Barking Dog: November 3, 2022
Bruce Cockburn - The Whole Night Sky
Canadian singer-songwriter and skilled guitarist who’s been playing professionally for over 40 years
This is an alternate version of a song that appeared on his 1996 album The Charity of Night
It’s from his forthcoming album, Rarities, which comes out on November 25
It presents 12 rarely heard recordings only previously available in a limited edition box set
Dick Gaughan - Workers’ Song
He’s a Scottish musician who began playing professionally in 1970, though he stopped playing publicly in 2016 due to a stroke that affected his ability to perform
This is off his 1981 album Handful of Earth, which at the time was the most political album he had released
The song was written by Ed Pickford
Tim Heidecker - I Never Understood the Wind
He’s a comedian and musician from Pennsylvania known particularly as part of the comedy duo Tim & Eric
This is one of many protest songs Heidecker has uploaded to Bandcamp
The lyrics are rearranged from a nonsensical speech Donald Trump gave about wind power in 2019
Uncle Sinner - Motherless Child
From Winnipeg
Off his album Trouble of This World, from 2020
Blues standard first recorded by Blind Willie Johnson in 1927
Vashti Bunyan - Come Wind Come Rain
She’s an English musician who began playing in the 1960s but quit in 1970 after her debut album sold few copies
The album slowly built a cult following, however, and Bunyan began playing and recording again in the early 2000s
She’s since released 2 more albums, the last in 2014
This one is from that first album, though, which is called Just Another Diamond Day
Eric Bibb - Delia’s Gone
He’s an American musician who grew up around well-known musicians like Peter 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
He moved to Sweden in the 1970s, and has lived there since
His version of a ballad based on the murder of Delia Green, a 14-year-old African American girl from Georgia, on Christmas Day, 1900
There are at least 2 different songs about the murder—this one is from the Bahamas, and contains little detail
It likely came from the longer American ballad, known simply as “Delia,” though it has changed enough that it can be considered a distinct song at this point
Alan Mills - Peter Emberley
Canadian folk singer, writer, and actor from Lachine, Quebec
Known for popularising Canadian folk music, and for writing I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly
One of the best-known New Brunswick ballads, with lyrics written by Emberley’s (Amberley’s) friend John Calhoun in 1881, and a traditional Irish tune put to use for it by local singer Abraham Munn
Emberley was a woodsman from Prince Edward Island who was killed on his first job at a Boiestown, NB woodyard in 1881 when he was struck by a log while loading a sled
Old Man Luedecke - Year of the Dragon
From Chester, NS
This is from his 2015 album Domestic Eccentric
AA Bondy - World Without End
Musician from Birmingham, Alabama who’s been playing professionally for over 30 years
From his 2007 album American Hearts
Tony Schwartz - Recreating a Story
He was an agoraphobic sound archivist who spent much of his life documenting the sounds of his neighbourhood in New York City, though he also collected recordings from around the world by corresponding with international musicians
Off his 1970 album Tony Schwartz Records the Sound of Children
Lawrence Ferlinghetti - The World Is a Beautiful Place
He was a poet, artist, and activist from New York who founded City Lights bookstore in San Francisco
Though he didn’t consider himself a Beat poet, he published many of the Beat poets, including Allen Ginsberg, and is often aligned with members of that movement
Ferlinghetti died in 2021 at the age of 101
The city of San Francisco named his birthday, March 24, “Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day” on the occasion of his 100th birthday
This poem is from perhaps his best known collection of poetry, A Coney Island of the Mind, which was published in 1958
Christine Lavin - Rockaway
She’s a musician who worked at a cafe in Saratoga Springs, New York, until the folksinger Dave Van Ronk convinced her to move to New York City to pursue a career as a musician
She’s recorded over 25 albums since the early 1980s, and this one’s from her 1985 album Future Fossils
Phil Ochs - Ringing of Revolution
He was an American protest singer from the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene
Off his live album, Phil Ochs in Concert, from 1966
He later changed the title of the song to “Rhythms of Revolution”, deciding that it sounded better
The song contains one of the earliest lyrical political references to Ronald Reagan
David Rovics - Judi Bari
He’s a musician and writer based in Oregon who’s been touring internationally since the 1990s
From his 1998 album We Just Want the World
It’s adapted from the song “Joe Hill” by Earl Robinson
Rovics says of the song, “I never met Judi, but we had mutual friends. She was a very effective and much-loved organiser with Earth First! and the Industrial Workers of the World.”
