Barking Dog: May 29, 2025
John Hinckley - Both Sides Now
He’s 70 today
Hinckley is probably best known for attempting to assassinate US president Ronald Reagan in 1981, reportedly in an attempt to impress the actress Jodie Foster
He was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and stayed in psychiatric care until 2016, when he was conditionally released
In 2020, he was given permission to publicly share his music, art, and writing using his own name, and he started a YouTube channel to share his music
It’s a song by Joni Mitchell, written around 1966
Ellen Stekert, Jean Ritchie, Oscar Brand, Dave Sear, The New Lost City Ramblers - High Floods & Low Waters
Stekert is a folklorist, musician, and scholar from New York (now based in Minnesota) who began her career in Greenwich Village in the 1950s
This is from an archival album she recently released, recorded in 1959 for the CBS TV show Camera Three
The song was written by Woody Guthrie in the 1940s about the droughts and water shortages that were occurring in New York City at the time, and the song was unknown and undocumented until the release of this recording
Taj Mahal, Keb’ Mo’ - Rough Time Blues
They’re Grammy-winning musicians from New York City and Nashville respectively whose careers have each spanned over 50 years
Together they’re known as TajMo, and this is from their new album Room on the Porch, which came out on May 23rd
The song is by Jontavious Willis, a young blues musician from Georgia who counts Taj Mahal and Ken’ Mo’ as his mentors
Richard Gere - Think of Others
He’s an actor known for films like Days of Heaven, Pretty Woman, and I’m Not There who’s been politically active throughout his career, campaigning for AIDS awareness, Tibetan independence, and indigenous rights
This is his reading of a poem by Palestinian writer Mahmoud Darwish, from his 2005 book Almond Blossoms and Beyond
Gere recorded it in April of this year
Elisapie - Call of the Moose
She’s a Juno-winning Inuk musician, journalist, and actress from Salluit, Nunavik
This is a song by Willy Mitchell
Eric Bibb, Habib Koité - We Don’t Care
Bibb is an American musician who grew up around well-known musicians like Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson, and Bob Dylan, because his father was part of the 1960s New York folk scene
Habib Koité is a Malian musician who comes from a line of traditional troubadours who provide entertainment and wisdom at gatherings and events
He’s been performing since 1988, and met Bibb in 1997 while recording an album called Mali to Memphis
They stayed in touch and decided to record together again, which resulted in the 2012 album Brothers in Bamako
This song is from that album
David Francey - Red Winged Blackbird
He’s a Juno-winning folksinger based in Elphin, Ontario, who’s been performing for over 25 years
From his first album, Torn Screen Door, from 1999
Wade Ward, Fields Ward, Glen Smith - Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down
This is off the 1967 Folkways album Bluegrass from the Blue Ridge: Country Band Music of Virginia
Wade Ward was an American old-time banjo and fiddle player from Independence, Virginia renowned for his clawhammer banjo playing; Fields was his nephew, a guitarist and singer; and Smith was an old-time fiddler from Hillsville, Virginia
The song was originally recorded by Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers in 1925
David Blue - More Good Men Going Down
He was a folk musician and actor from Rhode Island, known as a member of the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene in New York City
He appeared in films like Wim Wender’s The American Friend and Renaldo and Clara, which was filmed during Bob Dylan’s 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue
The song was published in Broadside Magazine #42 in March of 1964
Pharis & Jason Romero - New Day
Married duo from Horsefly, BC
Off their 2020 album, Bet On Love
