Barking Dog: December 4, 2025
Rhiannon Giddens, Jake Blount - Dèan Cadalan Sàmhach
Giddens is from North Carolina, and is a founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, an old-time stringband
She’s also released two solo albums and performs with the roots supergroup Our Native Daughter
Blount is a musician and scholar from Rhode Island who specialises in the music of Black and Indigenous communities in the southeastern US
This is off the soundtrack for the new PBS documentary The American Revolution, directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt
It’s a Scottish Gaelic lullaby and immigration song considered the first Gaelic song written in America and widely believed to have been written by John MacRae in North Carolina in 1763
Uncle Sinner - Catfish Blues
Winnipeg
Off his upcoming album Everybody Wants to Know How I Die, out on December 11th
“Catfish Blues” is credited to Robert Petway, an American blues musician, based on the fact that he was the first to record it in 1941
Uncle Sinner credits Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, the last living Bentonia bluesman, with teaching him how to play Catfish Blues during a visit to the Blue Front Cafe juke joint in Bentonia, Mississippi, in 2024
Meredith Moon - Lulu Gal
She’s a banjo player and singer who began writing music at the age of eight, and got her start busking across Canada, though she grew up learning about and surrounded by folk music through her father, Gordon Lightfoot
This one is from her latest album, From Here to the Sea, which came out in September
It’s a traditional song, with some new lyrics added by Moon
Dick Justice - One Cold December Day
An early American folk and blues recording artist from West Virginia
This one was recorded for Brunswick records in May of 1929
Thomas Fraser - Long Gone Lonesome Blues
He was a Scottish fisherman and farmer who left behind thousands of home recordings when he died in 1978, the majority of which were country and blues songs
His grandson rediscovered the tapes and released the first album of his music in 2002, followed shortly after by two more albums
This is the title track from that first album, and it’s a cover of Hank Williams’ 1950 song
Laura Dukes - Bricks in My Pillow
She was a blues singer from Memphis, Tennessee who performed between the 1920s and the 1980s, sometimes as a duo with blues musician Robert Nighthawk or with the Memphis Jug Band
This recording was made by Gianni Marcucci in Memphis in 1972
Leon Rosselson, Roy Bailey - The Ant and the Grasshopper
Rosselson is a musician and children’s book writer from England who first became widely known in the 1960s by performing his satirical songs on the BBC show That Was the Week That Was
Bailey was an English sociologist and musician, and the two were both members of the group Three City Four
From the 1975 album That’s Not the Way It’s Got to Be!: Songs of Life from a Dying British Empire
The song is by Rosselson, and he writes: “The grasshopper is held up as an Awful Warning, idling his time away, singing, dancing, enjoying himself, and in the end, getting his just deserts. The ant is offered as a Good Example. Thrift. Hard work. Self-sacrifice. As you sow so shall you reap. Invest in today and tomorrow will bring its own rewards. But for whom? Well, I never liked the ant too much. Cautious. Calculating. Smug. Self-satisfied. A merchant banker through and through. So this song, while not changing the story overmuch, reverses the traditional sympathies.”
Karine Polwart - The Terror Time
She’s a Scottish musician who’s been playing professionally since the early 2000s
This song is by Ewan MacColl, and Polwart’s version is from a 2015 tribute to MacColl called Joy of Living
MacColl wrote it for a 1964 radio ballad called The Travelling People, about Britain’s nomadic groups
Kev Carmody - Moonstruck
Carmody is an Aboriginal Australian musician who’s been playing professionally since the 1980s
This is from his 2003 album Mirrors
James “Son” Thomas, Eddie Cusic - Standing at the Crossroads
Thomas was a Delta blues musician from Mississippi, and he was also a gravedigger and sculptor
Cusic was a blues musician and mechanic from Mississippi who grew up in a farming community where musicians would regularly play the blues at gatherings
The recording was made by Gianni Marcucci in Leland, Mississippi in August of 1978, with Thomas singing and both playing guitar
It’s a song by Elmore James, from 1954
Lotus Wight - 1929
He’s from the Kawartha Lakes region of Ontario, and he’s known as part of the group Sheesham, Lotus and Son
This is from his album Original Works for Voice and Banjo, which came out in May
Kevin Coyne, Brendan Croker - Pass Me the Memories
He was an English musician, writer, and filmmaker who began performing in the late 1960s while working as psychiatric nurse and drug counsellor, an experience that deeply impacted his lyrical composition
Croker was also an English musician, and the two met in a hotel breakfast lounge in Bruges and recorded an album together in 2001 called Life is Almost Wonderful, which is where this one is from
Lonesome Ace Stringband - Log Train
Contemporary stringband based in Toronto
This is from their latest album, Big Wing, which came out in October
It’s a song by Hank Williams, said to be the last song anyone heard him sing, and it’s about his father, who worked as an engineer for a logging business in Alabama
Carl Broemel - Death Is Not the End
He’s a musician from Indiana, known as a member of My Morning Jacket
This is off a 2014 compilation album of covers of 1980s Bob Dylan songs, which also features artists like Reggie Watts, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and Lucius
The song is from Dylan’s 25th studio album, Down in the Groove, from 1988
Stan Rogers - Thanksgiving Eve
He was a musician from Hamilton, Ontario, whose music was largely inspired by Maritime folk music and the lives of working-class Canadians
This is a live recording from 1982, and the song is by American singer-songwriter Bob Franke
William Tagoona - Inutulunga
Tagoona is a musician and journalist from Baker Lake, Nunavut who worked for CBC North and was a member of one of the first Inuit rock groups, The Harpoons, in the 1960s
This is from a 1983 album recorded live in Nuuk, Greenland as part of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference’s third General Assembly
