mance Lipscomb - Shine On Harvest Moon
Texan blues artist who worked as a tenant farmer in Texas most of his life, but came to prominence in 1960 during the resurgence of country blues
This led to him recording an album in 1961, called Trouble in Mind, and appearing at the first Monterey Folk Festival in 1963
This is a popular song that was written in the early 1900s by the married Vaudeville duo Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth
Lipscomb recorded this version live at the Cabalo in Berkeley, California in 1964
Peggy Seeger, Ewan MacColl - The Ballad of Accounting
They were a well-known married duo
MacColl was a British folksinger and labour activist known for his involvement in the 1960s folk revival
Seeger is an American folksinger and member of the Seeger family who’s been living and performing in the UK for over 60 years
MacColl originally wrote the song as the theme song for a BBC radio series called Landmarks
Malvina Reynolds - Overtime
Malvina Reynolds came to folk music later in her life, when she met Pete Seeger and other folk singers when she was in her 40s
She’s known particularly for writing the song “Little Boxes,” though she wrote and recorded a large catalogue of music during her career
This is her own song, which was only first released in 2007
She wrote the song in support of a bill introduced in the California Assembly in March of 1977 that outlawed mandatory overtime
Seamus Heaney, Liam O’Flynn - The Given Note
Heaney was a Nobel Prize-winning poet, playwright, and translator from Ireland
O’Flynn was an Irish Uilleann piper known as a solo musician and as a member of Planxty
This is from their 2003 album The Poet & The Piper, which combines traditional and contemporary music with lyrics and poetry
Roscoe Holcomb - Willow Tree
Was a construction worker, coal miner, and farmer much of his life
He was an older artist who became popular during the folk revival of the 1960s, and didn’t have a music career at all before then—though he was born in 1912, he was first discovered by John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers playing on his front porch in Daisy, Kentucky in 1958
This is a traditional Appalachian folk song that is closely related to “Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies,” a version of which we’ll hear after this
The song also shares similarities with the murder ballad “Silver Dagger”
Bob Dylan, The Band - Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies
This recording was made during the Basement Tapes sessions in 1967
Okkervil River - Willow Tree
They’re a band from Texas that was formed by the musician Will Sheff in 1998
This is from the 10th anniversary edition of their 2005 album Black Sheep Boy
Joni Mitchell - Ten Thousand Miles
Recorded at her parents’ house in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in 1965
This is her version of the 18th century folk ballad “Ten Thousand Miles,” also known as “The Turtle Dove” or “Fare Thee Well”
The earliest published version of the song appeared in England in 1710
She likely got it from Joan Baez’s version from her 1960 debut album
Ed Trickett - The Telling Takes Me Home
He was a psychology professor by day and a guitarist, pianist, and hammered dulcimer player the rest of the time
He’s known for performing both on his own and in a trio with Gordon Bok and Anne Mayo Muir, and his music career spanned over 50 years
This is off his 1972 album of the same name
The song is by Utah Phillips
Alice Stuart - One Too Many Mornings
She was a musician from Washington who got her start in folk music at the Berkeley Folk Festival in 1964, when she was 22
She also toured with musicians like Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, Van Morrison, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott
Dylan wrote the song in 1963 and included it on his 1964 album The Times They Are a-Changin’
Her version is from her 1999 album Crazy with the Blues
Lonesome Ace Stringband - Don’t Get Trouble in Mind
Contemporary stringband based in Toronto
This is an American old-time tune of uncertain origin
From their 2014 album Old Time
The Texas Drifter (Goebel Reeves) - Railroad Boomer
He was a folk and country musician from Texas who played in the style of Jimmie Rodgers He’s known particularly for writing the song “Hobo’s Lullaby”
This one was recorded in Los Angeles in 1931
Sammy Walker - The Grand Coulee Dam
He’s a folksinger from Georgia who recorded his first albums in the mid 1970s
This is off his 1979 album Songs from Woody’s Pen, a collection of 11 covers of Woody Guthrie’s songs
Written by Woody Guthrie when he was commissioned by the Bonneville Power Administration to write songs promoting the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River in 1941
Star Thistle - Dragon Eyes
From Winnipeg
This is a song by Adrianne Lenker of the band Big Thief, released on her 2020 solo album Songs
Hitoshi Komuro
He’s a Japanese folksinger known as a member of the folk group Rokumonsen and as a composer for TV and movies
This is a live recording from a concert he gave in 1974
