Barking Dog: June 5, 2025
Spalding Gray - Auctioneer Battle
He was born 84 years ago today
He was a writer, actor, and performance artist from Rhode Island who’s known for his longform monologues including Swimming to Cambodia and Gray’s Anatomy
This clip is from the 1986 film True Stories, directed by David Byrne, in which Gray plays a civic leader in the small Texas town in which the film is set
Bonnie Dobson - Long River
Canadian folksinger who joined the folk revival scene in Toronto in the 1960s, and later moved to the US and performed at coffee houses there before moving back to Canada and finally to the UK, where she’s been living since
This song is by Gordon Lightfoot, and Dobson’s version is from her 1972 self-titled album
A Paul Ortega, Joanne Shenandoah - Sweetheart
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
Shenandoah was a Grammy-winning musician and composer from the Oneida Indian Nation, based in New York, and she performed internationally, including at Carnegie Hall and the Vatican
This is from their 1991 album Loving Ways
Moira Smiley, Seamus Egan, Sam Amidon - Days of War
Egan is an Irish-American musician who’s been playing since the 1970s and began performing with friends under the name Seamus Egan Project in 2018, including with Smiley, a musician and composer from Vermont
Amidon is a contemporary folk artist from Vermont, now based in England
This song was released in 2020, written by Smiley and Egan
Elaine White - The Time Will Come
This is from the 2000 compilation album The Best of Broadside 1962-1988, which presents 89 songs that were published in Broadside magazine, an independent underground publication that circulated original songs by artists including Bob Dylan, Malvina Reynolds, and Pete Seeger between 1962 and 1988
White began submitting songs to the magazine at the age of 20, and performed for many years in New York City before moving to Virginia in the 1980s
This one was published in Broadside in 1966
Leon Rosselson - They Said…
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
Belmont Silvertone Jubilee Singers - In My Dying Room
They were an American vocal group that had one recording session for Decca Records in New York City in 1939
This song is more commonly known as “In My Time of Dying” and it’s a song attributed to Blind Willie Johnson, though parts of it come from older gospel songs
The Be Good Tanyas - In My Time of Dying
They’re a group from Vancouver that’s been performing since 1999
This is from their 2003 album Chinatown
Lucius, Roger Waters - Goodnight, Irene
They’re an indie pop band from New York that formed in 2007 and have collaborated with artists including Jeff Tweedy, Sheryl Crow, John Prine, and Joni Mitchell
Waters is an English musician best known as the bassist for Pink Floyd
This is from Lucius’ 2018 compilation album Nudes
The lead vocalists of the band joined Waters as backing vocalists for his tour that year
The song was written by Black Tin Pan Alley composer Gussie Lord Davis, who was active in the 1890s
It’s best known as Lead Belly’s signature song—he learned it from his uncle Bob
Fred Eaglesmith - Don’t Try to Change My Mind
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
Fraser & DeBolt - We Shall Be Delivered
They were a Canadian folk duo that met at a workshop at the 1968 Mariposa Folk Festival
They were signed to Columbia Records at one point but never experienced commercial success, though their music has gained a cult following in recent decades
This is from the 2016 album This Song Was Borne, a compilation of previously unreleased music from the band’s career
Studs Terkel - Blessed Be the Nation
He was a Pulitzer-winning radio broadcaster, writer, historian, and actor known for his long-running radio show The Studs Terkel Program and for books like "The Good War": An Oral History of World War Two and Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do
This is a poem written by Pete Seeger, and it’s off the 1998 album Where Have All the Flowers Gone: The Songs of Pete Seeger
He first wrote the poem as graffiti on a stone on a small island in Maine that he landed on while canoeing with his daughter in 1964, upon discovering that the beach was littered with bottles and cans
Patti Smith - Libbie’s Song
She’s an American musician, writer, and artist known for her involvement in the 70s New York punk scene
This is off her 2000 album Gung Ho
Scrüj MacDuhk - Things in Life
They were a folk band from Winnipeg who were active in the 1990s
This is from their 1999 album The Road to Canso
It’s a song by the American bluegrass musician Don Stover
Réalta, Myles McCormack - Thing of the Earth
Réalta are a Belfast-based group that play traditional Irish music
McCormack is a multi-instrumentalist from Belfast
This is the title track from Réalta’s 2023 album
Willie Thrasher - Sweet Grass Song
