Barking Dog: May 15, 2025
We began the show this week with a celebration of Utah Phillips, who was born 90 years ago today.
Utah Phillips - What Is a Pacifist?
He was an anarchist folksinger, storyteller, and labour organiser from Ohio who also rode the rails throughout the United States and worked as an archivist, a dishwasher, and a warehouse-man at various points in his life
This is from his 1991 album I’ve Got to Know
Dan Wriggins - I Think of You
He’s a musician and poet originally from Maine who’s a member of the band Friendship
This is from a Utah Phillips tribute album that he released in 2021 called Still Is
Phillips wrote the song while he was in Korea as a soldier, and his friend, Rosalie Sorrels, popularized it
Si Kahn - Dump the Bosses Off Your Back
Kahn is a community organiser and musician from Pennsylvania who moved to the south as an activist during the Civil Rights Movement
This is off an album in tribute to Utah Phillips, called Singing Through the Hard Times
Phillips often performed the song
The lyrics are by John Brill, and it’s to the tune of "What a Friend We Have in Jesus”
Gordon Bok - Goodnight Loving Trail
Bok is a folklorist and musician from Maine who’s released almost 40 albums since the mid-1960s
It’s about the cattle trail that extended across Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming, and was named after cattlemen Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving
Will Brown, Cindy Kallet, Grey Larsen - Going Away
Kallet and Larsen are a duo from New England with a wide repertoire of traditional and original material
Brown is a musician from Maine with whom they often perform
Phillips wrote the song and included it on his 1973 album Good Though!
Jody Stecher & Kate Brislin - The Jury Set Him Free
They’re a San Francisco-based duo who started performing together in 1985, and were married in 1987
They’ve retired from touring, but continue playing music together
This is from their 1997 Grammy-nominated album Heart Songs: The Old Time Country Songs of Utah Phillips
Phillips never recorded the song himself
Bryan Bowers - Phoebe Snow
He’s an American musician often credited with introducing the autoharp to younger generations of musicians
This is from his 2000 album Friend for Life
“Phoebe Snow” was a character created by the Lackawanna Railroad to advertise their express passenger train, which was powered by anthracite which burned more cleanly than regular coal so that Phoebe’s white clothing remained clean during her travels
Hobos later spoke of Snow as if she were a real person, and some female hobos took the name “Phoebe Snow” as a moniker
Rosalie Sorrels - If I Could Be the Rain
She started out as a folksinger and collector of folk songs, and left her husband in the 1960s to travel across America with her five children, establishing herself as a performer and making connections with other folk musicians, writers, and artists
From her 1967 album of the same name
Phillips only officially recorded the song once, about 40 years after singing it for Sorrels in her living room before she recorded it for this album
David Rovics - Winnipeg
He’s a musician and writer based in Oregon who’s been touring internationally since the 1990s
This is his song about the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, which began 106 years ago today
Zeinab Shaath - The Story
Shaath was only a teenager when she began recording, and her music was some of the first in the English language to bring attention to the Palestinian struggle
This recording was likely made in the early 1970s
Today is Nakba Day, the commemoration of the 1948 destruction of Palestine’s land and culture and the permanent displacement of the Palestinian people
Phil Ochs - Rivers of the Blood
He was an American protest singer who grew up all over the United States, but moved to New York City in 1962 to establish himself as a folksinger in the Greenwich Village folk scene
This is from an issue of Broadside magazine that consists entirely of Ochs’ songs, from 1976
Arzo Youngblood - Goin’ Up the Country Blues
He was a blues musician originally from Mississippi, though he lived in New Orleans beginning in the 1960s, and his home was a gathering place for older musicians
His sister was married to Tommy Johnson, who had an enormous influence on the blues in his area of Mississippi, and his grandson, Louis Arzo Youngblood, also known as Gearshifter, was also a well-known blues musician
This song is from the 7th album in a series called Living Country Blues USA, which comprise field recordings made of American blues artists in 1980 by two German blues enthusiasts named Axel Kustner and Siegfried Christmann
This is his version of Henry Thomas’s 1928 song “Bull Doze Blues”
Benj Rowland - Crossroads Jig
He’s a musician from Peterborough, Ontario, who’s part of the folk duo Mayhemingways
This is from his 2022 album Community Garden
