Ballake Sissoko, Piers Faccini - When the jeli sings (Hommage à Kasse Mady)
Sissoko is a Malian kora player who has collaborated with artists including Toumani Diabaté and Taj Mahal
Faccini is an English musician and painter who’s been performing since the late 1990s
This is a new single from Sissoko’s upcoming album Djelimady No. 1, out on November 27th
It’s a tribute to the late Malian musician Kassé Mady Diabaté
John Prine - All the Way With You
Prine was one of the most influential songwriters of his generation
He died in April of 2020 from COVID, but he’s remembered for his social commentary and his unique style of singing
This one is from the new album Found Dogs, a collection of demos and recordings from the sessions for Prine’s 1995 album Lost Dogs & Mixed Blessings
The song originally appeared on that album
The Camperdown Family Band - Rattlesnake
They’re a band based in British Columbia, and this is from their new album Bright As A Penny, which came out in September
Bruce Cockburn - Louis Collins
Singer-songwriter and guitarist from Ottawa who’s been playing professionally for over 40 years
This one is from his new album The Blood of Others, which came out on October 16th
It’s a collection of songs written by other people that he “found sticking to the edges of [his] musical landscape”
This is a song by Mississippi John Hurt, who first recorded it in 1928
He claimed he had written the song after overhearing a conversation about a local murder
It became one of his best-known songs, and went on to become a standard during the folk revival of the 1960s
Mississippi John Hurt - Baby What’s Wrong With You
American country blues singer and guitarist from Avalon, Mississippi
He made a couple of recordings for OkEh Records in the late 1920s but they were commercial failures, and when OkEh Records closed shop during the Great Depression, Hurt returned to his work as a sharecropper, continuing to play music at local events
His early recordings were included on the incredibly influential 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music, and in 1963 a copy of his song “Avalon Blues” was discovered, which led the musicologist Dick Spottswood to locate Hurt in Avalon in Mississippi
Hurt performed at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, which brought further attention to his music, and he toured extensively throughout the US and recorded 3 albums
This is a live recording from a concert he gave at Oberlin College in Ohio in 1965
John Fahey - Funeral Song for Mississippi John Hurt
Founder of Takoma Records, one of three guitarists who aimed to raise steel string guitar to the level of a concert instrument
Considered the originator of the American primitive guitar genre
This is off his 1972 album Of Rivers and Religion
Gordie Tentrees - Sick Sorry Sober
He’s blues musician originally from Hamilton, Ontario, though he’s been living in the Yukon for several decades
This is off his new album Dandelion Blue, which he recorded in a studio in an Ontario farmhouse using vintage gear from the 1930s
It’s a song by his friend Todd Gallant, and it was one of the first songs he learned
Harrison Kennedy - Cruise Control Working
Harrison Kennedy a Hamilton artist with a career in blues and roots music spanning over 50 years
This is off his new album Old Fashion Plain, which he released in September
John Lawson Tyree - Hop Along Lou
From an album of non-blues, non-religious Black music from Virginia, released in 1978
This one was recorded in January of 1977 in Sontag, Virginia
Tyree was a musician from Franklin County, Virginia who learned the banjo from his father and uncle
He played music at square dances that he hosted in the basement of his home—part of a local dance tradition that lasted into the early 1970s
Tyree learned this song from his uncle, and he often played it at dances
Mairearad Green, Rachel Newton - Anna Bhàn
Newton is a contemporary Scottish singer and harpist who’s played in bands like The Shee, the Furrow Collective, and Boreas
Green is a musician and visual artist from the Scottish Highlands
They’re cousins, and this is the title track from their 2024 album, which they recorded in honour of their great-great-grandmother Anna Bhàn, one of a group of women who were at the forefront of the Coigach Resistance of 1852
It was one of only a few successful resistances during the Highland Clearances, a government-led attack on non-English-speaking societies in Scotland that occurred between 1750 and 1860
Bonnie & The Salty Dawgs - Hattimattim Tim
This is off a 2024 album that blends Bengal and Appalachian folk traditions, highlighting the similarities between cultures around the world
“Hattimattim Tim” is a Bengali folk nursery rhyme that first appeared in print in 1899
It’s about a group of animals that lay eggs in fields and have two horns on their heads
Art Napoleon - talkin bout a revolution
He’s a musician, actor, author, activist, bush cook, and former chief of the Saulteau First Nation
This is off his 2010 album Creeland Covers, on which he performs popular songs in Cree
This is a cover of Tracy Chapman’s 1988 song, which she released on her debut album
Blind Willie Johnson - Take Your Stand
He was a gospel blues musician from Texas who recorded between 1927 and 1930 and spent much of his life as a street performer and preacher
This recording is from 1929, and he’s accompanied by an unidentified female singer who was possibly his wife, Willie B. Harris, who often accompanied him on piano at church benefit performances
Enrico Merlin - Requiem for Blind Willie Johnson
He’s a musician, composer, and musicologist from Italy, and this is from his 2023 album Living Blues
Chris Smither - Down in the Flood
He’s a musician from New Orleans who began playing in the late 1960s
This one is off his 1992 album Another Way to Find You, and it’s a song by Bob Dylan from the 1975 album The Basement Tapes
Bob Dylan - Desolation Row
This is a version of the song he recorded live for the MTV Unplugged TV series in New York City in November of 1994
He originally released the song on his 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited
Florence Reece - Which Side are You On?