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
Mitchell plays the drum on this song
Sam Chatmon - Sam’s Blues
He 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
From the 2nd album in a series called Living Country Blues USA, which comprise field recordings made of American blues artists in 1980 by two German blues enthusiasts named Axel Kustner and Siegfried Christmann
Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Precious Lord Hold My Hand
She was a musician from Arkansas who was extremely important in the creation of rock and roll and electric blues, because she was one of the first musicians to combine gospel with electric guitar, and often used distortion
The words to this gospel song were written by Reverend Thomas A Dorsey in 1932 after the loss of his wife and infant son during childbirth
This recording was made in 1941 for Decca records
Harry & Jeanie West - Pretty Polly
Harry was from Virginia and Jeanie was from North Carolina
They first met when they both attended the folk festival in Jeanie’s hometown of Asheville, and the following year, the festival director announced their marriage onstage at the Asheville auditorium
Funnily enough, Jeanie’s last name was already West before she married, so she kept her name
This comes from their 1956 album Smoky Mountain Ballads
“Pretty Polly” is a mid-eighteenth-century American murder ballad that’s also popular as a banjo tune
It comes from several older British ballads including “The Gosport Tragedy” and “The Cruel Ship’s Carpenter”
Clara Hawks Tracy - Pretty Polly
This is from the 1956 album Wolf River Songs, a collection of traditional lumberjack songs performed by the Walker family of Wisconsin and recorded by ethnomusicologist and folksong collector Sidney Robertson Cowell
She learned the song from her mother, Mary Walker Wells
It’s more commonly known as “The False-Hearted Knight,” and many different versions of it have been recorded in Europe
The story is similar to the ballad performed by Harry & Jeanie West, but in this version, the heroine is able to escape murder and kill her attacker instead
Congo Cowboys - Pretty Polly
They’re a band that formed in 2016 by three members of the South African band Freshlyground, and they combine traditional American and African music
This is a single from 2020
Abigail Lapell - Count On Me
Songwriter from Toronto
This is one from her new album Anniversary & More Songs About Love, produced by Tony Dekker of Great Lake Swimmers
Garnet Rogers, Stan Rogers, David Woodhead - Down to the Valley to Pray
This was recorded live at the Blue Skies Festival in Central Frontenac, Ontario in June of 1977
Garnet leads the song, with Stan and David providing harmonies
Alexis Utatnaq - Maqaivvigivalauqtavut
He’s an Inuk musician and interpreter from Nunavut who’s performed at concerts throughout the country
The song was included on the Grammy-nominated 2014 compilation album Native North America
It’s in Inuktitut and it asks where the old hunting grounds have gone, stating:
“Canned food is not enough / At our old hunting ground, there is no game”
Peggy Seeger - Nobody Knew She Was There
She’s an American folksinger and member of the Seeger family who’s been living and performing in the UK for over 60 years
This was recorded live in concert in October of 1981
Her husband Ewan MacColl wrote it about his mother, Betsy Miller, who spent her life working as an office- and house-cleaner and doing the housework in her own home
David Francey - Waves
He’s a Juno-winning folksinger based in Elphin, Ontario, who’s been performing for over 25 years
From his 2007 album Right of Passage
Boogie Bill Webb - Maggie Campbell Blues
He was a blues musician from Louisiana who combined Mississippi hill country blues with New Orleans R&B
This is from the 9th volume of Living Country Blues USA
It shares many of its lyrics with the blues standard “See See Rider,” and it also contains floating verses found in several other blues and roots songs
Seamus Ennis - The Wealthy Squire
He was an Irish musician and song collector known especially for his uilleann pipe playing
This is from his 1957 album The Bonny Bunch of Roses, recorded for Tradition Records
It’s a popular song throughout the English-speaking world also known as “The Girl I Left Behind”
Bob Dylan - The Girl I Left Behind
He got the song from Woody Guthrie and recorded this version on Oscar Brand’s radio show in 1961
He later adapted it into the song “Long Time Gone”
John Lee Hooker - Jack O’Diamonds
He was a Mississippi blues musician known for adapting the Delta blues for electric guitar
This recording was made by Gene Deitch at his home in Detroit in 1949
It’s his version of the traditional Texas gambling song made popular by Blind Lemon Jefferson
Daniel Koulack - Train Song
From Manitoba
Off a compilation album of banjo music from 2007 called Old Time Banjo Festival