The song is by Jamie Snyder
Bobbie McGee - Solidarity Forever
From her 1981 album Bread and Raises: Songs for Working Women
Written by the writer and labour activist Ralph Chaplin in 1915
David Francey - Morning Train
He’s a Juno-winning folksinger based in Elphin, Ontario, who’s been performing for over 25 years
This is from his 2005 album The Waking Hour
Eli Conley - Dry as Sin
He’s a folk musician from Virginia
This is from his 2013 album At the Seams
Sis Cunningham - Oil Derrick by West Tulsa
Cunningham was an important member of the folk community for many years
Founding editor of Broadside Magazine, an important publication for the Greenwich Village folk scene
One of the first people to be blacklisted as a communist sympathiser in post WWII America
This is from the 1976 album Sundown
Blind Willie Johnson - It’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine
Texan blues singer born in 1897
This is one of his best-known songs, and he recorded it in 1927 in Dallas, Texas, with “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” as the B-side, which was included on the Voyager Golden Record in 1977
It’s been performed by many artists, including Eric Bibb, the Grateful Dead, and Led Zeppelin
Silvertone Jubilee Quartette - Ain’t Nobody’s Fault But Mine
A gospel quartet presumably from South Carolina
This recording was made in 1938
The Blind Boys of Alabama - Nobody’s Fault But Mine
They’re a Grammy-winning gospel group that formed in Alabama in 1939 and continues to record and perform, though they’ve undergone many changes in membership over the years
This is from their 2001 album Spirit of the Century
Old Man Luedecke - Kingdom Come
From Chester, NS
Off his 2012 album Tender is the Night
Richard Inman - Hasta La Vista
Folk and country artist from Winnipeg
This one comes from his 2019 album of the same name
Alice Stuart - I Can’t Help but Wonder
She was a musician from Washington who got her start in folk music at the Berkeley Folk Festival in 1964, when she was 22
She also toured with musicians like Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, Van Morrison, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott
This is from her 1964 album All the Good Times
The song is by Tom Paxton, who recorded it in 1964 for his album Ramblin’ Boy
Pharis & Jason Romero - Age Old Dream
From Horsefly, BC
Off their 2018 album, Sweet Old Religion
Suni Paz - Las Condiciones (Our Demands)
Paz is a musician, folklorist, and poet from Argentina
This comes from her 1973 album Breaking out of the Silence
The song is from the perspective of Chicanos living in poverty who want to organize
Paz sings: “My people are tired / of being fed the history / of America and California / and Mexicans never coming into it[…] We will not be made to forget / the language of our people / if 17 countries use it / it’s good enough for here at home”
Bob Dylan - Man on the Street
This is a recording from his first concert, given at the Carnegie Chapter Hall on the fifth floor of Carnegie Hall on November 4, 1961, just 11 months after he arrived in New York
The song is a reworking of a 19th century song called “John Doe,” which he got from the Almanac Singers
John Jacob Niles - Who’s Goin’ to Shoe Your Pretty Little Foot?
American musician, composer, folklorist, and collector of traditional ballads
Influential figure during the folk revival of the 1960s
This is from his 1960 album The Ballads of John Jacob Niles
Niles writes: “A gay, red-faced, noisy truck-driver sang this ballad for me on the Georgia road south of Murphy, N. C. It is, as it appears here, a short love song and a fragment of a much longer tragic ballad”
John Lee Ziegler - Who’s Gonna Be Your Man
He was a guitarist from Kathleen, Georgia, who played guitar upside down to accommodate his left-handedness
This is a recording that the folklorist George Mitchell made in Georgia in 1978
Nora Brown, Jackson Lynch - Green Valley Waltz
Brown is a contemporary singer and banjo player from New York
Lynch is a guitarist and banjo player and a member of the Down Hill Strugglers (previously the Dust Busters)
This is from Brown’s 2021 album Sidetrack My Engine
Wade Hemsworth - Envoyons d’l’Avant
A folksinger from Brantford, Ontario
This is a lumberjack song from the French settlers who farmed along the St. Lawrence River
At the time of recording in 1955, it was only about 60 or 70 years old
It’s a song the shanty boys who worked in the logging camps would sing in anticipation of the fun they’d have when the work was finished for the season
Kaia Kater - Come and Rest
Grenadian-Canadian artist based in Toronto
Off her 2015 album Sorrow Bound
Scrüj MacDuhk - Cidermill
They were a folk band from Winnipeg who were active in the 1990s
This is from their 1999 album The Road to Canso
Joseph Spence - Happy All the Time
Utah Phillips - You Cannot Even Tacitly Participate
