Barking Dog: May 14, 2026
David Byrne - Greenback Dollar
He’s best-known as the lead singer of new wave band Talking Heads
This was recorded live at St. Ann & The Holy Trinity Church in New York City in March of 1992 during a concert where Byrne shared the billing with English musician Richard Thompson
Byrne combines the older traditional American folk song “Greenback Dollar” with “I Don’t Want Your Millions, Mister,” a song adapted from “Greenback Dollar” by Kentucky union organizer and songwriter Jim Garland
The song comes from the “East Virginia” song family
Gene Clark - Silver Raven
He was a musician from Missouri, best known as a founding member of folk rock band The Byrds, though he also had a long career as a solo artist after leaving the band in the mid-1960s
This is was recorded live at Ebbet’s Field in Denver, Colorado in February of 1975
He wrote the song in 1974
Willie Dunn - Protest Song
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
This was recorded for CBC Radio in 1967
Talise - Country Blues
She’s an Ontario musician, and this single was released in October
It’s a traditional American folk song that’s been recorded by a number of artists including both Dock Boggs and Doc Watson
Cindy Walker - Take Me in Your Arms and Hold Me
She was a country musician, songwriter, and dancer from Texas who was born into a musical family and began singing and writing as a child
She got her start in the music industry in 1940 when Bing Crosby recorded a song she had written for him
Walker wrote this hit song for Eddy Arnold in 1949
Amythyst Kiah - Goin’ Away Party
A Tennessee roots musician and member of the roots supergroup Our Native Daughters
This is from the 2025 compilation album It’s all Her Fault: A Tribute to Cindy Walker
Walker wrote the song for Jim Ed Brown in 1972
Green Paschal - My Lord
He was a musician from Georgia who began playing music in the 1950s, when he was in his 30s or 40s
Recorded in Talbottom, Georgia in 1969 by the field researcher and festival curator George Mitchell
Jack Semple - If You Could Read My Mind
He’s a musician from Regina who began playing music as a teenager
This is a cover of Gordon Lightfoot’s song, from the 2008 Saskatchewan Jazz Festival
Gillian Welch, David Rawlings - Hello In There
Welch and Rawlings are one of the best-known contemporary American roots duos
This is from their Grammy-winning 2020 album All the Good Times, which is a collection of cover songs and traditional folk songs
It’s a version of John Prine’s song, which he wrote in 1971
Satyaki Banerjee - Emon Somaj (When will such a society be created?)
He’s a Bengali musician, composer, and historian who began performing in the early 2000s as both a solo artist and a member of the groups Parapar and Borno Anonyo
This is from his 2004 album Emni Dhara
The title translates to “When will such a society be created?”, and it’s about a world in which there are no castes or tribes
The Small Glories - Time Wanders On
From Winnipeg
Cara Luft and JD Edwards
From their 2016 album Wondrous Traveler
Joan Baez, Mimi Farina - Catch the Wind
Baez is one of the best known musicians to come out of the 1960s folk revival
She performed for over 60 years and released over 30 albums before her semi-retirement in 2019
Mimi Farina was Baez’s younger sister and a talented folksinger in her own right, who founded Bread and Roses, an organisation that presents free music and entertainment to those in institutional environments
The song was written by Donovan in 1965
Si Kahn - Lawrence Jones
Kahn is a community organiser and musician from Pennsylvania who moved to the south as an activist during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement
This is from Kahn’s 1974 album New Wood
Lawrence Jones was a 23-year-old striking miner who was shot and killed during the Brookside Mine Strike in Harlan County, Kentucky in 1974 by a company foreman
Kahn wrote the song while driving through eastern Kentucky on the way to his funeral
The strike, and the murder, are covered in the 1976 documentary film Harlan County USA
Woody Guthrie - Vanzetti’s Letter
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
This song is based on a letter Vanzetti wrote to the Governor of Massachusetts
Members of the KDP (Union of Democratic Filipinos) - Ang Masa (The Masses (Are the Makers of History))
From a 1976 album of songs of the Philippine national democratic struggle, which protests Ferdinand Marcos’ military dictatorship and American imperialism’s role in supporting his regime
This song is about how the masses are the only force powerful enough to change an exploitative system
At the time of recording, workers and peasants made up a large majority of the Filipino population
KC is Lazy - Fire
She’s a musician from Winnipeg who writes music inspired by the folk tradition
