Barking Dog: June 12, 2025
Kate & Anna McGarrigle - Swimming Song
They’re sisters who learned piano from village nuns when living in the Laurentian mountains as children
They started writing and performing their own songs in Montreal in 1960s
This is from their 1974 self-titled album
The song is by Loudon Wainwright
Pulido Sisters, Solorio Sisters, Joaquin Bautista - Rosa de Castilla
From a 1970 album of music from the Indigenous Purepecha people of northwestern Mexico
The Pulido sisters were the aunts of the Solario sisters, and what they perform is called a pirecua, a type of song that’s usually sung as a duet with guitar accompaniment, and is often a love song
Bill Morrissey, Greg Brown - Ain’t Life a Brook
Brown is a contemporary folk musician from Iowa who’s been playing since the 1960s
Morrissey was a musician and writer from New Hampshire, known for his music about the working-class experience
This is from their 1993 album Friend of Mine, and it’s a song by Ferron, a singer-songwriter and poet from British Columbia
Bilal Abdurahman - Lament - Ugandan harp
He was a teacher, musician, graphic artist, and writer from Brooklyn who advocated for heritage preservation and worked as a community leader
This is from his 1979 album Echoes of Timbuktu and Beyond in Congo Square, USA
It’s a collection of music and poetry that investigates the roots of African-American music by linking the city of Timbuktu in Mali with New Orleans’ Congo Square, an empty lot in which African Americans were allowed to assemble on Saturdays and Sundays to perform traditional music and dances in the early 19th century
George Landers - Barker’s Creek
He was a banjo player from Marshall, NC
Not much is known about him aside from that, but this is off musician, musicologist, photographer, and filmmaker John Cohen’s 1975 compilation album High Atmosphere, which is composed of recordings he made in 1965 of Appalachian folk music in North Carolina and Virginia
This is a traditional American folk song about an 1873 buffalo hunt that first appeared in John Lomax’s 1910 book Cowboy Songs, and Other Frontier Ballads
Bob Dylan - The Hills of Mexico
This recording was made during the Basement Tapes sessions in 1967
Tim O’Brien, Mollie O’Brien - Dream of the Miner’s Child
Tim 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
Mollie is his older sister, a singer based in Colorado who also performs as a duo with her husband, Rich Moore
This is from their 1988 album Take Me Back
It’s a ballad written by Robert Donnelly and Will Geddes in 1910 and later rewritten by Andrew Jenkins
Värttinä - Seelinnikoi
They’re a Finnish folk band that started playing in 1983 and has undergone many changes in membership since its beginning
This is from their fourth album, Seleniko, from 1992
This song uses a traditional Finnish melody
Scrüj MacDuhk - Adventure Sings / Louis Riel
They were a folk band from Winnipeg who were active in the 1990s
This is from their 1999 album The Road to Canso
Mairi Morrison, Alasdair Roberts, Pete Johnston - The Soldier’s Adieu
Morrison and Roberts are a Scottish folk duo based in Glasgow
Johnston is a bassist and arranger from Nova Scotia
This is from their album Remembered in Exile: Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia, released in April
It’s a collection of traditional songs with Scottish roots collected by the folklorist Helen Creighton in Atlantic Canada
This is a combination of the traditional song “Farewell to Nova Scotia” and “The Soldier’s Adieu” (written by Robert Tannahill of Paisley, Scotland) from which the former originated
Stan Rogers - The Flowers of Bermuda
Born and raised in Ontario, but known for his maritime-influenced music
Rogers recorded this for his 1979 album Between the Breaks Live!
He wrote it in the Spring of 1978
Lamine Cissokho, Manish Pingle - Toubaka / Loree
Cissokho is a Griot, or storyteller and oral historian, from Senegal, now based in Sweden
Pingle is a slide guitar-playing raga musician from Mumbai, India
This is from their 2019 album New Continents, which blends West African kora with Indian slide guitar
The Carter Family - Lover’s Lane
They were a very influential American country and folk singing family from Virginia
This recording was made for Decca Records in New York City in June of 1937, and the song was written by AP Carter
Beck - Girl Dreams
Contemporary American musician who got his start as a teenager performing folk music on city buses in Los Angeles
This is from the 1994 album One Foot in the Grave
Asie Payton - Livin’ in So Much Pain
He was a blues musician from Mississippi who made his living as a farmer
This is off the album Just Do Me Right, released posthumously by Fat Possum Records in 2002 and compiled from demos recorded at Junior Kimbrough’s club and at the Fat Possum studio between 1980 and 1994
Roger House - Beaver Man
He was a Cree musician from northern Quebec who began playing rock music with his friends in the band the Fort George Rockers in the early 1970s
This is from the 1980 album Sweet Grass Music, recorded live at the Sweet Grass Festival, founded by Willy Mitchell and Janine Poirier Macdonald
Sam Baker - Road Crew
He’s a musician and artist from Texas who, in 1986, was severely injured while travelling in Peru when a bomb exploded above his head on a train to Machu Picchu
He sustained brain damage and blown eardrums and had to undergo 17 reconstructive surgeries
Baker’s left hand was also injured, so he retaught himself to play the guitar left-handed and began to write music to help him relearn proper noun usage
This song is from his 2013 album Say Grace
It’s inspired by Emily Dickinson’s poetry
Bingo Gazingo - Everything’s OK at the OK Corral