The title of the song translates to “Hard Work”
Mike Seeger, Peggy Seeger - My Home’s Across the Blue Ridge Mountains
Seeger was a folklorist and musician who co-founded the New Lost City Ramblers in the 1950s
This is off their 2011 album Fly Down Little Bird, which they recorded in 2008, just a year before Mike’s death
The album was an attempt to record the traditional songs from their childhood as closely as possible to the way they originally heard them
Peggy notes that the recording was “like old times,” and was “the first time in 50 years that [they] had taken time to just sit back and sing”
They learned the song as “My Home’s Across the Smoky Mountains” from the singing of Bascom Lamar Lunsford
The song was first recorded by the Carolina Tar Heels in 1929
Caravan - Distant Gunfire Sounds
This is off the 1978 album Thailand: Songs for Life
Caravan are a folk-rock band that formed in 1975 during the Thai fight for democracy
The verse the title comes from translates to “Distant gunfire sounds / Waking slaves to freedom / Thus a new life comes”
Steeleye Span - My Johnny Was a Shoemaker
They’re a British folk rock band that formed in 1969 and remain active, though they’ve undergone several changes in membership over the years
This one is from their 1970 album Hark! The Village Wait
Cara Luft - My Johnny Was a Shoemaker
Artist from Winnipeg
This is a sea ballad, or “forecastle shanty” from England that is either traditional or was written by WJ Florence in the 1850s—we aren’t sure whether Florence truly wrote it or just claimed it as his own
Taskiana Four - I Shall Not Be Moved
A gospel vocal quartet that recorded for Victor Records between 1926 and 1928
“I Shall Not Be Moved” is a spiritual that became popular as a protest song during the Civil Rights Movement and as a union song
Marie Hare - Maid of the East
Ballad singer from Strathadam, NB, known for her performances at the Miramichi Folksong Festival
Relatively rare ballad
Hare learned it from her friend, who learned it from her father who was a woodsman and likely learned it in a lumber camp in the 1870s
The Moving Star Hall Singers - The Rabbit and the Partridge
The Moving Star Hall Singers were all lifelong residents of Johns Island, South Carolina, their ages ranging from 25 to 65 years old
Though the island was poor and younger generations weren’t as involved with preserving cultural traditions, the group of islands that Johns Island is part of has been referred to as one of the heartlands of American music
This comes from the 1967 album Been in the Storm So Long
Jane Hunter tells the story
Robert Mitchum, Gary Gray - Just Like Me
Mitchum was an American actor known for films like Cape Fear, Night of the Hunter, and River of No Return
Gray was a child actor who continued his career on TV as an adult
This is from the soundtrack to the 1948 film Rachel and the Stranger
Old Man Luedecke - Wait a While
This is from his 2015 album Domestic Eccentric, which he recorded in a cabin he built himself in his own backyard in Chester, NS
Bernice Johnson Reagon - Give Your Hands to Struggle
Reagon was a song leader, activist, scholar, and composer who was a founding member of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee’s Freedom Singers in the 1960s, and with them recognized the potential in collective singing to bring diverse groups together
This is from her 1975 album of the same name
The liner notes state: “Without struggle there is no friction, there is no movement, there is no life, and no future.”
Alonzo Burks - Will the Circle Be Unbroken
This is a field recording from Mississippi
Gianni Marcucci travelled from Italy to the United States five times during the 70s and 80s to document blues music
He found Burks in Flora, Mississippi, through the nephew of blues artist William “Do Boy” Diamond, and recorded several of his songs in the summer of 1978
Well-known Christian hymn written around 1907 by Ada R Habershon and Charles H Gabriel
Juan Sequndo Mamani, Eugenio Challapa Challapa - Solo on the Bandola / Romero, Romero / Sahsalye
This is off a 1975 album of music by the Indigenous groups of Chile
The songs we heard were performed by Aymara people, who inhabit the Andes and Altiplano regions, and each of the songs was about llamas and performed during the Floreo festival, which celebrates the llama
Cliff Scott - Long Wavy Hair
He was a country blues musician from Georgia who was recorded by the folksong collector George Mitchell in 1969
Margret RoadKnight - Living Legend
She’s an Australian musician who’s been performing for over 50 years in a variety of genres
This is a live performance from 2006
The song was written by Shel Silverstein and Bob Gibson in 1978
Totta Näslund - Farewell
He was a Swedish musician and actor who was active from 1975 until his death in 2005
This is a Bob Dylan song written in 1963 and only first officially released in 2010, though several recordings were circulated on bootlegs over the years
Pharis & Jason Romero - Cumberland Gap
From Horsefly, BC
Appalachian folk song likely from the late 19th century
Richard Brautigan - The View from the Dog Tower