In May of 1990, Bari was severely injured when a pipe bomb detonated beneath her car seat
FBI and police officials were quick to arrive on the scene, and were suspicious that Bari accidentally set off the bomb while knowingly transporting it
Bari and Darryl Cherney, who was in the car with her and suffered minor injuries, later filed a civil suit which found that their civil rights had been violated by the FBI and the Oakland police department and awarded them $4.4m in damages
Bari had died of breast cancer in 1997, 5 years before the trial was concluded
Faith Petric - Little Red Hen
She was a folksinger and activist originally from Idaho who was the head of the San Francisco Folk Music Club for 50 years
Petric was involved in activism for her entire life, participating in the Selma to Montgomery civil rights marches of 1965, sitting on anti-fascism committees, and assisting Spanish Civil War refugees
She died in 2013 at the age of 98
This one is from the 1988 album Rebel Voices: Songs of the Industrial Workers of the World
It’s version of the American fable of the same title, adapted by folksinger Malvina Reynolds into a socialist tale
Eagle Jubilee Four - May Be the Last Time
They were a gospel group that recorded for ARC records in South Carolina in 1938
Traditional American gospel song
The McIntosh County Shouters - This May Be Our Last Time
This is from a 2017 album of slave shout songs, a tradition that’s localized 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, “saut,” and doesn’t refer to the vocalisation present in the songs
The most important stylistic components of the tradition are call-and-response singing, hand-clapping, and the movement of performers in a counterclockwise circle
The McIntosh County Shouters have been performing since 1980, though the slave shout tradition has been passed down since the time of slavery
The first generation of McIntosh County Shouters have since passed away, but we heard the second generation of the group, which continues to carry the tradition
While older traditional spirituals are often distinct from shout songs, this one can act as either
In this case, it’s performed as a traditional shout song
Tom Willie Johnson - Paddle Song
From a 1986 album of west coast Indigenous music recorded by Dr. Ida Halpern
Halpern was originally from Austria, but arrived in Canada in 1944 to flee Nazism
She’s known mainly for her work with the First Nations people of British Columbia, which she conducted at a time when the government was actively working against efforts to celebrate and preserve Indigenous cultures in Canada
Her work paved the way for more recent efforts for reciprocal relationships between ethnographers and the people whose work they study
This is a Haida song performed by Kwakwakaʼwakw Chief Tom Willie Johnson
Magpie - Railroad Home
A duo comprised of Greg Artzner and Terry Leonino who have been playing together around the Washington, DC area since the early 1970s
This is from their 1978 album Live at the Dunham Inn
Brian Silber joins them on fiddle
Greg wrote the song about his former home in Southern Ohio, which was right next to railroad tracks
The house would shake around 2 AM every night when a fast freight would pass through
Ian & Sylvia - The Ghost Lover
Ian & Sylvia performed together from 1959 until their divorce in 1975
This is an English folk ballad, though several versions were collected by Maud Karpeles in Bonavista Bay, Newfoundland either in the late 20s or early 30s, which is likely where Ian & Sylvia got their version from
Pete Seeger - Throw Away That Shad Net (How Are We Gonna Save Tomorrow?)
Pete Seeger was a very influential folk singer and activist who advocated for Civil Rights, environmental causes, and other important social causes through his music
That’s one of his songs about the environment, which he wrote in 1975 and recorded for his 2007 album At 89, which won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album
In 1966, Seeger and his wife Toshi founded the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater Inc., a nonprofit organization that aims to protect the Hudson River in New York from pollution
Its main goal at the beginning was to force a clean-up of the Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) contamination that plagued the river beginning in the 1940s, as a result of nearby manufacturing activities by General Electric and other companies
Their protests led to the passage of the federal Clean Water Act in 1972 and the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, and operations still continue to reduce pollution in the river
Alistair Hulett - Too Long in the Tower of Song
He was a folksinger from Glasgow, Scotland, known as a member of the folk punk band Roaring Jack
This one is from the 2012 album Live in Concert, recorded at the Melbourne Folk Club in Australia in November of 2009, just a few months before his death in January of 2010
Willie Dunn - Unknown
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
This is an unreleased song taken from the 1969 independent documentary I Am the Redman
It has a similar melody and lyric format to his song “Louis Riel”, but refers to contemporary issues
No title is given for the song, and his label, Light in the Attic, wasn’t able to identify the song for me
Anne Feeney - Have You Been to Jail for Justice?
She was a folksinger, activist, and attorney from Pennsylvania who began playing in the late 60s
She also cofounded Pittsburgh’s first rape crisis centre, and worked as a lawyer for over a decade while continuing to play music and engage in activism
This is one of her better-known songs, off her 2001 album of the same name
Cyril O’Brien - The Derby Ram
Newfoundland field recording of this English tall tale folk song about an enormous ram and the troubles in pursuing, catching, and butchering it
Transcribed by Llewellyn Jewitt in 1867, likely from at least a century before then
Jean Ritchie - O Love Is Teasin’
Known as the Mother of Folk
Learned traditional folksongs in the oral tradition from friends and family in her youth
Member of one of the two "great ballad-singing families" of Kentucky
Jean moved to New York City to work as a social worker in the 1940s, and there she formed friendships with folksingers like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger
She learned this song in 1946 while in NYC from an Irish woman named Peggy Staunton, who was also working at the same non-profit Ritchie worked at
The tune can be traced to the ballad “Jamie Douglas,” in which a bride is falsely accused of infidelity and sent back to live with her father
Stan Rogers - Fogarty’s Cove
Born and raised in Ontario, but known for his maritime-influenced music that was informed by his time spent visiting family in Nova Scotia during summers
From his 1977 album of the same name
Danny Glover, Rev. Robert B Jones Sr. - Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning
From the married duo Kim and Reggie Harris’s 2007 album Get On Board! Underground Railroad & Civil Rights Freedom Songs, Vol. 2
Rev. Robert B Jones is a musician, storyteller, and pastor from Detroit who's been performing for over 30 years
Glover is a very well-known actor and activist
On this one, he reads from abolitionist Frederick Douglass’s writings while Jones plays this traditional gospel blues song
A Paul Ortega - Chicago
Ortega was an influential Apache musician who began as a tribal singer at the age of five
He moved to Chicago in the early 1960s and began to adapt blues guitar to Apache social songs
This is from his 2005 album Two Worlds Three Worlds
John Snipes - Going Away from Home
From an album of black banjo music from North Carolina and Virginia
Snipes was a farmer and banjo player from Chatham County, NC
He was known in the region for being a marathon dance musician, and would often play a single tune at lightning speed for as long as an hour
Likely related to “Going Round the World Baby Mine” and “Going Round the World with a Banjo Picking Girl”, though it also shares lyrics with the song “Long Tail Blue”
Bert Jansch - The Waggoner’s Lad
Today would have been his 79th birthday
Jansch was a founding member of the English folk group Pentangle and a leading member of the English folk revival of the 60s
This is his instrumental version of a traditional tune closely related to “On Top of Old Smoky”
