Barking Dog: February 27, 2025
Timothy Spall - Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest
He’s an English actor known for roles in films like Life is Sweet and Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise
It’s his 68th birthday today!
He’s also performed in multiple Shakespearean plays, including Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 adaptation of Hamlet
This is from a 2002 album of various actors and musicians reciting Shakespeare’s sonnets
Trampled by Turtles - Thank You, John Steinbeck
They’re a folk band from Duluth, Minnesota who have been performing since 2003
This is from their 2018 album Life is Good on the Open Road
John Steinbeck was born 123 years ago today
Uncle Sinner - Special Rider Blues
From Winnipeg
This is off his 2014 album A Pocketful of Glass Eyes
It’s a song by Skip James, who recorded it in 1931
Zachary Lucky - Ramblin’ Kind
He’s a musician from Saskatchewan who just released a new album called The Wind in November, which is where this song comes from
Ellen Stekert - Tomorrow is a Long Time
She’s a folklorist, musician, and scholar from New York (now based in Minnesota) who began her career in Greenwich Village in the 1950s
In the last year or so, she’s been working with the writer Christopher Bahn on a website where they share music, writing, and photography from her archives
They’re working on putting together an album of archival recordings, and they just released the third single from it, this cover of Bob Dylan’s 1962 song “Tomorrow is a Long Time,” which Stekert recorded at Wayne State University in 1968
Caroline Doctorow - Time Passes Slowly
She’s a folksinger from New York, and the daughter of author EL Doctorow
She’s released 11 albums and has opened for artists like The Band and Alison Krauss
This is from the 2016 compilation album Bob Dylan Uncovered, Vol. 2
The song is off Dylan’s 1970 album New Morning
Lao Lang - Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door
He’s a Chinese musician who began his career during the Chinese campus folk movement of the 1990s and has come to be known as the “Father of Campus Folk Songs”
His stage name translates to “Old Wolf”
This is from the 2020 EP Retrospectrum Bob Dylan, which was created in conjunction with a retrospective exhibition of the same name that presented a selection of his visual art, including paintings, sketches, and metal sculptures at the Today Art Museum in Beijing
Dylan wrote the song for the soundtrack to the 1973 film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which he also acted in
Hugo González, Pedro Yáñez - Canto Por Siempre (I Sing Forever)
González is a contemporary Chilean musician and poet who began playing in the early 90s
Yáñez is a Chilean musician who was one of the main figures in the Nueva Canción movement of the 1960s
This is from the 2008 album ¡Que Viva el Canto! Songs of Chile
The song is a tribute to the Chilean singer-songwriter Victor Jara, who was tortured and killed in 1973 following the US-backed military coup that overthrew the Chilean government and installed Augusto Pinochet as dictator
Ferron - Slender Wet Branches
She’s a musician and poet from BC
This is off her 2013 album Thunder and Lighten-ing
Arko Mukhaerjee, Casey Driessen - My Little Girl in Tennessee / Rongila
Mukhaerjee is a musician and music researcher from Calcutta, India who sings in more than 20 languages and plays several instruments
Driessen is a fiddle player and singer from Minnesota who plays a five-string violin and has performed with artists like Béla Fleck, Steve Earle, and Abigail Washburn
This is a medley of the American bluegrass standard “My Little Girl in Tennessee” and the classic Bengali folk song “Rongila”
Kolkata-based drummer Sounak Roy provides percussion on that one
Cephas & Wiggins - Trouble in Mind
Bowling Green John Cephas and Harmonica Phil Wiggins were an American blues duo who met in 1976 at the Smithsonian’s Festival of American Folklife
Cephas worked as a carpenter much of his life, only transitioning into a full-time music career in the 1990s
Wiggins began playing harmonica in the late 60s, and was one of three American harmonica players to be awarded the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship
“Trouble in Mind” was written by jazz pianist Richard M Jones in the vaudeville blues style, and first recorded by Thelma La Vizzo in 1924
Old Man Luedecke - Just Like a River
From Chester, NS
Off his album Proof of Love from 2008
Oscar Wright - Let Old Drunkards Be
He was an old-time musician from West Virginia who played the fiddle and banjo
This is a sentimental song popular from the turn of the century through the 1930s
Wright’s version was included on the 1978 compilation album Clawhammer Banjo Volume 3, recorded by Charlie Faurot
Antonia Lamb - Say Goodbye to Mendocino
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
Damien Jurado - Rosewood Casket
He’s a singer-songwriter from Seattle who began his career in the 1990s
This is off his album Ghost of David from 2000
It’s a traditional American folk song, the earliest printed version of which is from 1870
