Barking Dog: April 10, 2025
Tracy Schwarz - Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down
He died on March 29 at the age of 86
Schwarz was a fiddle player from New York City who was a member of the New Lost City Ramblers, and was the last surviving member of the band
This is off his 1975 album Look Out! Here It Comes
“Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down” is a traditional spiritual song first recorded in 1931
Schwarz learned the song from a tape that his bandmate John Cohen made of Frank Proffitt’s version
Michael Hurley - O My Stars
He died at the age of 83 on April 1st
Hurley was a member of the 1960s Greenwich Village scene, and continued performing until his death, especially in and around his home city of Portland, Oregon
He was also a cartoonist and painter who self-published several magazines and wrote several comic books featuring his werewolf characters Jocko and Boone
A few years ago, I discovered that Hurley sold his albums through the mail, so I sent off a letter with a 20 dollar bill and received a handwritten letter back, along with a couple of his albums
This is from the 2023 remaster of his 2002 album Sweetkorn
Ellen Stekert - Both Sides Now
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’ve just released an album of archival recordings called Go Around Songs, Vol. 1, which is where this one comes from
It’s a song by Joni Mitchell, written around 1966
Lonesome Ace Stringband - Peep of Day
From Toronto, ON
They just released this one at the end of March
They say about it: “‘Peep of Day’ is a song about nature’s masterpiece, which is happening around us, always, if we can just take the time to notice”
The title comes from a tune by the Texan fiddler Duck Wooton
David Rovics - Henry Ford Was A Fascist
It’s his 58th birthday today
He’s a topical singer-songwriter based in Oregon who’s been playing since the 1990s
This is from his 1998 album We Just Want the World
José-Luis Orozco - Dolores Huerta
Orozco is a musician, children’s author, and educator from Mexico who began his career at the age of 8 when he became a member of the Mexico City Boy’s Choir
This is from the 1978 album Corridos Mexicanos Y Chicanos Con José-Luis Orozco, Volume 10
It’s a song that celebrates Dolores Huerta, who’s a labour leader and feminist activist from New Mexico who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers
She turns 95 today, and she’s still politically active
Nana Mouskouri - Tiny Sparrow
She’s a Greek singer who began her career in 1958 and has released over 100 albums since then, in many different languages
This one is from her 1965 album Nana
It’s a traditional Appalachian ballad
Bud Reed - Mystery of Old #5
He was a singer and guitarist, and the husband of Ola Belle Reed, with whom he established New River Ranch in Maryland, which was one of the major country music parks in the mid-20th century
This is from a 1982 album of Jimmie Rodgers songs that he recorded, called Way Out on the Mountain
Rodgers recorded it in 1934 for Bluebird Records
Low - Back Home Again
They were a band from Duluth, Minnesota
This is from their 2016 collection of B-sides and demos called A Lifetime of Temporary Relief
It’s a song by John Denver, released in 1974 on his album of the same name
Eric Von Schmidt, Richard Fariña - Glory, Glory
Von Schmidt was a Grammy-winning musician, songwriter, and visual artist from Connecticut, known for his association with the Cambridge, Massachusetts folk scene of the 1960s
Richard Fariña was a musician and writer from New York, known for his novel Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, and for writing the song “Pack Up Your Sorrows”
This is from their 1963 self-titled album
Traditional American spiritual which has been recorded in a number of genres
The melody is very similar to “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”
If you listen carefully, you may be able to identify the harmonica player who accompanies them
The Dicey Doh Singers - You Ain’t Hurryin’ Me
From a 1997 album of music from the Bahamas, released by Smithsonian Folkways
All the artists on the album performed at the 1994 Festival of American Folklife, and the recordings were made in Nassau, Bahamas in February of 1995
The Dicey Doh Singers were a barbershop quartet from Nassau, the capital city of the Bahamas
Selah Jubilee Singers - Here Am I
An American gospel vocal quartet founded in Brooklyn, New York and active between 1927 and 1953
This recording was made in 1941 for Decca Records
Charlie Knight and His Country Music Boys - River Stay Away from My Door
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 Lenoir, North Carolina
This seems to be Knight’s own song
The New Lost City Ramblers - Beware, Oh Take Care
They were a group formed by John Cohen, Mike Seeger, Tom Paley in 1958
This is from their 1959 album Old Timey Songs for Children
They got it from father-son duo Blind Alfred and Arville Reed, who recorded it for Victor Records in 1931
The lyrics originate from a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which was based on a German poem and was actually about fair maidens rather than young men
The music was first published in New York in 1864
Peyton Hopkins - Stand Up for Your Union
He was a pastor, musician, and poet from Oklahoma who recorded two albums of union and labour songs in the 1980s
He later ran a furniture ministry in Florida, driving around and giving furniture to those in need
This is off his 1986 album Let the Teachers Tell the Story
Frank Proffitt - I’m a Long Time Travelling Here Below
Appalachian banjo player, known for preserving Tom Dooley
Worked in a spark plug factory, worked as a carpenter and tobacco farmer
His carpentry skills extended to making instruments—he was a talented luthier and the banjos he played were homemade
This is a Sacred Harp piece from around 1810, more commonly called “Long Time Traveller”
It was apparently one of Abraham Lincoln’s favourite songs
Peter & Mary Alice Amidon - White
Married duo who have been performing for children and adults alike for over 30 years
