Barking Dog: May 8, 2025
Robert Johnson - Dead Shrimp Blues
He was born 114 years ago today
Johnson was a Delta blues musician from Mississippi who mainly performed as a traveling musician and participated in two recording sessions in the late 1930s
He was not widely known during his lifetime, but he has come to be recognized as one of the most important musicians of the 20th century
This recording was made in November of 1936 in San Antonio, Texas
Unspecified - Sea Animals: Snapping Shrimp with Narration
This is from the 1955 album Sounds of Sea Animals, vol. 2: Florida, recorded by WN Kellogg of the Oceanographic Institute Florida State University
Gary Snyder - Piute Creek
He’s 95 today
Snyder is a Pulitzer prize-winning poet and environmental activist from the Pacific Northwest who’s associated with the Beat Generation
This poem is from his first book of poetry, Riprap, published in 1959
Holiness Church - Great Speckled Bird
Recorded by musician, photographer, field recorder, and filmmaker John Cohen and released on the 1996 re-release of his 1960 album Mountain Music of Kentucky
This is a hymn from the southern United States, written by Reverend Guy Smith
Archer - It’s Rainin’ in My Heart
He’s an Australian musician who performs both his own music and the traditional music of his country, by both white settlers and Aboriginal artists
This song is from his 2023 EP Australian Folk Ballads & Parlour Songs, recorded by Dylan Jewers of Big Turnip Records in Antigonish, Nova Scotia in 2022
This is his own song
Anna & Elizabeth - Father Neptune
Contemporary folk duo from Vermont and Virginia, respectively
This a song by Connie Converse, off their 2015 self-titled album
Caravan - Metrapab
Caravan are a folk-rock band that formed in 1975 during the Thai fight for democracy
This is from their collaborative soundtrack with Terry Allen for the 1985 album Amerasia
Allen is a musician and artist from Texas, known particularly for his country music recordings and his bronze sculptures
He wrote this song
Bob Dylan - Forever Young
This is from the 2013 compilation album Side Tracks, and it’s a demo recorded in June of 1973 for his album Planet Waves
Bruce Cockburn - Lovers in a Dangerous Time
Canadian singer-songwriter and skilled guitarist who’s been playing professionally for over 40 years
Cockburn wrote this song for his 1984 album Stealing Fire
This version is from Cockburn’s 2009 live album Slice O’ Life
Joe Glazer - Don’t Blame Me
Glazer was a folk musician and labour activist from New York who recorded over 30 albums during his career
This is from his 1982 album Jellybean Blues: Songs of Reaganomics
Gary Shearston - Stringybark Creek
He was an Australian folksinger and priest
This is from his 1965 album Traditional Australian Songs of Bolters, Bushrangers and Duffers
This song is about the Ned Kelly, one of the best-known Australian outlaws, and a folk hero who’s remembered through song and film
In October of 1878, Kelly and his gang shot three cops who were searching for them
Kelly was captured in 1880 after a shootout with police, during which he wore a suit of bulletproof armour
He was convicted of murder and executed in November of the same year
Peggy Seeger - Sing About These Hard Times
Peggy is an American folksinger and member of the Seeger family who’s been living and performing in the UK for over 60 years
This is a song from her new and final album, Teleology, which rounds off her 70-year music career
This is her own song, written in 2003 for an exhibition at the Asheville Arts Museum in North Carolina that celebrated the work of the artist Ben Shahn
The Mellomen with Thurl Ravenscroft - Some of These Days
They were a vocal quartet active between the late 1940s and the mid-1970s who provided backup for artists including Bing Crosby, Arlo Guthrie, and Elvis Presley, and also made solo recordings, including for Disney films like Peter Pan and The Jungle Book
This one is from the 1950s
The song was written by Shelton Brooks and published in 1910, and it was popularized that same year by Sophie Tucker
Corey Harris - Some of These Days
Harris a contemporary American blues and reggae musician from Virginia, known for helping to revive the acoustic blues in the 1990s
Harris’s version comes from Charley Patton’s 1929 recording of the song
He includes it on his 2021 album The Insurrection Blues
Jake Field, Eastman Brand, Arthur Holifield - Father, I Stretch My Hands to Thee
From a 1956 album of field recordings made by Frederic Ramsey Jr. in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi of older musicians he met during his travels through the southern states
This was recorded in April of 1954 near Morgan Springs, Alabama
A hymn written by Charles Wesley and first published in the mid-1700s
Le Patiloa - Ua Lata Mai Le Aso Fa’amasino
Le Patiloa were a voice and guitar group from the island of Upolu
This is from the 1982 album Music from Western Samoa: from Conch Shell to Disco, recorded by Pacific music scholars Ad and Lucia Linkels
The Darnings - Don’t Sing Love Songs
They’re a group from Halifax
This is from their 2023 self-titled EP
It’s a version of the ballad commonly titled “Fair and Tender Ladies,” which is considered an Appalachian ballad
The Xi’An Sí - An Comhra Donn
They’re a traditional Chinese music group that met in 2000 when they were studying at the Xi'An Conservatory of Music
