Barking Dog: December 14, 2023
Grup Bamba Puang - Kemayoran
This is off the 1999 album Music of Indonesia, Vol. 20, which focuses on Indonesian guitar music
This is a group of Mandar people, a Muslim group from the west coast of the South Sulawesi peninsula, who called their band Group Bamba Puang
The liner notes say that the guitar “comes into Indonesia from the West, but this does not mean its music is always Western in idiom”
In the case of this song, it’s a mix of Western and Indonesian elements
The song is in a genre called sayang-sayang, which involves singing with guitar accompaniment and is often performed at weddings and other celebrations
Stan Rogers - The Idiot
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 the summers of his childhood
This song is off the live album Home in Halifax, recorded in March of 1982 and released in 1993
It’s about the movement of people away from the Atlantic Provinces to Alberta for work
Tom Waits - Old Shoes
Waits a very well known American musician, composer, and actor who’s been playing professionally for 50 years
This song was first released on his debut album, Closing Time, from 1973, though this version was recorded prior to the album recording, in 1971
It was released on the 1993 compilation album The Early Years, Vol. 2
Sean ‘ac Donnca - The Bonny Boy
This is from the 1963 album Traditional Music of Ireland Vol. 1: The Older Traditions of Connemara and Clare
‘ac Donnca also went by the English name Johnny McDonough, and he was one of the best-known singers in Connemara
He worked as a schoolteacher and was the principal of a primary school for 25 years
The liner notes state that this song shows the “mingling of Irish and English musical elements”
It’s also known as “Young But Daily Growing” and “The Trees They Grow So High”
It’s an old British ballad, a two-verse fragment of which was found in a Scottish manuscript collection from the 1770s, suggesting that the song is even older than that
‘ac Donnca learned the song when he was fifteen years old
Bob Dylan - Young but Daily Growing
Dylan previously made a home recording of the song in 1961 while visiting Minnesota
This recording was made during the Basement Tapes sessions in 1967
José González - Cello Song
He’s an Argentinian-Swedish musician who’s been playing professionally since the early 2000s
This is from the 2023 20th anniversary edition of his first album, Veneer
It’s a live cover of “‘Cello Song” by Nick Drake, who included it on his debut album, Five Leaves Left, released in 1969
Tzo’kam - The Gathering
Tzo’kam are a family band from what is now British Columbia
They’ve been singing together at community events for over half a century, and they started performing and recording publicly in 1997 to share their traditional and contemporary culture
Tzo’kam means “chickadee” and “visitors are coming” in the Stl’atl’imx language
This is from their 2004 album Songs of the Lillooet
Pharis & Jason Romero - We All Fall
A married duo from Horsefly, BC
From their 2020 album Bet On Love
Simon & Garfunkel - Peggy-O
From their 1964 album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.
It’s an American folk song that comes comes from the Scottish folk song “The Bonnie Lass o’ Fyvie”
Ruthie Gorton - Free Palestine Now
This song was released in 1978 as part of the What Now People? record series that advocated song as political movement
In the liner notes, Gorton writes:
Pete Seeger - Times A-Getting Hard
Pete Seeger was a very influential folk singer and activist from New York who advocated for important social causes through his music
This is off a 1999 compilation album of some of Seeger’s topical song recordings
The song is about “contemplating the need to leave a beloved[…] homestead and move on, a situation faced by many sharecroppers in the South and Midwest in the 1930s”
The folksinger Lee Hays adapted the song from a version found in Carl Sandburg’s American Songbag
David Rovics - Drink of the Death Squads
He’s a musician and writer based in Oregon who’s been touring internationally since the 1990s
This is off his 2002 album Hang a Flag in the Window, and it’s about an incident in which members of a rightwing paramilitary group killed two union members on a Coca-Cola factory floor in Colombia
Sons of the Pioneers - When the Golden Train Comes Down
One of the earliest western bands in the US
Formed in 1933, originally Roy Rogers, Bob Nolan, and Tim Spencer
The band still exists but there have been countless changes in membership since the beginning
Bob Nolan, who was born in Winnipeg, wrote this song
It was recorded in 1940
Lum Guffin - Train I Ride 18 Coaches Long
Tennessee musician born Columbus Guffin Jr in 1902
Recorded August 8, 1978 in Guffin's yard in Memphis, TN by Gianni Marcucci, who travelled from Italy to the United States five times during the 70s and 80s to document blues music in the country
This is a song written by Junior Parker in 1953, and it later became popular as a rockabilly song
John Lee Zeigler - If I Lose Let Me Lose
He was a guitarist from Kathleen, Georgia, who played guitar upside down to accommodate his left-handedness
This was recorded around 1978, and it uses many elements of the murder ballad “Alabama Red,” recorded by Sidney Stripling in 1940
Willie Dunn - Our Native Land
