Barking Dog: June 29, 2023
This Week’s Theme: Past Winnipeg Folk Festival Performers
This week, with Folk Fest on the horizon, we thought we’d play a selection of recordings from artists who have performed at the Winnipeg Folk Festival since its beginning in 1974. The first few sets of songs we’ll hear are from artists who are performing at this year’s festival, which begins next week.
Genticorum - Sheepskin and Beeswax
They’re a traditional Quebecois trio from Montreal who have been playing together since 2000
They’ve performed at Folk Fest three times since 2004
This song is off their 2020 album Décembre
Emmylou Harris - Bright Morning Stars
American musician and songwriter who has won 14 Grammys and been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, among other honours
She’ll be back at Folk Fest this year for a second time—her first time was in 2005
This is from the 2007 album Songbird: Rare Tracks & Forgotten Gems
The song is likely from Kentucky, and it was not widely known before Ruth Crawford Seeger included it in her 1953 book American Folk Songs for Christmas—it later entered into the common repertoire when folk musician Robin Christenson found it in the book and arranged it to be performed at the 1968 Fox Hollow Festival
Kacy & Clayton - Pretty Saro
A duo from Wood Mountain, SK
They performed at Folk Fest in 2014 and 2018, and they’ll be back again this year
English folk ballad from the early 1700s
One of several folk songs that died out in England but was rediscovered in the Appalachian region in the early 20th century, preserved through the strong oral tradition of that area
Gregory Alan Isakov - One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
He’s a Grammy-nominated musician from Pennsylvania, and he’ll be playing his second Winnipeg Folk Fest this year—the first time was in 2010
This cover of Leonard Cohen’s song “One of Us Cannot Be Wrong” is from his 2009 album This Empty Northern Hemisphere, and Brandi Carlile sings backing vocals on it
Fleet Foxes - Silver Dagger
Contemporary band from Seattle, Washington, and they’re playing Folk Fest for the very first time this year
“Silver Dagger” is an American ballad, widespread in North Carolina and Virginia
Variants of the song include “Katie Dear,” “Molly Dear,” and “Awake, Awake, Ye Drowsy Sleepers”
Fleet Foxes released their version in 2021
Myriam Gendron - Poor Girl Blues
She’s a musician from Montreal, and this year she’s playing Folk Fest for the first time
This is off her 2021 album Ma Délire - Songs of Love, Lost & Found
Nora Brown - Southern Texas
She’s a 17 year-old banjoist and singer who carries on the old-time tradition
She’s found mentors in many folk masters, including the master banjo player Lee Sexton of Kentucky, the female bluegrass pioneer Alice Gerrard, and founder of the New Lost City Ramblers John Cohen
This is from her album Long Time To Be Gone, which came out last year
She’s never played Folk Fest before—this is her first time
She learned the song from master banjo player George Gibson
Charley Crockett - Short Life of Trouble
He’s a musician from Texas who’s been playing since the early 2000s, and got his start as a performer travelling around the United States and playing on street corners
He’s never played Folk Fest before, though—he’s playing this year for the first time
A traditional American song, which it’s hard to find anything about from before its first recording by Dick Burnett and Leonard Rutherford in 1926
Crockett included it on his 2020 album Field Recordings, Vol. 1
Dirk Powell - Waterbound
He’s a Grammy-award-winning musician from Ohio who’s considered one of the leading experts on traditional Appalachian fiddle and banjo styles
From his 2004 album Time Again
He’ll be at Folk Fest this year for the first time since 2011, which was his first time at the festival
This is a play-party song likely from Grayson County, Virginia, and it was a favourite of fiddlers and banjo players from that area
Cat Clyde, Jeremie Albino - Pastures of Plenty
Clyde is from Stratford, Ontario and Albino is from Toronto
This is from their 2021 album Blue Blue Blue
Neither of them have played Folk Fest before, but Clyde will be at this year’s festival
Woody Guthrie wrote the song in 1941
The tune is based on the ballad “Pretty Polly”
Enoch Kent - The 1913 Massacre
A Scottish-born, Canada-based folksinger who began playing professionally in the 1950s
He’s performed at Folk Fest three times, in 1974, 1976, and 2009
That one is from his 2010 album Take a Trip With Me
It was written by Woody Guthrie, who wrote it in the mid 1940s about the Italian Hall Disaster, a tragedy that took place in Michigan on Christmas Eve, 1913, when striking copper miners and their families rushed to escape a Christmas party when somebody yelled “Fire,” even though there wasn’t one
Utah Phillips - Union Burying Ground
