Barking Dog: May 28, 2026
Marisa Anderson - Zar
She’s a musician based in Portland, Oregon, known for her compositions inspired by the American primitive guitar style
This is a track from Anderson’s new album The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music, which was inspired by the private record collection of Harry Smith, who compiled the highly influential Anthology of American Folk Music in the early 1950s
Anderson’s album focuses on music from places the US has had conflict with since 1970
She got this one from the 1978 album North Yemen Traditional Music, on which it’s performed on the tanbura by Omar Yussof Traibi
Anderson notes that the song is composed of only five notes, with a melody that never repeats itself and follows no pattern
Robbie Basho - Call on the Wind
A major figure in the American Primitive guitar style, who aimed to raise steel string guitar to the level of a concert instrument, along with Leo Kottke and John Fahey
This is from his 1978 album Visions of the Country
Alexis Utatnaq - Silami Silalungmat (It Is Stormy)
He’s an Inuk musician and interpreter from Nunavut who’s performed at concerts throughout the country
This is off an album of songs that he recorded for the CBC Northern Service
Lesley Riddle - Broke and Weary Blues
He was a musician who collaborated with the Carter family, gathering songs from the region around the Carter family home and memorizing their melodies while AP Carter transcribed the lyrics
He learned to play the guitar while recovering from the amputation of his right leg as a young man, and developed a distinct picking and slide method
Riddle retired from music in the 1940s but met Mike Seeger in 1965, who persuaded him to return to music
Over the next 13 years, Seeger made a number of recordings of his music
This is his own song
Bruce Cockburn - Tie Me At the Crossroads
Artist from Ottawa with a career spanning over 300 songs, 33 albums, and 40 years
This is a live recording from his 2009 album Slice O’ Life, recorded in May of 2008
Cockburn originally released the song on his 1994 album Dart to the Heart
Drew Martin - I’ll Rock You to the Rhythm of the Ocean
He’s a musician from Maui, Hawaii, and he recorded this one in Seattle
It’s a song by Yupik musician John Angaiak
Mickey Miller - Now He’s Gone
Folksinger from Washington, DC, who moved to California in the 40s
This is from her 1959 album Mickey Miller Sings American Folk Songs
She learned the song from her husband, who learned it from a banjo player named Stuart Jamison in New York
She’s joined on vocals by Bess Lomax Hawes
Robyn Hitchcock - Dignity
He’s an English musician who began his career as a member of the Soft Boys in the 1970s, and later became known internationally as a solo musician
This is off his 2002 Bob Dylan covers album Robyn Sings
Dylan originally recorded the song during the sessions for his 1989 album Oh Mercy, though it wasn’t released until 1994, when it was included on Volume 3 of his greatest hits album series
June Tabor, Oysterband - Love Will Tear Us Apart
Tabor is an English singer best known for her work as a duo with Maddy Prior, and as a solo musician
Oysterband are an English folk rock and folk punk band from Canterbury
This is from the second album that Oysterband and Tabor made together—Ragged Kingdom, from 2011
It’s a cover of one of Joy Division’s best-known songs, from 1980
Dan Pickett - Something’s Gone Wrong
His real name was James Founty and he was a Piedmont and country blues musician from Alabama who made several recordings in 1949 for Gotham Records
Nothing else is known about him aside from his birth and death dates, though it’s possible he also recorded under the name Charlie Pickett for Vocalion Records in the late 1930s
This is one of those 1949 recordings, made in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The Wakami Wailers - Howling At the Moon
They’re a band that formed in 1981 when four employees at Wakami Lake Provincial Park, near Chapleau, Ontario, started playing Canadian folk music together
They have continued playing since then, and have released four albums
This is off their 2017 album Un, Deux, Trois… Four
Andy Irvine, Rens van der Zalm - Outlaw Frank Gardiner
Irvine is an Irish musician who’s been playing professionally for 60 years, both as a member of bands like Planxty and Sweeney’s Men, and as a solo artist
Van Der Zalm is a Dutch musician who primarily plays guitar and fiddle
This is from their 2013 album Parachilna, recorded in 2012 while camping in the Australian outback
It’s a traditional folk song about the famous Australian bushranger, though Irvine put it to new music inspired by the Bulgarian chetvorno rhythm
Gordon Bok - Clear Away in the Morning
Bok is a folklorist and musician from Maine who’s released almost 40 albums since the mid-1960s
This one comes from his 1971 album Peter Kagan and the Wind, and the song comes from his time working on schooners out of Camden, Maine
He writes: “Come fall, time to lay the vessel up, I never wanted to quit. It was my home, and the only place I felt I was really needed was on the deck of that schooner."
