Barking Dog: January 9, 2025
We began the show today with a couple of birthdays:
Joan Baez - Riddle Song
She turns 84 today!
Baez is one of the best known musicians to come out of the 1960s folk revival
She performed for over 60 years and released over 30 albums before retiring in 2019
This is an English folk song and lullaby that was brought over to the Appalachian region by settlers
It’s also known by the title “The Devil’s Nine Questions”
This is from a 1982 album of previously unreleased tracks, recorded at Baez’s concerts between 1961 and 1963
She’s joined on the song by Pete Seeger
Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds - Down by the River
He’s a musician from New York known as the lead singer and guitarist for his eponymous band
It’s his 58th birthday today
Reynolds is the lead guitarist for Dave Matthews Band, and a solo artist who plays a variety of instruments
This was recorded live at Radio City Music Hall in New York City in 2007
The song is by Neil Young, who first released it on his 1969 album Everybody Knows This is Nowhere with Crazy Horse, and Young has stated that he wrote the song while in bed with a fever of 39 degrees
Ted Hawkins - 59th Street Bridge Song
He was a musician from Mississippi who had a rough childhood, and first learned to sing while he was at a reform school at the age of twelve
He drifted in and out of jail around the United States over the next few decades, recording several tunes and busking on the boardwalk in Venice Beach, California
He recorded an album in 1986 that became popular in Europe, and he toured there and lived in the UK for several years
In 1994, a few years after returning to the States, Hawkins recorded an album for Geffen Records, which finally brought him to national attention in the US, and he began to tour
He unfortunately died of a stroke when he was 58, just a few months after the release of his breakthrough album
This is from the 1998 compilation album Love You Most Of All: More Songs from Venice Beach
The song is by Paul Simon
Bridget St. John - If You’d Been There
She’s an English musician who’s been playing professionally for over 50 years
This comes from the compilation album Les Cousins: The Soundtrack of Soho’s Legendary Folk & Blues Club, released in January of 2024
Les Cousins was a club in London, England that was prominent during the folk revival of the 1960s
St. John originally included the song on her 1971 album Songs for the Gentle Man
Antonia Lamb - Joanna
She was a musician, dancer, actor, writer, and astrologer who was active in the Greenwich Village and LA folk scenes of the 1960s
This is from her 1978 debut album Easy to Love Her
David Francey - Nearly Midnight
Scottish-born Canadian folksinger who worked as a railyard worker and carpenter for 20 years before pursuing folk music at the age of 45
This is from his 2003 album Skating Rink
OJ Abbott - How We Got Back to the Woods Last Year
Abbott was 84 when this song was recorded for the album Lumbering Songs from the Ontario Shanties, compiled by Edith Fowke between 1957 and 1958
The song is from the northern Ontario woods, though it was brought to American camps by migrant shanty boys
Furry Lewis - When My Baby Left Me
American country blues artist from Memphis, Tennessee who began his recording career in 1927
From his 1972 album Shake ‘Em On Down
He recorded this one in April of 1961
It’s a song written by Arthur Crudup and first recorded in 1950
Birmingham Jug Band - Bill Wilson
They were a jug band from Alabama that had four recording sessions between 1927 and 1930
Their members included Big Joe Williams, Jaybird Coleman, and Bogus Ben Covington
This one was recorded in Atlanta, Georgia in 1930
It’s another version of the song “John Henry”
Lisu Musicians - Dance Tunes for Banjo
From the 2009 album Sounds for the Spirits, recorded in northern Thailand by John Moore for his Indigenius label
The Lisu are an ethnic group that inhabit Myanmar, Thailand, China, and northern India
The type of banjo these tunes are played on is called a tseubeu, and it’s a long-necked fretless three-stringed instrument with a soundboard made from lizard or snake skin
It’s interesting how similar some of the basic tunes are to some well-known western banjo tunes
Big Dave McLean - Police and High Sheriff
A blues musician from Winnipeg who’s been playing for over 50 years
This song seems to come from the 1927 Ollis Martin recording “Police and High Sheriff Come Ridin' Down”, and the song was undoubtedly the inspiration for the newer folksong “Gotta Travel On”
McLean includes it on his 2008 album Acoustic Blues: Got ‘Em from the Bottom
Leon Pinson - Hush (Somebody Is Calling Me)
He was a Mississippi Delta gospel blues musician
The folksong collector George Mitchell made this recording of Pinson in Cleveland, Mississippi in September of 1987
An old African-American spiritual with floating lyrics that appear in many other traditional songs
Noel Paul Stookey - Give a Damn
He’s a musician from Michigan best known as a member of the trio Peter, Paul and Mary, though his career as a solo musician and activist has also been very successful
This is off his 1971 album Paul And
It refers to the 1968 song of the same name by the band Spanky and Our Gang
Lou Reed - Men of Good Fortune
This is a demo from May of 1965
Seamus Heaney - Bogland
Heaney was a Nobel Prize-winning poet, playwright, and translator from Ireland
This is from his 2003 album with Irish Uilleann piper Liam O’Flynn called The Poet & The Piper, which combines traditional and contemporary music with lyrics and poetry
It’s originally from Heaney’s second collection of poetry, Door into the Dark, from 1969
Liam O’Flynn - After Aughrim’s Great Disaster
He was an Irish musician known both for his solo career and as a member of Planxty
This is from his 1993 album Out to an Other Side
It’s a traditional Irish song about the aftermath of the Battle of Aughrim in 1691, fought between the Irish Jacobite Army and the Williamite Army, which resulted in a breakdown of the old order of Irish chieftains
David Rovics - Jenin
He’s a topical singer-songwriter based in Oregon who’s been playing since the 1990s
This is from his 2002 album Hang a Flag in the Window
He writes of it: “During Israel’s 2002 invasions of Jenin and other West Bank cities the IDF destroyed a lot of buildings and killed a lot of people. I figured while they were in Jenin that perhaps the next suicide bomber in Israel would be from Jenin. If memory serves, I was actually working on writing the song, sitting on the grass in Canterbury, England, when I heard on the radio about a suicide bomber from Jenin who had just exploded.”
