Barking Dog: June 11, 2026
Big Country Ramblers - Cumberland Gap
They’re a band from Halifax, Nova Scotia that play old-time and bluegrass music
This is their latest release, from April
It’s an Appalachian folk song likely from the late 19th century
Jean Ritchie - The Water is Wide
She learned traditional folksongs in the oral tradition from friends and family during her youth in Kentucky, and in adulthood moved to New York to work as a social worker, where she met folk musicians like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Alan Lomax
In 1952, she received a Fulbright scholarship to study the connections between American and British ballads, and travelled to the UK where she recorded many well-known traditional singers
She continued to perform for the rest of her life, and passed away at her home in Kentucky in 2015, at the age of 92
This is a recent release from Swingin’ Pig, also known as Ross Wylde, who’s been helping the folklorist and folksinger Ellen Stekert digitize and release her archival recordings over the last few years
Stekert recorded it at a concert Ritchie gave at Indiana University in 1960
It’s a traditional British folk song also known as “The Water is Deep” and “Waly, Waly”
Bob Dylan - Gotta Serve Somebody
This is a track recorded in 2021, around the time that Dylan was recording his 2023 album Shadow Kingdom
Dylan originally released the song on his 1979 album Slow Train Coming
Chris Smither - Friend of the Devil
He’s a musician from New Orleans who began playing in the late 1960s
This is off his 1992 album Another Way to Find You
It’s a song by the Grateful Dead, first released on their 1970 album American Beauty
David Francey - Red-Winged Blackbird
He’s a Juno-winning folksinger based in Elphin, Ontario, who’s been performing for over 25 years
This is from his first album, Torn Screen Door from 1999
Kate Wolf - 2-4-D
She was a musician from California who began her recording career in 1976
This one is off the posthumously released 2018 album Live in Mendocino, a collection of 20 tracks selected from 15 hours of live recordings made at Wolf’s concerts in Mendocino County, California between 1979 and 1982
It’s a song by Antonia Lamb, about the herbicide 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, a herbicide that’s been used since 1945
Sabreen - Smoke of the Volcanoes
They were a Palestinian band that formed in 1980 and focused on developing modern Palestinian music that merged Eastern and Western sounds
This comes from their 1982 album of the same name
The lyrics are a poem by the Palestinian poet Samih al-Qasem
Michael Doucet - L’Ouragon (The Hurricane)
He’s a musician from Louisiana known as a founder of the Cajun group BeauSoleil
This one is from a 1995 Arhoolie Records compilation album called Masters of the Folk Violin
Doucet also recorded it with BeauSoleil in 1993
Bryan Bowers - Storms on the Ocean
He’s an American musician often credited with introducing the autoharp to younger generations of musicians
This is off his 2000 album Friend For Life, and it’s an old song that seems to have come from at least two older sources: the very depressing Scottish ballad “The Lass of Roch Royal” and the many, many songs about sailors leaving girls behind, which were very popular in America during the mid-nineteenth century
Nana Mouskouri - Love Minus Zero / No Limit
She’s a Greek singer who began her career in 1958 and has released over 100 albums since then, in many different languages
This one is from 1969, and it’s a song by Bob Dylan, who originally released the song on his 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home
Slaughter Beach, Dog - If I Needed You
Slaughter Beach, Dog are a band from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania formed in 2014 by former Modern Baseball vocalist Jake Ewald
This is from their 2022 album Live at the Cabin, which they recorded as a livestreamed concert during the pandemic
The song is by Townes Van Zandt, who released it in 1972
Malvina Reynolds - If You Were Little
She was a folksinger from California known particularly for writing the song “Little Boxes,” though she wrote and recorded a large catalogue of music during her career
This one was recorded live at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco in 1976
Bernice Johnson Reagon - They Are Falling All Around Me
She was a song leader, activist, scholar, and composer who was a founding member of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee’s Freedom Singers in the 1960s, and with them recognized the potential in collective singing to bring diverse groups together
This is from her 1975 album Give Your Hands to Struggle
This is her own song, and she wrote it “for the musicians who lived to make their music and died singing”
Clyde “Kindy” Sproat - Amazing Grace
Sproat was a renowned musician, storyteller, and song keeper from North Kohala, Hawaii
This is from a 1996 album of songs and stories from Hawai‘i, recorded live at the Honolulu Academy of Arts in 1993
Bruce Cockburn - Colin Went Down to the Water
Singer-songwriter and guitarist from Ottawa who’s been playing professionally for over 40 years
This is from his 2023 album O Sun O Moon and it’s inspired by a friend who drowned in a scuba diving incident in Maui
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott - Talkin’ Dust Bowl Blues
He’s a folk singer from New York City who was a protege of Woody Guthrie, a collaborator with Derroll Adams, and a major influence for Bob Dylan
This song was included on Guthrie’s first album, Dust Bowl Ballads, from 1940
Elliott recorded the song for his 1960 album Jack Elliott Sings the Songs of Woody Guthrie
Tony Enery - Vigilante Man
He was an Australian musician who played in several rock bands in the 60s and 70s and later recorded as a solo musician
This is from his 1990 album Live from Somewhere
The song is by Woody Guthrie, who first released it on Dust Bowl Ballads
It’s about the hired thugs who chased away migrant workers in California as they tried to escape the Dust Bowl and find work during the Great Depression
Pugh Rogefeldt - How Can You Keep On Moving
He was a Swedish musician who began his career in the late 1960s
This is from his 1977 album Bamalama, and it’s an instrumental version of a song by Sis Cunningham, who says that it “comes out of the late thirties when certain states, especially California, were posting signs at roads crossing their borders: NO MORE MIGRATION. Armed guards were stationed at these points to direct homeseekers to turn around and ‘keep moving’.”