Crooked Still - Undone in Sorrow
Contemporary band from Boston, MA
This is a song by Ola Belle Reed, also known as “Over Yonder in the Graveyard”
Their version is from their 2008 album Still Crooked
Damien Dempsey - Mona Lisa
Dempsey is an Irish musician who’s been playing since the mid 1990s
This is off a 2015 charity compilation album organized by Paul Brady and Gavin Glass for the Irish Youth Foundation
The song was written by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston for the 1949 film Captain Carey, USA, though it’s perhaps best known through Nat King Cole’s 1950 recording
Bob Dylan - Mr. Tambourine Man
He recorded this version live in Monterey, California in May of 1995
Dyad - Farewell to Old Bedford
From Victoria, BC
Off their 2002 album Who’s Been Here Since I’ve Been Gone
The earliest recorded version of this song was collected by folklorist Frank Warner in Beech Mountain, NC in 1951
It’s possible that it’s a reworked version of an older ballad, especially since it contains so few verses
William Tagoona, Per & Birthe - Ananaga
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
Per & Birthe were a brother/sister duo from Greenland that recorded 2 albums
This is from a 1983 album recorded live in Nuuk, Greenland as part of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference’s third General Assembly
The title translates to “My Mother”
Genticorum - Goûtons du plaisir
They’re a traditional Quebecois trio from Montreal who have been playing together since 2000
This is from their 2023 album Au coeur de l’aube
It’s a traditional hymn
Palace Music - We All, Us Three, Will Ride
He’s a musician and actor from Kentucky, known under both his own name, Will Oldham, under variations of the name “Palace” and, since 1998, under the name Bonnie “Prince” Billy
He began making music while studying under the influential ethnomusicologist Jeff Todd Titon at Brown University
This is from his 1995 album Viva Last Blues
Floyd Council - I’m Grievin’ and I’m Worryin’
He was a piedmont blues musician from North Carolina, and half the inspiration for the name “Pink Floyd,” along with Pink Anderson
He recorded this one for Conqueror Records in New York City in 1937
Birmingham Jubilee Singers - What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire
A prewar jubilee quartet from Birmingham, Alabama
They recorded this one for Victor Records in 1927 under the name the Alabama Four
Brad Crain - Forever
He’s a powwow drummer and singer from the Muskoday First Nation in Saskatchewan who began drumming in 1995, when he was 13
This one is from 2015
Karen James - Paper of Pins
James is an English-born Canadian folksinger who began her career at the age of twelve, hosting a radio show on CBC called “Karen Discovers America”
This is from her 1962 album Through Streets Broad and Narrow
She got the song from Ethel Park Richardson’s collection of American mountain songs, and she also performs a Cajun version of the song on the album
Tom Paxton - What Did You Learn in School Today?
He’s a folksinger and music educator known for his involvement in the 1960s Greenwich Village folk music scene
This one is off his 1964 album Ramblin’ Boy
Sons of Membertou - Kwan’to’te
They’re a Mi’kmaw group from Unama’kik (also known as Cape Breton, Nova Scotia)
This is from the brand new Smithsonian Folkways reissue of their 1995 album Wapna’kik: The People of the Dawn
This is a social dance, called a round dance
The song includes a reading of the poem “The Spirits Are Calling” by Kiju’ Ka’wi, which reflects on the cultural renaissance of the Mi’kmaq people from the 1980s to now
Joe Stevens - A Reverie
He’s a musician from California who began writing songs when he was 15 years old
He was part of the first wave of transgender musicians to enter the public consciousness with the introduction of social media, and he states that his transition “closed some doors while opening many others, and significantly informs his songwriting and performance”
This is from his 2014 debut solo album Last Man Standing
Édith Butler, Lisa LeBlanc - Dans l’bois
She’s an Acadian musician and folklorist from New Brunswick who began her career in the early 1960s
This is from her 2021 album Le Tour du Grand Bois, which was produced by fellow New Brunswickan Lisa Leblanc, who also performs on this one
Dellie Norton - Young Emily
She was a North Carolina ballad singer who sang the English and Scottish ballads that were brought to the Southern Appalachians by early settlers, which she learned from her parents
In the 1960s, she was sought by folklorists and song collectors, and performed at the Smithsonian’s Festival of American Folklife and at the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee
This ballad likely comes from a British broadside, and was well-known throughout the southern Appalachians, also under the name “The Driver Boy” and “Young Edwin in the Lowlands”
Daniel Bachman - Chattanooga
He’s a guitarist from Virginia, known for playing in the American Primitive style
This is from his album Where the Tide Ebbs and Flows, which came out in January