This is a track from 2024, and she describes it as “a meditation on the ones left behind in the universal and seemingly ever repeating process of war”
The New Golden Ring - Jute Mill Song
Golden Ring was started in 1964 as “a gathering of friends for making music” and recorded by Folk-Legacy Records during the height of the folk revival
As Sandy Paton, Golden Ring member and founder of Folk-Legacy Records explained, “the "Golden Ring" has never been an established group of specific individuals; it has always been more a concept, an approach to informal, non-competitive music-making by a gathering of friends, often solo performers in their own right, who simply enjoy singing and playing together"
The New Golden Ring were the second incarnation of the group, comprised of more than 25 musicians
This is from the 1971 album Five Days of Singing, Vol. 2
The song is led by Gerry and George Armstrong, and they’re accompanied by the rest of the group, with Ed Trickett and Joe Hickerson on guitar
It was written as a poem by Mary Brookbank, a jute mill worker from Dundee, Scotland who dedicated much of her life to socialist politics and trade union activism
Ewan MacColl put the poem to music in the 1950s
Peggy Seeger - Hangman
She’s an American folksinger and member of the Seeger family who’s been living and performing in the UK for over 60 years
This song is also known as “The Maid Freed from the Gallows” and “The Hangman Song”
It was first collected by Francis James Child in the 19th century
It’s one of many ballads with the theme of a woman pleading for someone to buy her freedom from the hangman
The song may have originated in continental Europe, as there are versions from Finland, Sweden, and even Lithuania
This is from her 2008 album Three Score and Ten, recorded live at her 70th birthday celebration at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, England
Pieta Brown - Dirt Road Blues
She’s a musician from Iowa who began writing music at the age of 8
This is from the 2011 compilation album A Nod to Bob 2: An Artists’ Tribute to Bob Dylan on His 70th Birthday
Dylan included the song on his 1997 album Time Out of Mind
Bob Dylan - Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues
This is a track from his 2023 album Shadow Kingdom, a collection of new recordings of thirteen songs from the first half of his career
He originally released the song on his 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited
Blind Willie McTell - Death Room Blues
He was a piedmont blues and ragtime artist who made many recordings with different companies under different names, but who never had a major hit
Despite his lack of commercial success, he actively played and recorded during the 40s and 50s, unlike many of his peers
He did not live to see the folk revival of the 1960s through which many other bluesmen were rediscovered, but he influenced many artists, including Taj Mahal and The White Stripes
He recorded this one in New York City in September of 1933
Shane Pendergast - Farewell to the Teacup
He’s a musician from PEI, and this one is off his 2025 album Winter Grace
Curt Bouterse - All Around the Mountain
He’s a musician, scholar, and instrument maker from Tennessee, now based in California, who grew up in a musical family and began playing the hammered dulcimer as a teenager before learning the banjo a few years later
This is from his fifteenth album, Old Jawbone, from 2024
He got the song from Stu Jamieson, and he sings and plays banjo and dulcimer on it
Lady Maisery - bird i do not know
They’re an English folk trio that formed in 2011
This is a track from their 2022 album Tender, and it was written by Hazel Askew, who plays melodeon, concertina, and harp in the band
Bob Snider - What An Idiot He Is
He’s a musician from Toronto, now based in Nova Scotia, who began playing in the 1980s
This is from his 2007 album The Street Takes You In, which consists of songs included in his play of the same name
He originally included it on his 1989 debut album You
Cecil Barfield - Love Blues
Barfield was a blues musician and farmer from Georgia who folksong collector George Mitchell recorded in 1976
This is off a 2015 collection of those recordings
The Black Family - Donkey Riding
They’re a Celtic group formed by five siblings in the 1960s, and they’ve played on-and-off together ever since
This is off their 1986 debut album
It’s a traditional work song widespread across Canada, Scotland, and the Northeastern US that has since become a popular children’s song
Many believe the “donkey” referred to is the steam donkey, a type of general-purpose steam engine
Veranda - Reel du Pont-Methot
They’re a country and bluegrass group that formed in Montreal in 2018, and this is off their latest album, which came out in January
The Local Ghost - Mona