KC Is Lazy - Cuckoo Bird Mother
She’s a musician from Winnipeg who writes music inspired by the folk tradition
She released this track in 2024
Mary McDonald - Little Bitty Man
She was a singer from Alabama who was recorded by the folklorist Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress between 1939 and 1940
Cara Luft - Sing
From Winnipeg
This song originally comes from Luft’s band the Small Glories’ 2019 album Assiniboine & The Red, though she recorded this one at the Portland FolkMusic Society in 2025
Bob Dylan, Joan Baez - Deportees
Woody Guthrie wrote it in 1948, with music by Martin Hoffman, about a plane crash near Los Gatos Canyon in California
32 people died, including 28 migrant farm workers who were being deported to Mexico
Guthrie recognized the racist reaction to the crash, as victims were not named in national radio and news coverage, but instead referred to just as “deportees”
The song was originally just a poem, with Guthrie assigning symbolic names to those who died
Martin Hoffman was a schoolteacher, and he wrote the music a decade after Guthrie wrote the words
Pete Seeger popularised it after it was turned into a song
Dylan and Baez made this recording during the Rolling Thunder Revue tour in May of 1976
The Connors Project - Have You Been to Jail for Justice?
They’re a family band from Florida, and this is from 2021
It’s a song by Anne Feeney, a folksinger, activist, and attorney from Pennsylvania
Alistair Hulett - He Fades Away
He was a folksinger from Glasgow, Scotland, known as a member of the folk punk band Roaring Jack
This is off his 1991 album Dance of the Underclass
The song is about an Australian miner dying of mesothelioma after working at the Wittenoom blue asbestos mine
The mine was declared a contaminated site and removed from maps in the 1990s
Sam Krauser, Christian Rizzalli - The Cottager’s Reply
They’re Australian musicians who draw from Anglo-Celtic folk traditions, and this is from their 2024 album The Green Field and the Factory Floor
The song is a poem by English poet Frank Mansell, put to music by English folk musician Chris Wood for his 2007 album Trespasser
Jody Stecher & Kate Brislin - Our Town
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 the title track from their 1993 album
The song is by Iris DeMent, and it was the first song she ever wrote
Sylvia Plath - Child’s Park Stones
A poet and writer from Massachusetts known for her novel The Bell Jar and her collections of poetry
Recorded at the Poetry Room at Harvard College Library in the late 1950s
David Laing - Alder River
He was a geologist, singer-songwriter, and educator from New Hampshire who recorded 2 albums for Folkways records in the 1970s
His father was a novelist and his mother was the poet Dilys Laing, and he inherited his love for nature and humanity from both of them
Laing wrote songs about places that were special to him, which resulted in the album this song comes from, called Magic Mountain
This song was inspired by Boulder, Colorado, and he wrote it for an environmental science fiction novel that he was writing
Tom Paxton - Ev’ry Time (When We Are Gone)
Paxton is a folksinger and music educator who was involved in the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene in New York City and has remained a fixture on the international folk scene since
This is from his 1965 album Ain’t That News
The Millers (The North Shore Singers) - N Uair Nighidh Tù (When You Wash)
This comes from a 2006 Smithsonian Folkways compilation album of Canadian folk recordings
The performers on this recording were members of the last generation of Scots in Canada to hear and speak Gaelic from birth
This song was recorded at a milling frolic in Skir Dhu, a community on the north coast of Cape Breton
It’s a song for washday, though it was also used to accompany milling, also known as fulling, which is the process of felting woven woollen fabric by wetting and agitating it to create a denser, warmer cloth
Veranda - Sans ardillon
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
Blind Willie Johnson - Everybody Ought to Treat a Stranger Right
He was a gospel blues musician from Texas who recorded between 1927 and 1930 and spent much of his life as a street performer and preacher
This song is from his final recording session in April of 1930
He’s accompanied by his wife, Willie B. Harris, who often accompanied him on piano at church benefit performances
Charlie Adams - Anuri Mut Titt Autu Ing Namat (Blowin’ In the Wind)
He was an Inuit musician from Nunavik who began learning guitar as a teenager in the early 1970s, and made his first recordings with his band People of the Ice in 1976
This one is off his 1981 album Minstrel on Ice, produced by the CBC Northern Service
It’s an Inuktitut version of Bob Dylan’s song from his 1963 album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
Willard Watson - Cousin Sally Brown
He was a musician, dancer, storyteller, and woodworker from North Carolina who was a cousin of the musician Doc Watson
This recording was made in the 1960s, and it’s a traditional old-time reel from the United States
Ryan D’Aoust - Ashokan Farewell
He’s a fiddle player and educator from Norway House Cree Nation in northern Manitoba who has won many fiddle competitions, as well as several Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards
This is off his 2006 album South Side of the Strings
The song was composed by American folk musician Jay Ungar in 1982