Chris Thomas King - Hard Time Killing Floor Blues
He’s a Grammy-winning blues musician and actor from New Orleans who’s been recording since the 1980s
This one’s off his 2003 album The Roots, and it’s a song by Skip James, who recorded it in 1931
His version also appears in the Coen Brothers’ 2000 movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?, in which he plays the blues musician Tommy Johnson
The Wilderness of Manitoba - Revolutionary Blues
They’re a band that formed in Toronto in 2009
This one is off their 2012 EP Delaware House
Norman Kennedy - The Fause Knight Upon the Road
He’s a Scottish singer, weaver, and storyteller who moved to the United States in the 1960s, where he performed at the Newport Folk Festival, worked as Master Weaver at Colonial Williamsburg, and, in 1975, founded what is now the Newbury School of Weaving in Vermont
Kennedy received the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage fellowship in 2003
This comes from his 1968 album Ballads and Songs of Scotland, released by Folk Legacy Records
He learned the ballad in school, and it’s one of the oldest ballads of English or Scottish origin
The “false knight” in the tale is the devil in disguise, trying to trick the child he meets on the road
John Timpany, Audrey Smith - The False Knight
They were English folk musicians who recorded two albums together in the 1970s
This version is from their 1973 album Come All You Tender-Hearted Christians
Fleet Foxes - False Knight on the Road
They’re a contemporary band from Seattle, Washington
This is from 2009
South African choral singers - Dubula Nge Mbaymbayi (Shoot with Cannons)
This is off the 1965 album This Land is Mine: South African Freedom Songs
The songs on the album were first composed in the 1950s in support of the South African Liberation Movement
The liner notes state that this song “reflects the present day mood”
Jack Owens - Keep On Grumbling
Owens was a blues musician from Mississippi
He learned several instruments as a child but his chosen instrument was the guitar
He never really aimed to become a professional recording artist, and instead farmed and ran a juke joint for much of his life before being recorded during the folk and blues revival of the 1960s when the musicologist David Evans learned about him from other blues musicians from his region
He toured throughout the US and Europe during the last decades of his life
This one was recorded between the late 70s and early 80s by Gianni Marcucci, who travelled from Italy to the United States five times during the 70s and 80s to document blues music in the country
Myriam Gendron - Go Away from My Window
She’s a musician from Montreal
This is off her 2021 album Ma Délire - Songs of Love, Lost & Found
The song is by American musician, composer, folklorist, and collector of traditional ballads John Jacob Niles
He wrote it in 1907, and it was actually the first song he wrote, though he only first performed it over 20 years later, in 1930
He based it on a line in a song that he heard an African American farm worker named Objerall Jacket sing
Michel Montecrossa - Oxford Town
His website bio describes him as: “one of today’s most prolific songwriter, orchestral composer, painter, writer, moviemaker, futurist architect and cyberartist.”
He seems like an interesting guy
This is from his 2007 album Michel Montecrossa’s Michel & Bob Dylan Fest 2006
This is a song by Bob Dylan from his 1963 album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
He wrote it in 1962 in response to an open call from Broadside magazine for songs about one of the biggest events of the year: the Ole Miss riot, which occurred after a black student named James Meredith enrolled at the University of Mississippi on October 1, 1962
When he was interviewed later by Studs Terkel, Dylan said: “It deals with the Meredith case, but then again it doesn't... I wrote that when it happened, and I could have written that yesterday. It's still the same.”
