Barking Dog: June 25, 2026
Vivat Virtute - 50/50 Funding
Vivat Virtute is the name Winnipeg artists John Samson Fellows and Christine Fellows use to release music and other projects
This is a new song they just released as a jingle for the Manitoba Climate Action Team’s 50/50 Funding campaign, which asks the provincial government to reinstate the transit funding matching program that ended in 2017 under the provincial PC government
The song features youth from West Broadway’s After School Leaders program
Pharis & Jason Romero - I Got Away from Myself
From Horsefly, BC
This is a track from their brand new album album These Are the Days That Turn in to Years, which came out on the 12th
Lonesome Ace Stringband - Trans Canada Highway Blues
Contemporary stringband based in Toronto
This one is from their brand new album, Afield 2, which came out on the 21st
It’s a version of the tune also known as “Hometown Blues,” “Bob’s Special,” and “Lee Highway Blues,” among many other names
They state that they decided to continue the tradition of naming the tune whatever you want
They recorded it on a ridge in Parkfield, California last summer
Paper Wings - Lonesome Freeway Rider
They’re a duo based in Nashville, Tennessee who became friends through music camps and festivals growing up and made their first recordings in 2015
This is off their latest album, Mountains on the Moon, which came out in March
Iron Horse - Interstate 8
They’re a bluegrass group that formed in 2000 in Muscle Shoals, Alabama
They have released several of their own albums, and they were also commissioned by CMH Records to record a series of albums for the Pickin’ On series, which turns music from popular artists from various genres into bluegrass tunes
This is from the 2007 album Pickin’ on Modest Mouse
Modest Mouse included it on their EP of the same name, from 1996
Anne Feeney - Hallelujah, I’m a Bum
She was a folksinger, activist, and attorney from Pennsylvania who began playing in the late 60s
She also cofounded Pittsburgh’s first rape crisis centre, and worked as a lawyer for over a decade while continuing to play music and engage in activism
This is from her 2008 album Dump the Bosses Off Your Back
It’s her version of the American folk song, which was possibly written by a member of the Industrial Workers of the World in the latter half of the 19th century
Uncle Sinner - Poor Pilgrim of Sorrow
Winnipeg
This is from his first album, Ballads and Mental Breakdowns, from 2008
It’s a gospel folk song from the southern Appalachian region
Bruce Upshaw - Someday Baby #1
He was a country blues musician from Alabama who recorded some songs for music historian George Mitchell in Georgia in 1963
The song was first recorded as Someday Baby Blues by Sleepy John Estes and Hammie Nixon in 1935
Lou Marinoff, Sonny Stone - Ride and Roll
This is from the 2017 album Bytes from the Underground: Vintage tracks from Montreal
Marinoff is a musician, table hockey champion, and Professor of Philosophy and Asian Studies at the City College of New York, though he’s originally from Quebec and made this recording at Dawson College in Montreal in 1973 with Sonny Stone, a multi-instrumentalist who later became creative director for an advertising firm
They got the song from Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, who recorded it in 1955
Pete Seeger - L’Internationale
Seeger was a folk singer and an activist from New York who advocated for countless social causes through his music for 75 years
This is a live recording from a singalong he hosted at Sanders Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1980
It’s an internationally popular song that has been a socialist anthem since the late 19th century, when it was written by Eugène Pottier and Pierre De Geyter
Unspecified - Internasyonal
From a 1976 album of songs of the Philippine national democratic struggle, which protests Ferdinand Marcos’ military dictatorship and American imperialism’s role in supporting his regime
The liner notes state that the song “symbolizes the firm determination of the international working class to free the world of all exploitation and to emancipate humankind”
Mighty Sparrow - No, Doctor No
He’s a Trinidadian calypso musician known as the “Calypso King of the World” who began his career in 1949 as a member of a steel band
This is from a collection of recordings made in Trinidad by Emory Cook between the mid-50s and early 1960s
This one is from 1957, and it’s about holding politicians to account—particularly members of the People’s National Movement who held power in Trinidad and Tobago at the time, and who Sparrow largely supported
Kevin Roth - Gnossienne
Singer-songwriter, pianist, and Mountain Dulcimer player--in fact, he’s one of the leading innovators of dulcimer and has released 48 albums, the first of which he released in 1975 when he was 18 years old
This is from his 1981 album The Living and the Breathing Wind: Songs and Tunes for the Dulcimer
It was originally a piano composition written by French composer Erik Satie in the late 19th century
Josh White - Landlord
White was an American musician who started playing music in the late 20s and gained fame as a blues, jazz, and folk musician, as well as a film and Broadway actor
This is a song written by musician, architect, and professor Eugene Raskin
White recorded this version in 1945 for Moses Asch, founder of Folkways Records, though it wasn’t released until 1998 on the Smithsonian Folkways album Free and Equal Blues
Hedi Guella & Hamadi Boulares - Telegram from Prison
This is from a 1977 album of Palestinian, Syrian, and Tunisian poems put to music by Tunisian musicians Hedi Guella and Hamadi Boulares and dedicated to Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani, who was martyred in 1972 by Israeli Mossad agents