Mott Willis - Someday Blues
He was a blues musician from Crystal Springs, Mississippi
This one was recorded in July of 1975
This is a blues song written and recorded by blues musician Walter Davis in 1940
Victor Jara - Canción De Cuna Para Un Niño Vago
He was a Chilean musician, poet, teacher, theatre director, and activist who was tortured and killed in 1973 during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet
His work is widely remembered and celebrated throughout the world for its focus on peace, love, and social justice
The title translates to “Lullaby for a deserted child”
It’s off his second album, from 1967
Karen James - The Ghost Lover
A folksinger who grew up in England, Spain, and France, and moved to Canada as a teenager
The ballad is descended from an English folk ballad, though James got her version from a recording collected by Maud Karpeles in Bonavista Bay, Newfoundland either in the late 20s or early 30s
Bob Dylan - A Couple More Years
This is an outtake from the soundtrack to the 1987 film Hearts of Fire, which Dylan starred in
The song was written by Shel Silverstein and Dennis Locorriere
Francis Bebey - Souffles
He was a Cameroonian musician, musicologist, artist, and writer
This is off his 1978 album Ballades Africaines
The lyrics are a poem by the Senegalese poet Birago Diop
The title translates to “Breaths” and the first stanza translates to:
Listen to things
More often than Beings
Hear the voice of fire,
Hear the voice of water.
Listen in the wind,
To the sighs of the bush;
This is the ancestors breathing.
Joy Harjo - Nandia
She’s a poet, author, playwright, and musician who was the first Native American to serve as Poet Laureate of the United States
This is off her 2006 album She Had Some Horses
Uncle Sinner - House Carpenter
From Winnipeg
“The House Carpenter” is a Scottish ballad also known as “The Daemon Lover”
Kacy & Clayton - Wood View
Second cousins from Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan
From their 2013 album The Day Is Past & Gone
Smokey Joe Miller & The Georgia Pals - The House Where We Were Wed
Smokey Joe Miller was a guitarist from Georgia who began his career in 1936, playing with early country musicians like Gid Tanner and Riley Puckett
He was given the nickname “Smokey Joe” because of his ability to play lightning-fast runs and note-for-note fiddle tunes
This is from the 1982 album Old American Heart Throbs
He’s joined by his friend Lawrence Humphries on this one
The lyrics are a poem by the American poet Will Carleton
Art Bouman - Going to German
He’s a Halifax-based banjo player who’s interested in reclaiming the banjo as a traditional instrument of the African diaspora and highlighting the Black banjo players whose work has historically been overlooked
This is a single released by Big Turnip Records in 2024
It’s a song from the repertoire of jug band leader Gus Cannon, who recorded it in 1929
“German” likely refers to a prison
Ken Waldman - Dubuque
He’s a musician and writer from Alaska
This is off his 2005 2-CD debut album called All Originals, All Traditionals, and this one is from the “All Traditionals” CD
It’s a traditional American old-time tune, and Waldman recites one of his poems while playing
Alphabetical Four - When the Moon Goes Down in the Valley of Time
NYC Jubilee gospel quartet that recorded between 1938 and 1943
Recorded in New York City in August of 1938
Wade Hemsworth - Ye Girls of Old Ontario
A respected Canadian folksinger from Brantford, Ontario
Only wrote about 20 songs during his career, though many of them, such as “The Black Fly Song,” “The Logdriver’s Waltz,” and “The Wild Goose” are so ingrained in Canadian culture that people consider them traditional Canadian folk songs at this point
This is a lumberjack song similar in content to many other English and French shanty songs
Countrydiction - Who’s Crazy
This song was released in 1978 as part of the “What Now People” record series that advocated song as political movement
It’s by Tim Patterson, the vocalist and banjo player for the band
Hayes McMullan - Every Day Seem Like Murder Here
American Delta blues artist from Mississippi who was also a sharecropper, deacon, and civil rights activist
This is from the 2017 Light in the Attic album of the same name, which is a compilation of previously unreleased tracks by McMullan
It was recorded in Mississippi in the late 1960s
Margaret MacArthur - Old Mr. Grumble
She was an American singer and dulcimer player originally from Chicago, though she moved to Vermont in the 1940s and lived there until her death in 2006
This is from her 1962 album Folksongs of Vermont, which she recorded in her kitchen after Pete Seeger insisted that she sign to the Folkways record label
The song comes from Minnie Stetson of Jacksonville, Vermont
Dyad - Hickory Jack