Tim O’Brien - Masters of War
O’Brien is a Grammy-winning musician from West Virginia who’s been playing professionally for almost 50 years, and has performed both as a solo act and with his band Hot Rize
This is from his 1996 album Red on Blonde, a collection of Bob Dylan covers
Dylan released the song on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
Tony Rice - One More Night
He was a bluegrass guitarist who played with artists including David Grisman, Jerry Garcia, and Norman Blake over the course of his career
This is from the 2013 compilation album Country Does Dylan
Bob Dylan wrote the song and included it on his 1969 album Nashville Skyline
Tony Schwartz - Translations (Italian, Puerto Rican Jukebox Records)
He was a sound archivist, media theorist, advertising creator, and graphic designer from New York City who recorded copious amounts of ambient sounds, spoken word, and music for albums released by Folkways and Columbia and hosted a radio show called Around New York for 30 years on WNYC
This is from his 1954 album New York 19, a collection of recordings from a single postal zone in Manhattan, which includes what was then the commercial music centre of the United States
He writes that for this recording, he looked for people who spoke English and the language the songs were in and who had a poetic feeling for translation
For instance, the first song was translated by a woman who loved Italian songs and had known this song since childhood
The translations we hear are the first and only takes
Cathy Fink - Ms. McLeod’s Reel
Cathy Fink is from Maryland, but began her career in the early 70s, busking and playing folk music in Canadian coffeehouses
This is from her 1992 album Banjo Haiku
It’s a traditional reel possibly from the Isle of Skye in Scotland, though it was also popular in Ireland and later in North America
John Jackson - Don’t You Want to Go Up There
He was a piedmont blues musician and grave digger from Virginia who had given up playing music in his community by the time folklorist Chuck Perdue found him in 1949
Arhoolie Records released his first recordings in the early 60s, and he toured Europe, played folk festivals, and recorded for a few other record companies during that time
This is off the posthumous 2010 album Rappahannock Blues, a collection of Jackson’s recordings curated from hundreds of live performances
It’s an old African American spiritual also known as “In My Father’s House”
Jackson’s version is similar to the Carter Family’s version from 1935
The Small Glories - No Friend of Mine
From Winnipeg
Cara Luft and JD Edwards
The song is off their 2015 EP
This version from a live performance they gave at the Kennedy Center in the summer of 2023
The Men of No Property - Freedom Fighter
This is from the 1977 Folkways album England’s Vietnam—Irish Songs of Resistance: Sung by the Men of No Property
The Men of No Property were Belfast-born musicians Barney McIlvogue, Brian Whoriskey, and Irene Clarke, all students who took part in protests and marches in Northern Ireland in 1969 during the Northern Ireland civil rights campaign
The song refers to Joe McCann, a member of the Irish Republican Army who was shot in the street by British paratroopers in 1972
AJJ - Disposable Everything
They’re a folk punk band from Arizona that’s been performing for 20 years
This is from their recent EP of demos called Good Luck Everybody
Sons of the Pioneers - Little Brown Jug
One of the earliest western bands in the US
Formed in 1933, originally Roy Rogers, Bob Nolan, and Tim Spencer
The band still exists but there have been countless changes in membership since the beginning
This recording is from the mid-1930s
The song was written by Joseph Eastburn Winner in 1869
Maybelle Carter - Little Brown Jug
Also known as “Mother Maybelle” of Carter Family fame
This one was recorded live at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, at an autoharp workshop that Mike Seeger hosted
Rhiannon Giddens, Justin Robinson - Little Brown Jug
They’re both founding members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, an old-time string band from North Carolina that performed between 2005 and 2014
This one’s off their new album What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow: Fiddle and Banjo Music of North Carolina
Alan Mills - I Ride an Old Paint
Mills was a Canadian folk singer, writer, and actor from Lachine, Quebec who was made a member of the Order of Canada in 1974 for his contributions to Canadian folklore
A traditional American cowboy song, first collected and published in Carl Sandburg’s American Songbag in 1927
From a 1954 album of children’s songs
Ian & Sylvia - Royal Canal
Ian & Sylvia were a married duo who performed together from 1959 until their divorce in 1975, and each continued their music careers after their divorc
The song was written by Dubliner Dick Shannon in the 1950s, and made popular by The Dubliners in the late 1960s, though it was also recorded by the Clancy Brothers in 1964
This version was recorded in 1963
The McMillan’s Camp Boys - Sweet Davie
They’re a band originally from British Columbia, now based in Nova Scotia
This is off their 2024 EP So Long To The Kicking Horse Canyon & Other Folk Songs
The song was inspired by the 1956 Springhill Mine Disaster in Springhill, Nova Scotia
Bruce Cockburn - Blind Willie
Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist who’s been playing professionally for over 40 years
Off his 2019 album Crowing Ignites
Scrüj MacDuhk - Nonsuch / Dinky’s Reel / The Meech Lake Breakdown