The lyrics are a poem by influential Palestinian poet and author Mahmoud Darwish that begins: “From the confines of prison flies the fist of my poems / to strengthen your hands like wind does fire / I am here and beyond the wall my trees / subdue the haughty mountain”
Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger - Lullabye for the Times
A well-known married duo
MacColl was a British folksinger and labour activist, and Seeger is an American folksinger who’s been living and performing in the UK for over 60 years
This is from their 1962 album The New Briton Gazette, Vol. 2, and it was written by MacColl
The liner notes state that in 1961, an organization dedicated to nuclear disarmament began a large-scale civil disobedience campaign that culminated in a group of 100,000 people gathering for a sit-down in Trafalgar Square in defiance of a government ban
Thousands of cops were brought into London to disperse the crowd and arrest protestors, who remained limp and passive as they were carried to police buses
Several of the 800 who were arrested refused to pay their fines, and served several months in jail instead
Si Kahn - Compañera
Kahn is a community organiser and musician from Pennsylvania who moved to the south as an activist during the Civil Rights Movement
This is from his 1997 album Companion, and he dedicates it to his friend, the activist and organizer Cathy Howell
John Beecher - Ensley, Alabama
He was an activist, poet, writer, and journalist who often wrote about the southern United States
His father was a steel executive, and his family expected him to enter the same line of work, but his experiences in the steel mills caused him to become active in labour movement activities
This is from his 1977 album Report to the Stockholders and Other Poems
Autoharp Angie - Everything is Broken
A 2023 autoharp cover of Bob Dylan’s song from his 1989 album Oh Mercy
Bob Dylan - Liverpool Gal
This is a recording made by his friend Tony Glover in Minneapolis, Minnesota in July of 1963
Dylan wrote the song in London, England in December of 1962
Jean Ritchie - The Lonesome Dove
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 and Pete Seeger
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
She learned this song from her father, and it uses floating verses, meaning some of the lyrics are found in other folk songs
Bruce Cockburn - Into the Now
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
The Mellomen with Thurl Ravenscroft - When You and I Were Young, Maggie
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
The song is a popular standard with lyrics originally written as a poem by Hamilton, Ontario school teacher George W Johnson in 1864 and later put to music by James Austin Butterfield
The Wailin’ Jennys - Glory Bound
Winnipeg folk group formed in 2002
This version was recorded live at the Mauch Chunk Opera House in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania in 2008
They first included it on their 2006 album Firecracker
The Kossoy Sisters - Hobo’s Lullaby
Identical twin sisters from New York City who began singing together at age 6 after hearing their mother and aunt sing harmonies in their home
The song is by Goebel Reeves, a folk singer from Texas who recorded throughout the 20s and 30s
They recorded this live in Somerville, Massachusetts in April
Etulu and Susan Aningmiuq - Kutt-Naligimachi (This Land Is Our Land)
They were a married duo from Pangnirtung, Nunavut, who began performing together in the 1970s and continued until Susan’s death in 2001
This is from an album they made for the CBC Northern Service in 1976
It’s likely an Inuktitut version of the song by Woody Guthrie—if anyone listening speaks Inuktitut, I’d be happy to learn more about their version (you can email me at ckuwbarkingdog@gmail.com or contact me here)
Francis Bebey - Akwaaba (Welcome)
He was a Cameroonian musician, musicologist, artist, and writer
This is from his 1984 album African Moonlight
The title translates to “Welcome,” and it’s based on one of the most widespread African rhythms
Galway Kinnell - Vapor Trail Reflected in a Frog Pond (Excerpt)
He was a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet from Rhode Island, and this is from the 1967 album The Original Read-In for Peace in Vietnam, recorded at Town Hall in New York City in February of 1966, which featured 29 artists reading works relevant to the anti-war effort
Grupo de Experimentación Sonora - Reza el Cartel Allí (The Sign Says Here)
From a 1971 album of songs written, arranged, performed, and produced in Cuba by the Experimental Sound Collective of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Arts and Industries
This song is about “the disease of bureaucracy,” and it was written in 1968 by collective member Noel Nicola
He performs every instrument himself on this recording
Wade Walton, RC Smith - Barbershop Rhythm
Walton was a musician, civil rights leader, and renowned barber from Mississippi, known as the Blues Barber because his shop was a centre of music in Clarksdale
Smith was a Piedmont blues musician from Cruger, Mississippi, and he and Walton recorded several tracks for music collectors Paul Oliver and Chris Strachwitz at Walton’s barbershop in the early 1960s
His barbershop was sadly bombed around this time due to his status as a local NAACP leader, though he continued his career and even opened a nightclub at one point
Belmont Silvertone Jubilee Singers - Fire Down Yonder
They were an American vocal group that had one recording session for Decca Records in New York City in 1939
Dyad - Hell and Scissors