She was a union activist, singer, poet, and songwriter from Tennessee, best known for writing this song
She originally wrote it in 1912 when her father, a coal miner, was on strike, then later updated it during the 1931 strike in Harlan County, Kentucky, a region that’s seen several violent labour struggles
Her husband was a union leader in Harlan County during this time, and she wrote the new lyrics on a calendar in their kitchen after she and their children were terrorized by Sheriff JH Blair and his men in an act of intimidation against her husband
Utah Phillips - Yuba City
Phillips was an anarchist folksinger, storyteller, and labour organiser from Ohio
This is from his 1997 album The Telling Takes Me Home
He wrote it after the murder of 25 transient farm workers in California in 1971
Larry Mohr - Pay Day at Coal Creek
This is a solo by Mohr from the 1958 Odetta and Larry album The Tin Angel
Odetta and Larry were a short-lived duo, and while Odetta went on to become a highly influential folk musician, Mohr became a political scientist and professor at the University of Michigan, though the two remained friends
Mohr learned this from Pete Steele’s recording for the Library of Congress from 1938
The song is about a mine explosion that happened in Coal Creek, Tennessee in 1911
Odetta - The Frozen Logger
Born in Birmingham, Alabama
Had operatic vocal training from the age of 13 and studied music at Los Angeles City College
While on tour with the musical Finian’s Rainbow, she fell in with some San Francisco folksingers and began to focus on performing folk music
This is also from the 1958 Odetta and Larry album The Tin Angel
The song was written by American writer and composer James Stevens in 1928
Shirley Collins - Sweet Greens and Blues
She’s an English folk singer, and is one of the best-known names from the English folk revival of the 1960s
This is from her 2020 album Heart’s Ease, and the lyrics were written by her first husband, Austin John Marshall, in the 1960s about their life at the time
Collins had never recorded the song, and wanted to record it for her children
The song takes its melody from the traditional folk song “The Wagoner’s Lad”
Blind Willie McTell - Don’t Forget It
He was a piedmont blues and ragtime artist who made many recordings with different companies under different names, but who never had a major hit
Despite his lack of commercial success, he actively played and recorded during the 40s and 50s, unlike many of his peers
He did not live to see the folk revival of the 1960s through which many other bluesmen were rediscovered, but he influenced many artists, including Taj Mahal and The White Stripes
This is from his last recording session, made in Atlanta, Georgia in September of 1956
Stefan Grossman - Blues for Blind Willie McTell
He’s a guitarist, singer, producer, and educator from Brooklyn, New York who began playing guitar at the age of nine
This is from his 1982 album Blues and Ragtime Guitar
Welling & McGhee - The North Carolina Textile Strike
They were an old-time duo from Huntington, West Virginia who made numerous recordings in the 1920s and 30s, both as solo artists, as a duo, and with many other local musicians and family members
They made this recording for Paramount Records in 1929
It’s about the Marion Massacre, which occurred in Marion, North Carolina in October of 1929 when police shot six workers and injured about 30 during a strike at the Marion Manufacturing Company textile mill
About 600 workers had been on strike for several weeks demanding better pay and working conditions
The company pretended to accept their demands, but once they returned to work, foremen and thugs began beating and insulting them, and the shooting began as a result of the workers turning off the machines
Cara Luft - Come Undone
Winnipeg
This is from her new album My Heart Will Always Be, which came out at the end of July
Sarah Ogan Gunning - Captain Devin
She was a folksinger from Kentucky
She was briefly involved in the New York folk scene in the 1930s and was later rediscovered in Detroit in the 1960s, and played at Newport Folk Festival in 1964
This is from her 1965 album Girl of Constant Sorrow
Gunning learned her version of the song from her mother, and it was quite uncommon in the Appalachian region of the United States
Stompin’ Tom Connors - Whiskey in the Jar
He was a musician from New Brunswick known for a number of classic Canadian songs like “Bud the Spud” and “The Hockey Song”
Connors grew up poor in Saint John, and first began hitchhiking at the age of 13
He was still hitchhiking around the country in his 20s, and found himself at a bar in Timmins, Ontario, where the bartender offered him a second beer if he played a few songs
From those songs, he got a 14-month run as an entertainer at the bar, a radio show, and a recording career
This is off his 2012 album The Roads of Life
It’s a traditional Irish song possibly from the 18th century
Two Crows for Comfort - The Ballad of Giles Corey
They’re a duo from Winnipeg Beach, and this is from their 2021 album Show Me Light
Giles Corey was one of several people accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials in the 1690s
Mama’s Broke - Build It Up
They’re a duo from Nova Scotia who have been playing together for a decade
This is from their latest album Reunion, which came out in August
Staber and Chasnoff - Wind in the Wires
They’re a duo based in Montreal who met in 1993 and married soon after
This is off their 2007 album Looking for the Road, and it’s a song by Scottish-Canadian singer-songwriter David Francey
George Childers - Five Hundred Miles
This is from a 1984 album of traditional music from northern Georgia, recorded by folklorist and musician Art Rosenbaum
Childers’ father was also a talented banjo player, though George noted that he had to learn the instrument on his own because his father never showed him “one thing in the world”
Childers played only sporadically, working professionally as a sawmill hand
This song has many forms, and has been recorded as ”Ruben,” “The Train Song,” and “Seventy-Four,” among other names
His son Bobby accompanies him on guitar on this recording
Barking Dog: October 22, 2026
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