This is from their 1999 album Hymns & Ballads
Ken Whiteley - Wondrous Love
Ken Whiteley is a musician from Toronto who’s been playing folk music since the early 1970s
This is from his 2022 album Long Time Travelling, and he added some of his own lyrics to the song
Old Man Luedecke - Notes from the Banjo Underground
From Chester, NS
From his 2006 album Hinterland
Stan Rogers - Free in the Harbour
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 his childhood
This is from his 1981 album Northwest Passage, but this version is from the posthumously released 1993 live album Home in Halifax
The Be Good Tanyas - Rowdy Blues
They’re a group from Vancouver that’s been performing since 1999
This is from their 2003 album Chinatown
boygenius, Ye Vagabonds - The Parting Glass
They’re an Irish folk duo made up of brothers Diarmuid and Brían Mac Gloinn
boygenius are a supergroup made up of Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, and Phoebe Bridgers, and they played together between 2018 and 2024, when they announced an indefinite hiatus
This was the most popular parting song in Scotland prior to Robbie Burns writing “Auld Lang Syne"
This collaboration was released in 2023
Rick Lee, Lorraine Lee - The 1913 Massacre
Were a Massachusetts-based married duo who recorded a diverse album of folk songs in 1975
Rick a banjoist and pianist, Lorraine a skilled dulcimer player
They divorced in 1989 but both continued to play music
Rick died in 2014, and Lorraine is still playing, now in a duo with her second husband
This song was written by Woody Guthrie, who wrote it in the mid 1940s about the Italian Hall Disaster, a tragedy that took place in Michigan on Christmas Eve, 1913, when striking copper miners and their families rushed to escape a Christmas party when somebody yelled “Fire,” even though there wasn’t one, and 73 people, mostly children, were trampled to death in the stairway
Bob Dylan - Song to Woody
He wrote this one in 1961 and released it on his self-titled debut album, though this version was recorded live in Madrid in 1989
It uses the tune of Woody Guthrie’s song “1913 Massacre”
Michel Montecrossa - Talkin’ New York
Here’s how Montecrossa’s website bio describes him: “Michel Montecrossa is one of today’s most prolific songwriter, orchestral composer, painter, writer, moviemaker, futurist architect and cyberartist. He created more than 2200 songs and instrumentals playing a wide variety of musical styles ranging from cyberrock dance-drive, cybermetal, nu ethno, vikingsongs and slam poetry topical songs to futuristic cybersymphonies in concerts and recordings you won't forget.”
This is from his 2007 album Michel Montecrossa’s Michel & Bob Dylan Fest 2006
Bob Dylan included it on his debut album, from 1962
Woody Guthrie - Red Wine
Guthrie was an influential folk musician who’s known for his songs about the Okie migrants who travelled west during the Great Depression in search of work
This is off a 1996 collection of Guthrie’s Sacco and Vanzetti songs
Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian immigrant anarchists accused of murdering two men during an armed robbery in Massachusetts in 1920, and later executed
Though they were sentenced to death, they appealed several times on several factors that seriously brought into question the guilt of the two men and raised questions about the biases of the jury that sentenced them
They were nonetheless executed in 1927, and 60 years later in 1987, the governor of Massachusetts finally issued a proclamation that the two men had been unfairly tried and convicted
The liner notes state that the song “stresses the political motivations in the arrest and prosecution of Sacco and Vanzetti and the apparently circumstantial evidence upon which they were convicted”
Larry Penn, Darryl Holter - Frozen in Time
Penn was Wisconsin’s Labour Poet Laureate, a songwriter, toymaker, activist, and union man
Holter is a musician and historian from Minneapolis
This is from their 1989 album Stickin’ with the Union: Songs from Wisconsin Labor History
Lil McClintock - Mother Called Her Child to Her Dying Bed
He was a country blues musician from South Carolina who began his career as a street musician before recording for Columbia Records in the early 1930s, after which he completely disappeared from documentation
This one is from 1931
Jennie Mae Clayton - What Must I Do?
She was a singer and the wife of Memphis Jug Band leader Will Shade, with whom she performed early in the jug band’s recording history
This is a recording that the folklorist George Mitchell and his friend, the German professor Roger Brown made in Memphis in the early 1960s
Jaybird Coleman - No More Good Water, ‘Cause the Pond is Dry
He was a country blues musician from Alabama who was born into a sharecropping family and began playing the harmonica at the age of 12
His parents encouraged him to pursue a music career to avoid sharecropping for the rest of his life
After serving in the army during WWI, he resumed his music career and started performing as a duo with his wife, and in the mid-1920s, he began recording as both a solo artist and as part of a group called the Bessemer Blues Pickers
This one is from 1927
David Francey - Sorrows of the Sailor
Scottish-born Canadian folksinger who worked manual labour jobs for 20 years before pursuing folk music at the age of 45
This is from his 1999 album Torn Screen Door
Uncle Sinner - Shady Grove
He’s from Winnipeg
This is off his 2008 album Ballads and Mental Breakdowns
Traditional Appalachian folk song
There are many variations of this song, with at least 300 stanzas recorded by the early 21st century
Art Bouman - Tea Lake Dreaming
He’s a Halifax-based banjo player who’s interested in reclaiming the banjo as a traditional instrument of the African diaspora and highlighting the Black banjo players whose work has historically been overlooked
This is from his recent album Simple Songs For Trying Times
This is his own song, with a clip of musician Willie King talking about the political purposes and historical origins of Black folk music
