Barking Dog: July 16, 2026
Fiver - Elemental Progression
Solo project of Sackville, New Brunswick-based artist Simone Schmidt
This is a track from their brand new album Cleaning House, which came out on July 10th
Pharis & Jason Romero - Last Night
From Horsefly, BC
This is a track from their new album album These Are the Days That Turn in to Years, which came out last month
Cathy Fink, Marcy Marxer, Chao Tian - Yongjun Yangko
A married duo that has been performing together for over 35 years
Cathy Fink is from Maryland, but began her career in the early 70s, busking and playing folk music in Canadian coffeehouses, and played the very first Folk Fest in 1974
She met Marcy Marxer, originally from Michigan, in Toronto in 1980, and they started writing songs together in 1983
Since then, they have released about 35 albums and received 14 Grammy nominations and 2 Grammy awards
Chao is a Chinese hammered dulcimer player, sound designer, and visual artist who has performed in over 30 countries and has been fostering cultural exchange between the United States and China since 2015
This is from a concert they gave at Club Passim in Cambridge, Massachusetts in February
Frank Harte, Donal Lunny - The Hot Asphalt
Harte was a traditional Irish singer, song collector, and architect who began collecting songs early in his life and had collected over 15,000 songs by the end of his life
Lunny is an Irish folk musician known as a founding member of Planxty
This is from their 2007 album of Irish labour songs called There’s Gangs of Them Digging
It’s a 19th century comic music hall song
Michael Cooney - The Engineer
He’s a folk singer from California who got his start during the 1960s folk revival and later organised and played at folk festivals across the continent, including Winnipeg Folk Fest
This is from his 1968 album The Cheese Stands Alone
The lyrics for this song are a poem by AA Milne, famous for writing the Winnie-the-Pooh books, with music by New Zealand folk singer Des Rainey
Robert Lighthouse - Deep Down in the Mud
He’s a musician originally from Sweden who moved to the United States at the age of 18 and travelled around the country learning about blues music before settling in Washington, DC in 1988
This song comes from his 2007 album of the same name
Big Joe Williams - Goin’ Back Home
A Delta blues musician from Mississippi, best known for the unique sound of his 9 string guitar
He began his recording career in 1934 and remained a prominent artist into the 50s and 60s, when many of his contemporaries were rediscovered during the folk revival
Williams became popular among folk blues fans and even toured Europe and Japan
This is off his 1964 album Back to the Country
The song uses lyrics from several different blues songs, including “Catfish Blues” and “Going Down the Road Feeling Bad”
The Pines - What Good Am I?
They’re a band from Iowa that formed in 2002
This is from the 2011 compilation album A Nod to Bob 2: An Artists’ Tribute to Bob Dylan on His 70th Birthday
Dylan included the song on his 1989 album Oh Mercy
Cara Luft - Sunset Pendulum
From Winnipeg
This is a cover of Willie P Bennett’s song, off her 2011 album Black Water Side and Other Favourites
Vera Johnson - Oh Canada
She was a musician and author from Vancouver who began playing music in 1949, when she was in her late 20s
This is from her 1974 album Bald Eagle, the liner notes of which state: “I think all national anthems are deplorable. Ours is just a little bit worse than most.”
Wizz Jones - American Land
He was an English musician who began performing in the late 1950s and worked with many prominent English folk musicians including John Renbourn and Bert Jansch, and also influenced musicians like Keith Richards, Jimmy Page, and Bruce Springsteen
This is from the 2015 compilation album A Life on the Road: 1964-2014, and it’s a song by Slovakian steelworker Andrew Kovaly, who lived in Pennsylvania and wrote it in 1900 after a friend was run over by a buggy just before his wife and children were due to arrive in the United States
Malvina Reynolds - Are You Walking There for Me
She was a folksinger from California known particularly for writing the song “Little Boxes,” though she wrote and recorded a large catalogue of music during her career
This is off Swedish musician Jan Hammarlund’s 2014 album Uncovered, a collection of previously unreleased songs by Reynolds, most of which are performed by Hammarlund, though we get to hear Reynolds perform this song
This song was first published in the July 20, 1964 issue of Broadside Magazine
She wrote it during Mississippi Freedom Summer, a campaign to register as many African Americans as possible to vote
Local activists and volunteers from northern states came to support the campaign, and the KKK and other hate groups committed a series of violent acts, including murders, beatings, and the destruction of homes, businesses, and churches
Reynolds wrote the song after the beating of a rabbi and two volunteers
Ernest V Stoneman - The Unlucky Road to Washington
Ernest Stoneman was one of the most prominent country musicians during the genre’s first decade, and was raised by his father and three musically inclined cousins, who taught him the instrumental and vocal traditions of Blue Ridge mountain culture
Stoneman recorded this one for Edison Records in 1928, and it’s about President William McKinley’s assassination in 1901
The song was first recorded by Charlie Poole in 1926
Bluegrass Police - White House Blues
They’re a Japanese bluegrass group who are at the forefront of the bluegrass scene in Japan, which has remained strong throughout the last decade
They can often be found performing at Tokyo’s popular Rocky Top bluegrass club
This is off their 2013 self-titled EP
Odetta - Why Oh Why
Born in Birmingham, Alabama
Had operatic vocal training from the age of 13 and studied music at Los Angeles City College
While on tour with the musical Finian’s Rainbow, she fell in with some San Francisco balladeers and began to focus on folk singing
This is from her 1965 live album, Odetta in Japan, and it’s a children’s song by Woody Guthrie, translated live on stage into Japanese
Lamine Cissokho, Manish Pingle - Ta-daa
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
Joseph Spence - The Crow
Joseph Spence was a Bahamian musician known for vocalising and humming while playing guitar
This track was included on the 2021 Smithsonian Folkways album Encore: Unheard Recordings of Bahamian Guitar and Singing
It’s a dance tune associated with a dance of West African origin, and “crow” actually refers to a buzzard
Drink Small - When You Tell One Lie, You Gotta Tell Another
He’s a blues musician from South Carolina who’s known as the Blues Doctor
He began playing music at the age of eight when he was thrown from a mule-drawn wagon and was bedridden for several weeks
In the 1960s he gained a following of university students, and began performing at universities across the Carolinas
This is from his 2008 album Tryin’ to Survive at 75
Uncle Sinner - Rocky Island
From Winnipeg
Off his 2020 album Trouble of This World
It’s a popular old Kentucky square dance tune, probably best known through the Stanley Brothers’ version
The Golden Gate Quartet - Lord, Am I Born to Die?