He was an anarchist folksinger, storyteller, and labour organiser from Ohio who also rode the rails throughout the United States and worked as an archivist, a dishwasher, and a warehouse-man at various points in his life
He played Folk Fest NINE times between 1976 and 2004
Recorded live in British Columbia in February 1981
As Phillips notes, the song was written by Woody Guthrie
Faith Petric - Grandma’s Battle Cry
She was a folksinger and activist originally from Idaho who was the head of the San Francisco Folk Music Club for 50 years
Petric was involved in activism for her entire life, participating in the Selma to Montgomery civil rights marches of 1965, sitting on anti-fascism committees, and assisting Spanish Civil War refugees
She died in 2013 at the age of 98
Petric performed at Folk Fest once, in 1983
This is from a 1985 issue of Fast Folk Musical Magazine, a cooperative that was dedicated to reinvigorating the New York folk scene, and released over 100 albums between 1982 and 1998
The issue this one is from is dedicated to female folksingers
Petric was 72 when she recorded it
Leon Redbone - Don’t Let It Bother You
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
It’s been suggested that he was an alternative identity for someone like Frank Zappa or Andy Kaufman due to his reluctance to discuss his past, and he was often described as both a musician and a performance artist
He played the very first Folk Fest in 1974, and returned four more times, the last in 2013
This is a Fats Waller song, first recorded in 1934
John Jackson - Railroad Bill
He was a piedmont blues musician from Virginia who had given up playing music in his community by the time folklorist Chuck Perdue found him in 1949
Arhoolie Records released his first recordings in the early 60s, and he toured Europe, played folk festivals, including Winnipeg Folk Fest in 1977, and recorded for a few other record companies during that time
The song is about Morris Slater, a former circus hand and turpentine worker who lived a life of danger and became Railroad Bill, an African American outlaw remembered through folklore and folk song
Rosalie Sorrels - Goodbye, Joe Hill
She started out as a folksinger and collector of folk songs, and left her husband in the 1960s to travel across America with her five children, establishing herself as a performer and making connections with other folk musicians, writers, and artists
She died in June 2017 but is remembered for her storytelling abilities
Sorrels performed at the Winnipeg Folk Festival once, in 1978
That one’s from her 1967 album If I Could Be the Rain
It’s by folksinger and labour activist Utah Phillips, who we heard earlier
The liner notes explain that the song is about Ammon Hennacy of Salt Lake City, who provided a warm place with a blanket and a meal for floaters and drifters who passed through town
He called it the Joe Hill Friendship House, and the only requirements for staying there were that you left your liquor outside and that you listened to Ammon tell you about Anarchy
The city would sometimes close the place due to either Ammon’s politics or a health code violation or both, and Phillips wrote the song about Ammon and his friends after one such closing took place
Cara Luft - The Ploughboy and the Cockney
She’s from Winnipeg, and she’s played Winnipeg Folk Fest four times between 2001 and 2014
From her 2012 album Darlingford
Can be traced back to a 1670s broadside ballad called “The Courageous Plow-Man”
Hedy West - Drowsy Sleeper
She was a folk singer from Georgia, known particularly for writing the song “500 Miles,” who was heavily influenced by her upbringing in a creative, politically active family
West performed at Folk Fest in 1976 and ‘77
American folk ballad, likely with origins in Britain
Variants of the song include “Katie Dear,” “Molly Dear,” and “Silver Dagger”
She included her version on her 1963 self-titled album, and learned the song from Vergie West of Alabama
Alan Mills - Darby Ram
Canadian folk singer, writer, and actor from Lachine, Quebec
Known for popularizing Canadian folk music, and for writing “I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly”
Made a member of the Order of Canada in 1974 for his contributions to Canadian folklore
1974 was also the year of the very first Winnipeg Folk Festival, which Mills performed at
English tall tale folk song about an enormous ram and the troubles in pursuing, catching, and butchering it
It was transcribed by Llewellyn Jewitt in 1867, though it’s likely from at least a century before then
Old Man Luedecke - Yodelady
From Chester, NS
This is from his 2015 album Domestic Eccentric, which he recorded inside a cabin he built in his backyard
The last time he played Folk Fest was in 2017
Art Rosenbaum - Po’ Boy
He was a Grammy-award-winning musician and folklorist, and an art professor at the University of Georgia
He played Folk Fest in 1990
This is off the 1985 compilation album The Young Fogies