It seems to be an Inuktitut version of “Lonesome Valley,” a traditional American gospel song first recorded by old-time musician David Miller in 1927
Jolly Robinson - Blowing Down That Old Dusty Road
She was a musician, poet, and activist from Philadelphia who was raised in a community of freethinkers and moved around the United States during the Great Depression and the Second World War, befriending folk musicians like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger during her time in New York City, and working with unions and as a freelance photographer
This is from a 1962 album of folk music recorded at Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, New York City in the early 1960s
It’s a traditional song that seems to be from Black pre-blues tradition, though it’s been widely recorded by many well-known artists like Woody Guthrie and Elizabeth Cotten
It’s also known as “Lonesome Road Blues”
Lane Hardin - Hard Time Blues
He was a country blues singer likely from Tennessee whose true identity is unknown—it seems the name was an alias for another recording artist, though nobody knows exactly who
This recording is from 1936
Pete Seeger - Song of the World’s Last Whale
Seeger was a folk singer and an activist who advocated for Civil Rights, environmental causes, and peace through his music
Seeger wrote this song in 1970, after hearing the biologist and environmentalist Roger Payne’s album Songs of the Humpback Whale
He recorded it almost 40 years later, in 2007, on his album At 89, which won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album
Malvina Reynolds - Dialectic
She was a folksinger from California known particularly for writing the song “Little Boxes,” though she wrote and recorded a large catalogue of music during her career
This is from the 2000 compilation album Ear to the Ground
Sammy Walker - Closin’ Time
He’s a folksinger from Georgia who recorded his first albums in the mid 1970s
This is from his first album, Song for Patty, from 1975
Selah Jubilee Singers - Somebody’s Knockin’ At Your Door
An American gospel vocal quartet founded in Brooklyn, New York and active between 1927 and 1953
This recording was made for Decca Records in 1942
It’s a traditional African American spiritual
Dave Van Ronk - One Meatball
A member of the Greenwich Village folk scene in New York City, known as the “Mayor of MacDougal Street”, MacDougal Street being where practically every coffeehouse was located in New York in the 60s
This comes from his 1966 album No Dirty Names
It was one of Josh White’s biggest hits, and one of the most popular songs in 1940s American folk music
The song was written by tin pan alley songwriters Lou Singer and Hy Zaret
Dewey Corley, Walter Miller - Down to Arkansas
Corley was a musician born in Arkansas who spent much of his life in Memphis, Tennessee, playing in the jug bands that proliferated there
Miller was a country blues musician from Tennessee
Recorded in Memphis in the summer of 1967 by the field researcher and festival curator George Mitchell
Bill Cornett - Old Age Pension Blues
Off a 1960 album of Kentucky mountain music
Cornett started playing banjo when he was 8, and later picked and sang his way to his first term as a representative in the Kentucky State Legislature
He was quoted saying “You know how I win? I get the young folks with my music and the old folks by fighting for old age benefits”
He was known for this song “Old Age Pension Blues”, which he sang on the floor of the legislature
Jim Page - Nice Doesn’t Make Any Noise
He’s a folksinger and activist based in Seattle, and this is off his 2020 album Pretty Simple
Judith Reyes - Tragedia de la Plaza de las Tres Culturas (Tragedy of Plaza of the Three Cultures)
Reyes was a composer, musician, and writer who’s known as a pioneering protest singer in Mexico
This is from the 1973 album Mexico: Days of Struggle, which covers topical issues including land reform, state violence, exploitation, and income inequality
It’s a corrido about the Tlatelolco massacre that took place on October 2, 1968 when the Mexican Armed Forces (with the support of the US government) opened fire on unarmed citizens, many of them students, who were gathered in the Tlatelolco area of Mexico City to protest the upcoming Olympics, which continued as normal just ten days later
The full death toll is still unknown, with some estimates reaching at least 300, though we do know that hundreds were injured, and over a thousand people were arrested
The Be Good Tanyas - The Coo Coo Bird
They’re a group from Vancouver that’s been performing since 1999
This is from their 2000 debut album Blue Horse
It’s a traditional English folk song that was adapted into a banjo tune as it continued to develop in the US
Also popular in Canada, Scotland, and Ireland
The Brushy Mountain Boys - Hitchhiker’s Blues
This is from a 1962 album recorded by Mike Seeger and Lisa Chiera in 1961 at the 37th Old-Time Fiddlers Convention at Union Grove in North Carolina
They were a group from North Wilkesboro, NC, and they won the band contest at the convention
Irvin Cook - Old Blue
This is from an album of African American music from Virginia
Cook was from Henry County, Virginia, and his father taught him the two-finger banjo picking method that he used
This was recorded in October of 1976 by Kip Lornell
If you’re unfamiliar with minstrel shows, they began around the 1840s and were touring variety shows that provided entertainment that included comedy sketches, music, and dances
They also provided white audiences with a misleading idea of what plantation life looked like for Black people in the southern states, and often employed black face and racist stereotypes for comedic purposes
“Old Blue” was a minstrel song which, like many minstrel songs, gradually passed into the folk tradition
DeFord Bailey - Pan-American Blues
He was an old-time musician from Tennessee, widely considered the first African American country star
Bailey learned to play the harmonica and mandolin at the age of three when he was confined to his bed after contracting polio
His career began in the 1920s, and he was one of the Grand Ole Opry’s first performers, first appearing in 1927
That was the same year he debuted this song, which was his signature tune, named for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad’s Pan-American passenger train
Daniel Koulack & Karrnnel Sawitsky - The Bank Teller Madame Neruda