The Small Glories - Oh My Love
From Winnipeg
Off their 2019 album, Assiniboine & the Red
Tim Couch, Randy Kohrs, Richard Bailey, Jay Weaver, John Rembold - Fell In Love With a Girl
This is from the the 2005 album Pickin' On The White Stripes, part of the Pickin’ On album series that turns music from popular artists from various genres into bluegrass tunes
The White Stripes first released it on their 2001 album White Blood Cells
Michael Hurley - Hog of the Forsaken
Hurley was a musician who got his start as a member of the 1960s Greenwich Village scene, and continued performing around the world until his death in 2025
He first released the song on his 1976 album Long Journey, though this version is from his 1994 album Wolfways
Alexis Utatnaq - Ilaila Taimannainmat (But It Is So)
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
Norman Blake, Boys of the Lough - Eamon An Chnoic (Ned of the Hill)
He’s an American musician who’s been playing professionally since the mid 1950s
He toured with Johnny Cash for a decade, played on Bob Dylan’s album Nashville Skyline, and appeared on Joan Baez’s recording of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”
Boys of the Lough are a Scottish-Irish celtic band that have been playing together since the 1970s
The groups met each other for the first time at the 1978 Winnipeg Folk Festival, and after nearly three decades trying to plan a recording session together, they finally got together in 2007 to record Rising Fawn Gathering along with Blake’s wife Nancy and the father-daughter duo James and Rachel Bryan
The album was released by Smithsonian Folkways in 2009, and that’s where this one comes from
This is a popular traditional Irish song attributed to 18th century Irish folk hero Éamonn Ó Riain
The Wailin’ Jennys - Bold Riley
Folk group formed in Winnipeg in 2002
This is a sea shanty, the origins of which are unknown
Many of the lyrics are found in other songs, so it may be an amalgamation of other shanties that has become its own song over time
Victoria Williams - On Time
She’s a musician based in California who recorded her first album in the late 1980s
This is from a 1989 issue of Fast Folk Musical Magazine that focuses on the Los Angeles folk scene
Fast Folk was a cooperative that was dedicated to reinvigorating the New York folk scene, and released over 100 magazine-albums between 1982 and 1997
Cathy Fink - Idaho or My Own Private Banjo
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
Rafael Manríquez - Adiós, corazón amante (Good-bye, Dear Lover)
He was a Chilean musician who was raised in a musical family and joined his first band as a teenager
Manríquez also studied journalism and worked as a music journalist in the early 1970s, covering artists like Víctor Jara, Violeta Parra, and Quilapayún
After the 1973 coup, he moved to Ecuador, where he toured the country performing traditional music, before moving to California in the late 1970s
This is off his 2008 album ¡Que Viva el Canto! Songs of Chile
The song is by Violeta Parra, who first recorded it in 1958
Ann Mayo Muir, Gordon Bok, Ed Trickett - Past Caring
A well-known trio who recorded 7 albums for Folk-Legacy Records beginning in the late 1970s
This is from their 1990 album And So Will We Yet
The words of the song were written as a poem by Henry Lawson and put to music by Australian musician Phyl Lobl
It’s about the loneliness of life for women in the rural parts of Australia
The McMillan’s Camp Boys - Elk River Blues
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 and Other Folk Songs
This tune is credited to the West Virginia fiddle player Ernie Carpenter, who wrote it after his home was flooded when the Elk River was dammed to create Sutton Lake
Lonesome Ace Stringband - Polly Put the Kettle On
Contemporary stringband based in Toronto
They recorded this track in a church in Sussex, England in January, and it comes from North Carolina fiddle player Marcus Martin
Howard Zinn - Artists and Experts
