Barking Dog: June 26, 2025
Big Bill Broonzy - Trouble in Mind
He was born 132 years ago today
He was an American blues singer and guitarist, and was one of the leading figures of the emerging folk revival of the 1950s
“Trouble in Mind” was written by jazz pianist Richard M Jones in the vaudeville blues style, and first recorded by Thelma La Vizzo in 1924
This recording was made between 1949 and 1951
Nick Offerman - Shut Your Eyes
He’s 55 years old today
He’s best known as an actor in TV shows and films such as Parks and Recreation, The Last of US, and Audrey the Trainwreck, though he’s also an accomplished author and woodworker
This is a recording from the soundtrack to the 2018 film Hearts Beat Loud, in which Offerman stars as a record store owner who tries to start a band with his daughter
Jason Schwartzman - Seven in the Woods
He turns 45 today
He’s an actor and musician best known for his work in the films of Wes Anderson, as well as films like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Marie Antoinette
This is from For the Birds: The Birdsong Project, a collection of 242 songs and poems about birds by countless artists
The poem is by American poet Jim Harrison
Maddy Prior, June Tabor - The Grey Funnel Line
They’re also known as the Silly Sisters, and they’re an English folk duo that formed in the 1970s
This one is off their 1976 self-titled debut album
The song was written by the English musician Cyril Tawney in 1959 about his experience as a sailor in the Royal Navy
Ruth Moody - Trouble and Woe
She was born in Australia but grew up in Winnipeg, and she’s a member of the Wailin’ Jennys
This song is off her 2013 album These Wilder Things
Laura Dukes - Crawdad
She was a blues singer from Memphis, Tennessee who performed between the 1920s and the 1980s, sometimes as a duo with blues musician Robert Nighthawk or with the Memphis Jug Band
This was recorded in Memphis, Tennessee in January of 1976
It’s a relatively well-known song that developed out of white American play-party traditions and Black American blues songs
Other versions of the song are called “Sweet Thing” or “Sugar Babe”
Bukka White - I’m Getting Ready, My Time Done Come
After serving in the US Navy in the early 1940s, he settled in Tennessee and put his music career on hold, but the musician John Fahey and producer Ed Denson searched for White and found him in 1963, which revived his career
He recorded a new album for Denson and Fahey’s record label, Takoma Records, and Denson became his manager
He continued to play and record until his death in 1977
This was recorded by Italian blues enthusiast Gianni Marcucci at White’s home in Memphis in December of 1972
Alistair Hulett - Geordie
He was a folksinger from Glasgow, Scotland, known as a member of the folk punk band Roaring Jack
This is from his 2001 album In Sleepy Scotland
It’s a 17th-century ballad that’s spread across the English-speaking world, though there are several variants from different regions
The two main variants are the Scottish version, in which Geordie is released, and the English version, in which he is executed
Hulett sings the Scottish version, and relates the story to George Gordon, the Sixth Earl of Huntly, who devoted his life to ousting the Stuart monarchy from the Scottish throne
Haruomi Hosono - When I Paint My Masterpiece
He’s a very influential Japanese artist who has recorded in many genres over his 50 year career
This is from his 2013 album Heavenly Music
The song is by Bob Dylan, who wrote it in 1971
Ellen Stekert, Marge Doherty - Four Strong Winds
Stekert is a folklorist, musician, and scholar from New York (now based in Minnesota) who began her career in Greenwich Village in the 1950s
In the last year or so, she’s been working with the producer Ross Wylde on cleaned up archival recordings, and with writer Christopher Bahn on a website where they share music, writing, and photography from her archives
They also recently gave Barking Dog a very kind shoutout!
This is Stekert’s most recent release, which just came out on June 20th in honour of Pride Month
She writes: “I had never felt as inspired by anyone’s harmonies or musical interaction with my singing as I did with Marge. She was immensely talented and had an innate ability to predict when and where I would start and stop, syncopate, or accelerate. I never analyzed her harmonies, and I don’t think I want to. In many ways, it is like trying to explain why you love someone, and I did love Marge in our singing, although we never had the physical involvement that it seemed she was keenly afraid of.”