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
This is a demo from 2000
Fiver - Yonder White Mare
Stage name of Toronto-based artist Simone Schmidt
This is from a 2017 album of fictional field recordings collected from the files of people who were incarcerated at the Rockwood Asylum for the Criminally Insane in Kingston, Ontario between 1856 and 1881
The album is called Audible Songs from Rockwood
Bridget St. John - The Road Was Lonely
She’s an English musician who’s been playing professionally for over 50 years
This is from her 1969 debut album Ask Me No Questions
Auntie Alice Namakelua - Ka Manu
She was a Hawaiian musician, composer, and dancer, and an expert of the Hawaiian language and the ki ho’alu, or slack key, guitar style
This is from her 1974 self-titled album
Malvina Reynolds - Sing Along
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
Had received a doctorate from the University of California in 1938, but went back to university in the late 1950s to study music theory
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 off her 1960 album Another County Heard From
Tony Schwartz - Portrait of Lincoln
He was a sound archivist, media theorist, advertising creator, and graphic designer from New York City who recorded copious amounts of ambient sounds, spoken word, and music for albums released by Folkways and Columbia and hosted a radio show called Around New York for 30 years on WNYC
From the 1962 album “You’re Stepping on My Shadow”, which was originally broadcast on Around New York
Old Man Luedecke - Wrong Side of the Country
From Chester, NS
Off his 2006 album Hinterland
Peggy Seeger, Tom Paley - Who’s Going to Shoe Your Pretty Little Foot?
Seeger is a well-known American folk singer who’s been living in the UK for over 60 years
Paley was an American folk musician, best-known as a member of the New Lost City Ramblers
This is from the 1964 album of the same name
The current form of the song is attributed to Woody Guthrie, though he adapted it from several old Appalachian ballads and reels which use many of the same lyrics, as well as the song “I Never Will Marry”, which is similar in theme and melody
OJ Abbott - The Barley Grain for Me
Abbott was 84 when the folklorist Edith Fowke recorded this song in 1957 for her album Irish and British Songs from the Ottawa Valley
This is a version of the song “John Barleycorn Must Die,” the earliest known version of which was printed as a broadside in 1620
The song personifies barley, going through the process of planting, reaping, threshing, milling, and brewing of the grain
Abbott learned his version from Owen McCann, who he worked with on a farm 60 years before this recording was made
Burnett & Rutherford - Lost John
They were an early old-time duo from Kentucky
Burnett is especially known for writing the song “Man of Constant Sorrow,” though the duo never recorded it
“Lost John” is an old-time song from the southern US
Several tunes that refer to “Lost John” tell the story of the folk trickster figure, an escaped enslaved or incarcerated man who outwits possible captors by wearing shoes with backwards soles
Another “Lost John” variant tells of the bank robber John Dean, who escapes in the same method as the trickster figure, and the two songs have become inextricably connected regardless of their origin
This recording is from 1927
John Lennon - Lost John (Jam 2)
This was recorded during the sessions for Lennon’s debut solo album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band from 1970
Uncle Sinner - Long Gone
From Winnipeg
Off his 2020 album Trouble of This World
Marie Hare - Peter Emberley
Ballad singer from Strathadam, NB, known for her performances at the Miramichi Folksong Festival
This is one of the best-known New Brunswick songs, with lyrics written by Emberley’s friend John Calhoun in 1881, and a traditional Irish tune was put to use by local singer Abraham Munn
Hobart Smith - Peg and Awl
An old-time musician who was rediscovered in the 60s after performing throughout the first half of the 20th century, often with his sister Texas Gladden
This is from the 1964 album Hobart Smith of Saltville, Virginia
The title refers to the “pegging awl” that was used by cobblers while making shoe soles, and the liner notes state that the lyrics “point to the fact that the problem of automation is an old one and a mixed blessing”
It’s an American song, though it was rare even in the States
Smith learned it from his sister
Hubby Jenkins - You Got to Die
American multi-instrumentalist from New York City
A member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a contemporary stringband
This is a Blind Willie McTell song
Beck - Fourteen Rivers, Fourteen Floods
Contemporary American musician who got his start as a teenager performing folk music on city buses in Los Angeles
This is from the soundtrack to the 2017 documentary The American Epic Sessions, in which an audio engineer restores the first electrical sound recording machine from 1925, and contemporary artists try to record songs on it
John Showman, Chris Coole - Sally Goodin
Two members of the Lonesome Ace Stringband from Wolfe Island, ON
From their 2022 album Afield: 11 Fiddle and Banjo Duets Recorded in the Great Outdoors
Old-time reel by Eck Robertson
Blind Boy Fuller - Weeping Willow