They disbanded after graduation to pursue solo careers, and around this time their guzheng player, Li Kai, was introduced to Irish music and noticed its similarities with the music of her region
She began learning traditional Irish songs on the guzheng, and moved to Ireland for a time before returning to China and reuniting the Xi’An Sí
In 2008 they released an album of Irish music played on Chinese instruments, called the Xi’An Sessions
The title translates to “The Sound of the Waves,” referring to a phenomenon where particular wind conditions can cause the sound of waves to be heard as far as forty miles inland
The tune comes from the Scottish tune “The Caledonian March”
Memphis Sanctified Singers - He’s Got Better Things For You
They were a Pentecostal group, with Memphis Jug Band Leader Will Shade on guitar
This was recorded in 1929
Leon Redbone - Mother, Queen of My Heart
Redbone moved to Canada from Cyprus with his family when he was a teenager in the 1960s, and first appeared onstage in Toronto in the 1970s
This is from the 2016 archival album Long Way from Home, which presents 18 tracks recorded for a 1972 radio broadcast at WBFO in Buffalo, New York
Art Thieme - On the Wilderness Road
He was a folk musician, photographer, and radio host from Chicago who specialised in music and stories from the upper midwest United States, but he also had an interest in cowboy songs
This is the title track from his 1986 album
The song is by Jimmy Driftwood, a folk musician from Arkansas who wrote over 6,000 songs during his career
Thieme writes that the song really captures what he feels about folk music
Per & Birthe, William Tagoona, John Angaiak - The ICC Song
Tagoona is a musician and journalist from Baker Lake, Nunavut who worked for CBC North and was a member of one of the first Inuit rock groups, The Harpoons, in the 1960s
Per & Birthe were a brother/sister duo from Greenland that recorded 2 albums
Angaiak is a Yup’ik singer-songwriter from Alaska
After serving in Vietnam, he enrolled in the University of Alaska and became active in the school’s indigenous language workshop
This is from a 1983 album recorded live in Nuuk, Greenland as part of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference’s third General Assembly
The song uses the tune of Angaiak’s song “Ak’a Tamaani”
Arja Saijonmaa, Inti-Illimani - Hurraa opiskelijoille (Me gustan los estudiantes)
Saijonmaa is a Finnish singer and actress who’s been recording since the early 1970s
Inti-Illimani were a folk ensemble from Chile that formed in 1967 and were part of the nueva canción movement
This is from their 1979 album I Want to Thank Life, recorded in Swedish
The songs on the album were all composed by Violeta Parra, a hugely influential Chilean musician, folklorist, and artist
The title translates to “I Love the Students”
Kacy & Clayton - The Plains of Mexico
From Wood Mountain, SK
This song is often known as “Santianna”
Sea shanty referring to the Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna
Written around the 1850s
From their 2016 album Strange Country
David Francey - Long Long Road
He’s a Juno-winning folksinger based in Elphin, Ontario, who’s been performing for over 25 years
This comes from his 2013 album So Say We All
Sal - Jack of None
He’s a musician from Ottawa
This is a recent release from Big Turnip Records, ahead of his new album, Hemlock, which comes out on May 20th
Ellen Stekert - The Trees They Do Grow High
She’s a folklorist, musician, and scholar from New York (now based in Minnesota) who began her career in Greenwich Village in the 1950s
She’s just released an album of archival recordings called Go Around Songs, Vol. 1, which is where this one comes from
It’s a traditional Scottish song, also known as “Young But Daily Growing”
Uncle Sinner - Wolves A-Howling
Artist from Winnipeg
This is from his 2015 album Let the Devil In
It’s an old-time tune from the southwest United States
Damien Dempsey - Factories
Dempsey is an Irish musician who’s been playing since the mid 1990s
This comes from his 2003 album Seize the Day
Paul Ely Smith - Pompey Ran Away
He’s a California musician and composer who plays both fiddle and banjo
In the 1980s he quit playing the modern banjo to focus on building and playing the traditional gourd banjo
This is from his 2016 album American Akonting, which represents the culmination of his work on the gourd banjo
It’s one of the earliest recorded blends of European and African melodies, and is believed to have been composed by an enslaved person in the United States
Peggy Seeger - Thoughts of Time
This is off the 1978 album Cold Snap, which she recorded with her husband Ewan MacColl and their sons Calum and Neill
Peggy sings and plays autoharp on this one, with Calum accompanying
She wrote the song to celebrate her 40th birthday
Brian Bigley - Port na bPucai
He’s a musician, dancer, and Uilleann pipe maker from Ohio, and he recorded this one for his 2006 album Uilleann Pipes
This song is also known as “The Fairy’s Lament” and “The Lament of the Island,” and some say it comes from a fisherman who interpreted the sound of whales he heard while out on the ocean, while others say it has supernatural origins
Pharis & Jason Romero, Greg Canote - Chicken in the Barnyard
Married duo from Horsefly, BC
Canote is a fiddle player based in Washington
Off their album Back Up and Push from 2010
Leon Rosselson - Still Is the Memory Green in My Mind
Utah Phillips - Candidacy