You can read her full essay here
The song is by Ian Tyson of the Canadian folk duo Ian & Sylvia, who wrote it in about 20 minutes in his manager’s apartment in New York City in 1962, apparently after hearing Bob Dylan perform “Blowin’ in the Wind” the previous day
The Wakami Wailers - Peter Emberley
They’re a band that formed in 1981 when four employees at Wakami Lake Provincial Park, near Chapleau, Ontario, started playing Canadian folk music together
They have continued playing since then, and have released four albums
This is off their 1985 album The Last of the White Pine Loggers
This is a folk song from New Brunswick that tells the story of a boy from Prince Edward Island who was fatally injured in the Miramichi logging woods when large logs rolled out of a sleigh and fell on him
It’s one of the best-known New Brunswick songs, with lyrics written by Emberley’s friend John Calhoun in 1881, and a traditional Irish tune put to use for it by local singer Abraham Munn
Bob Dylan - Two Soldiers
He recorded this live in Munich in 1991
He says of this song in the liner notes of his 1993 album World Gone Wrong: “Jerry Garcia showed me TWO SOLDIERS (Hazel & Alice do it pretty similar) a battle song extraordinaire, some dragoon officer's epaulettes laying liquid in the mud, physical plunge into Limitationville, war dominated by finance (lending money for interest being a nauseating & revolting thing) love is not collateral. hittin' em where they ain't (in the imperfect state that they're in) America when Mother was the queen of Her heart, before Charlie Chaplin, before the Wild One, before the Children of the Sun -- before the celestial grunge, before the insane world of entertainment exploded in our faces -- before all the ancient & honorable artillery had been taken out of the city, learning to go forward by turning back the clock, stopping the mind from thinking in hours, firing a few random shots at the face of time.”
It’s a traditional American Civil War song
Old Man Luedecke - Caney Fork River
From Chester, NS
From his album My Hands Are On Fire and Other Love Songs
This is a song by Willie P Bennett, who wrote it to stay awake on a 14-hour drive to his next gig
He apparently crossed the Caney Fork River in Tennessee four times on that trip, which inspired the song
Texas Gladden - The Two Brothers
American folk singer born in Virginia in 1894
Known for her recordings with her brother, Hobart Smith
Their performance in 1936 at the White Top Folk Festival impressed Eleanor Roosevelt so much that she invited them to play at the White House, which brought them to the attention of Alan Lomax, an ethnomusicologist and folklorist important to the preservation of North American folk music
This is a recording made by folklorist Alan Lomax in 1941
This is a traditional ballad also known as “The Twa Brothers” and “The Rolling of the Stones”
It may be Scottish in origin, though many versions have been recorded in Appalachia and the Ozarks, including this one
Oscar Brand - The Rolling of the Stones
Brand was a Winnipeg-born American folk musician and author who also hosted a weekly folk music show on WNYC Radio in New York City for 70 years, the longest running radio show with a single host in broadcasting history
This is from the 1959 album A Folk Concert in Town Hall, New York, featuring Brand, Jean Ritchie, and David Sear
Taj Mahal - Railroad Bill
Taj Mahal is a Grammy-winning blues musician from New York City whose career has spanned over 50 years
This is off his 1973 album Oooh So Good ’N Blues
This is an instrumental version of the song, which is about Morris Slater, a former circus hand and turpentine worker who turned to a life of crime due to the terrible conditions in which turpentine workers lived
Slater became Railroad Bill, an African American outlaw who broke into and stole from railroad cars
He’s now remembered through folklore and folk song
Geoffrey Ursell, Number One Hard - Empty Stations
This is from the 1979 play Number One Hard, an investigative documentary play about the grain industry, created collaboratively by the Globe Theatre in Regina
The song was written by Geoffrey Ursell, a writer and musician from Saskatchewan known particularly for writing plays like The Running of the Deer and Saskatoon Pie, and for co-founding the literary press Coteau Books, which published authors from across Canada
It’s sung by Elizabeth Moulton
Bonnie Dobson - Farewell to Nova Scotia
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
The song was adapted from the Scottish song “The Soldier’s Adieu,” written by Robert Tannahill
Willie Thrasher - Our Days Will Never Pass
Inuit musician from Aklavik, NWT
He was born into the traditional Inuit hunting culture, but he was taken from his family and placed into residential school from the age of five until he was 16