He was a poet and postal worker from New York City who performed regularly at coffeehouses and music clubs until his death in 2010
This is from a 1995 issue of Fast Folk Musical Magazine that highlights singer-songwriters in the New York folk scene
Fast Folk Musical Magazine was a cooperative that was dedicated to reinvigorating the New York folk scene, and released over 100 albums between 1982 and 1997
Lord Christo - Calypso Tent: BWIA
He was a singer from Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago who began singing in the 1940s as leader of the John “Buddy” Williams Band, and later switched to calypso music in the early 1950s
This is from the 1956 album Jump Up Carnival, recorded by Emory Cook at the Port of Spain Carnival
The liner notes state that this is “perhaps the first spontaneous calypso singing commercial,” and it refers to BWIA West Indies Airways
Sons of the Pioneers - Heavenly Airplane
They were one of the earliest western bands in the US, and they were formed in 1933 by Roy Rogers, Bob Nolan, and Tim Spencer
The band still exists but there have been many changes in membership
This is a gospel song written by John S McConnell in 1925
The Sons of the Pioneers recorded it in 1937
Phil Ochs - Talking Airplane Disaster
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 was released by Vanguard records in 1964
Barry Coope, Jim Boyes, Lester Simpson - Children of Palestine
They were an English vocal folk trio that formed in the early 1990s and performed together for nearly 20 years
They often collaborated with members of the Watersons as the supergroup Blue Murder and with the band Chumbawamba
This is from their final album, CODA, from 2016
Unspecified - Ballada stoczniowca (Ballad from a Shipyard)
From a 1981 album of songs from the New Polish Labour Movement, which began when Lech Wałęsa began the Solidarity trade union movement in 1980
This is a ballad adapted from old Polish storytelling tradition, to the tune of Bob Dylan’s “North Country Blues”
Bonnie Dobson - Special Sense of Kind
Canadian folksinger who joined the folk revival scene in Toronto in the 1960s, and later moved to the UK, where she’s been living since
This is from the 2010 archival album Vive la Canadienne
It’s by Iain Rankin, a Scottish-born musician who grew up in Canada and was involved in the folk revival in both Toronto and Edinburgh
Edmund Henneberry - Saladin’s Crew
This is from a 2022 album of previously unreleased recordings made by the folklorist Helen Creighton in Atlantic Canada between 1943 and 1961, compiled by Dylan Jewers of Big Turnip Records
This recording was made in Eastern Passage, Nova Scotia in June of 1948
The Saladin was a British ship that was taken over by mutineers in April of 1844 as it crossed the Atlantic towards England carrying fertilizer and over 7,000 silver dollars, 13 silver bars, and 90 tons of copper
Sonia Sanchez - last poem i’m gonna write bout us
She’s a writer and professor from Alabama who was a main figure in the Black Arts Movement and has been publishing her work since 1969
This is from her debut album A Sun Lady for All Seasons from 1971
Larry Towell - Song for the Lazy Boy
He’s a photographer, poet, musician, and oral historian from Chatham-Kent, Ontario who’s spent much of his career documenting sites of political conflict around the world
This is off his 1980 album Feathers and Bones
Vuna village group - Ko Lomaloma
From a 2014 album of string band field recordings from Fiji that were made in 1986
This is a popular traditional song that describes the natural beauty of the Lomaloma harbour in the Lau islands
Its ¾ time signature is unusual for the song
Ella Hanshaw - Little Black Book
She was a country and gospel singer from West Virginia who wrote her own songs rather than performing traditional hymns
Her music was never professionally recorded, but her granddaughter recently collaborated with Spinster Records to release her home recordings and church performances on an album called Ella Hanshaw’s Black Book, which comes out tomorrow
Fred Eaglesmith - Yesterday’s News
He’s an Ontario musician who hopped a freight train going west as a teenager and began writing and performing his music
This is off his 1983 album The Boy That Just Went Wrong
Dave Van Ronk - Sportin’ Life Blues
A member of the Greenwich Village folk scene in New York City, known as the “Mayor of MacDougal Street”, MacDougal Street being where practically every coffeehouse was located in the 60s
It’s a song by Brownie McGhee
Dave Van Ronk tells the story of learning this song when he was about fifteen, but feeling that he hadn’t lived enough to play it yet. Every time he tried to play it onstage, he would make a mistake, as if it was a curse for him. When he finally decided he was ready to play it, he went over to the club where Brownie McGhee was working, and played it for him perfectly. He felt that that lifted the curse, but while he was leaving, a thought occurred to him. He asked Brownie how old he was when he wrote the song. Brownie said, “Oh, around fifteen”
Howard Armstrong - Nothing in This Wide World for Me
He was a multi-instrumentalist country blues musician and artist from tennessee who began playing in string bands in the 1920s under the name “Louie Bluie”
This is off the soundtrack to the 1985 documentary Louie Bluie, which is about his life and music
Ken Whiteley - Long Time Travelling
Ken Whiteley is a musician from Toronto who’s been playing folk music since the early 1970s
This is the title track from his 2022 album
This is a Sacred Harp piece from around 1810
It was apparently one of Abraham Lincoln’s favourite songs
Karrnnel Sawitsky, Daniel Koulack - Lullaby
Karrnnel Sawitsky, Daniel Koulack - Sally in the Garden