Precious Bryant - Morning Train
She was an American musician described as one of Georgia’s great blueswomen
She was first recorded by George Mitchell in 1967, and by the mid 1980s her fanbase had grown enough for her to perform internationally
She played the Winnipeg Folk Festival once, in 1990
From her 2005 album The Truth
This seems to be a traditional African American spiritual, likely composed by an enslaved person and passed on through the oral tradition
Si Kahn - They All Sang “Bread and Roses”
Kahn is a community organiser and musician from Pennsylvania who moved to the south as an activist during the Civil Rights Movement
He performed at Folk Fest 7 times between 1980 and 1998
This is from his 1991 album I Have Seen Freedom
The song references a number of folk songs popular during the 60s folk revival
Dyad - Bill Banks
From Victoria, BC
They’ve played Folk Fest once, in 2007
This is a rare ballad about the first and last legal hanging that took place in Ashe County, North Carolina on August 22, 1907
It seems like a relatively well-known story in that region of NC, though the only other version of the song that I could find was done by Doc Watson and family
Fred Eaglesmith - The Building
He’s an Ontario musician who hopped a freight train going west as a teenager and began writing and performing his music
He’s playing Folk Fest three times between 1986 and 2006, twice with his band The Flying Squirrels
From his 2003 album Balin
Sam Chatmon - That’s All Right
Was a delta blues guitarist and singer
He was part of a well-known Mississippi musical family that started the Mississippi Sheiks, which first consisted of Chatmon, his brothers Lonnie and Bo Carter, and Walter Vinson
Chatmon played Folk Fest twice in the 70s
“That’s All Right” is a traditional gospel song that’s likely a simplification of an older spiritual
Recorded in Hollandale, Mississippi in 1976 by Gianni Marcucci, who travelled from Italy to the United States five times during the 70s and 80s to document blues music in the country
A Paul Ortega - Traveling Song
This is from an album of traditional Native American music from New Mexico, released in 1992
Ortega was an influential Apache musician who began as a tribal singer at the age of five
He moved to Chicago in the early 1960s and began to adapt blues guitar to Apache social songs
He performed at the Winnipeg Folk Festival once, in 1978
This is a protective song for travellers
Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton - Painting the Clouds with Sunshine
Young artist from Los Angeles who’s played Folk Fest twice, in 2015 and 2019
Influenced by pre-WWII blues and jazz music
This is a popular song, written in 1929 for the musical Gold Diggers of Broadway, a partially lost film
The scene that contains the song is one of the few scenes that survived
Dave Van Ronk - Hang Me, Oh Hang Me
A member of the Greenwich Village folk scene in New York City, where he was known as the “Mayor of MacDougal Street,” MacDougal Street being where practically every coffeehouse in New York was located in the 1960s
He played Folk Fest three times between 1978 and 1990
Little is known about this song, aside from the fact that it’s an American song first collected in 1917
It’s known by many names, including “Hobo’s Blues” and “I’ve Been All Around This World”
Van Ronk included it on his 1964 album Inside Dave Van Ronk
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott - East Texas Talking Blues
He ran away from home at the age of 15 to join Col. Jim Eskew’s Rodeo, rather than become a surgeon as his father intended
He was only with them for 3 months before his parents found him and dragged him home, but his first exposure to a singing cowboy left him rapt, and at home he taught himself guitar and began busking for a living
Elliott’s played Folk Fest 5 times between 1975 and 2005
This is from his 1958 album Jack Takes the Floor
Willie Dunn - Down by the Stream (Starlight Maiden)
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal who played Folk Fest once, in 2006
From the 2021 compilation album Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies
Big Dave McLean - Rollin’ and Tumblin’
A blues musician from Winnipeg who’s been playing for over 50 years
McLean has played Folk Fest the most times eight times between 1975 and 2009
From his 1998 album For the Blues–Always!
A version of “Roll and Tumble Blues,” first recorded by Hambone Willie Newbern in 1929
Stan Rogers - The Mary Ellen Carter
Born and raised in Ontario, but known for his maritime-influenced music that was informed by his time spent visiting family in Nova Scotia during his childhood
He played Folk Fest five times between 1975 and 1982
This song is from his 1979 album Between the Breaks... Live!
The song has been sung to close every Winnipeg Folk Fest since Stan’s death in 1983, so we’re going to close today’s show with it as well
Jean Carignan - Bonny Kate