After playing in several rock bands in his youth, Thrasher was approached by an elderly man at a show he played in the 70s, who asked him why he wasn’t playing music that reflected his culture
From there, he began to study Inuit music and turned to personal songwriting, joining other artists like Morley Loon and Willy Mitchell, who explored their Indigenous heritage in song and advocated for Indigenous rights
Several of his songs were included on the 2014 compilation album Native North America, which resulted in more publicity for Thrasher, and provided more touring opportunities for him
This is from the 1980 album Sweet Grass Music, recorded live at the Sweet Grass Festival, founded by Willy Mitchell and Janine Poirier Macdonald
Morley Loon plays lead guitar on this song, with Mitchell on drum
Joan Baez - There But For Fortune
Baez is one of the best known musicians to come out of the 1960s folk revival
She performed for over 60 years and released over 30 albums before semi-retiring in 2019
This is from a compilation album of live performances from the Bread and Roses Festival of Acoustic Music in Berkeley, California, which was founded by Baez’s sister, Mimi Fariña
Phil Ochs wrote this song in 1963
Frankie Armstrong, Leon Rosselson - I Don’t Want Your Red Roses
Rosselson is a musician and children’s book writer from England who first became widely known in the 1960s by performing his satirical songs on the BBC show That Was the Week That Was
This is from his 2005 album Turning Silence Into Song, a collection of songs written between 1963 and 2004
Ligue communiste (marxiste-léniniste) du Canada - Le front des travailleurs
This is from the 1973 album Forge Our Party, released by the Canadian Communist League
The song was written by Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler, and the title translates to “Song of the United Front”
Burton Cummings - With God On Our Side
This is from his 1990 album Plus Signs
Bob Dylan wrote the song in 1963
Roy Bailey - Palestine
Bailey was an English sociologist and musician, known as a member of the group Three City Four
This is from his 2009 album Below the Radar
The song is by American songwriter Jim Page
Baidamudamu village group - Ni Rogoca Mada Na Noqu I Talanoa
From a 2014 album of string band field recordings from Fiji that were made in 1986
It’s a song about playing soccer, composed by Maikali Qalomaiwasa in 1955
The Carter Family - Chewing Gum
Very influential American country and folk singing family from Virginia
This song was written by AP Carter and recorded in 1928 by Victor Records
Edmund Henneberry - Mary L MacKay
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 is a recording made in Eastern Passage, Nova Scotia in June of 1948
It’s an excerpt of an important local song, with the lyrics taken from a poem published by Frederick William Wallace in Canadian Fisherman in 1914, and the melody written by Edmund Henneberry
Sleepy John Estes - President Kennedy
Estes was an American blues musician from Tennessee
Gianni Marcucci recorded this one at Estes’ home in Brownsville, Tennessee in December of 1972
Bryan Bowers - Crossing the Water
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 a song by American folksinger Bill Staines
James “Son” Thomas - European Country Blues
He was a Delta blues musician from Mississippi, and he was also a gravedigger and sculptor
Thomas became better known after William Ferris included him in the films he made for the Center for Southern Folklore in the 1970s
He’s also known for making sculptures from the clay he dug up on the banks of the Yazoo River, many of which were skulls that contained real human teeth, reflecting his philosophy that "we all end up in the clay"
This recording was made by Gianni Marcucci at Thomas’s home in Leland, Mississippi, in August of 1978
Ken Whiteley - Shenandoah
Ken Whiteley is a musician from Toronto who’s been playing folk music since the early 1970s
This is from his 2022 album Long Time Travelling
Traditional American folk song and sea shanty, traced back to the early 19th century
Likely came from American and Canadian voyageurs who travelled down the Missouri River, though it’s unclear whether it originated in French or English
“Shenandoah” refers to Skenendoah, an Oneida chief
Chris Coole - The Tumbling River
He’s a musician from Toronto who’s currently a member of the Lonesome Ace Stringband, though he’s played with the Foggy Hogtown Boys, Sylvia Tyson, and David Francey
This is from his 2017 album of the same name
Kyle Creed - Ducks on the Millpond
Creed was a banjo luthier and influential 20th century Appalachian musician from Round Peak, North Carolina
He popularized Round Peak style old-time music along with Fred Cockerham and Tommy Jarrell
This is from the 1965 County Records album Clawhammer Banjo