They are a vocal quartet formed in Virginia by four high school students in 1934
They are still active today, but have obviously undergone multiple changes in membership
This is a standard Sacred Harp hymn written by Charles Wesley and first published in 1788
They recorded it in New York City in November of 1938
Otis Taylor - 12 Feet Under
Taylor is a blues musician from Colorado who left the music industry in the late 70s to become an antique dealer
He started playing professionally again in the mid 90s and has now released 15 albums
This comes from his 2023 album Banjo…
When asked why he didn’t name the song “Six Feet Under,” he said, “Bury me real deep, you know?”
Norman Blake - Waitin’ for the Mail and Social Security
He’s an American musician who’s been playing professionally since the mid 1950s
He toured with Johnny Cash for a decade, played on Bob Dylan’s album Nashville Skyline, and played with the bluegrass group Aero-plain with John Hartford and Vassar Clements
He’s also well-known for the duo he formed with his wife, Nancy, and they’ve been playing together for almost 50 years
This is from their 2017 album Brushwood (Songs and Stories)
Peyton Hopkins - The Teachers’ Strike
He was a pastor, musician, and poet from Oklahoma who recorded two albums of union and labour songs in the 1980s
He later ran a furniture ministry in Florida, driving around and giving furniture to those in need
This is off his 1986 album Let the Teachers Tell the Story
He wrote this song, and put it to a tune written by folksinger Charlie King
Elisa Serna - Con los Dientos
She was a musician from Madrid, Spain who took part in the Spanish protest song movement of the 1970s
This is from her 1974 album Este Tiempo Ha De Acabar (This Time Must End)
It’s a poem by Palestinian poet and politician Tawfiq Ziad, which Serna translated and put to music
The title translates to “With My Teeth” and the poem begins: With my teeth I’ll protect every inch of my homeland / With my teeth
Maria Dunn - Pekiwewin
She’s a Juno-winning musician based in Alberta who’s been performing since the late 1990s
This is from her 2025 album Hardscrabble Hope, and it’s about Pekiwewin, a peace and relief camp for people who were sleeping on the streets, started by a group of Indigenous women in Edmonton during the COVID-19 pandemic
David Francey - Highway
Scottish-born Canadian folksinger who worked as a railyard worker and carpenter for 20 years before pursuing folk music at the age of 45
Off his 2001 album Far End of Summer
The Weather Station - What Am I Going to Do (With Everything I Know)
Toronto
Fronted by Tamara Lindeman
This is from their 2014 EP of the same name
Gaither Carlton - Rambling Hobo
He was an American old-time fiddle and banjo player from North Carolina who often appeared with Doc Watson, who was his son-in-law
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
As he says at the end, it’s a traditional banjo tune he learned as a child
Ola Belle Reed - My Epitaph
She was an American musician from Ashe County, North Carolina
She was born to a musical family, and her uncle Dockery Campbell taught her to play the banjo as a child, while her mother and grandmother taught her songs and ballads
Reed formed the band The New River Boys and Girls with her brother Alex, and they went on to open the New River Ranch music park in Maryland, which hosted a number of well-known artists
This is from her 1973 self-titled album
Captain Luke, Cool John - It’s Just a Matter of Time
Captain Luke was a musician from North Carolina who began singing professionally in King’s Gospel Quintet after catching the attention of Otis King while singing the low parts in his church choir
In the 1970s, he began a long collaboration with Guitar Gabriel, and the two played at bars around Winston-Salem together
Cool John was a blues musician from South Carolina who began playing in the 1970s
Taj Mahal ranks him among the five greatest guitarists in the world
He was also the Director of Creative Development for the Music Maker Relief Foundation
This is from their 2001 album Outsider Lounge Music
The song is by Brook Benton, Clyde Otis, and Belford Hendricks, who wrote it in the late 1950s
Lonesome Ace Stringband - Old-Time Train 45
Contemporary stringband based in Toronto
This one is from their new album, Afield 2, which came out on June 21st
Margaret Avison - Not the Sweet Cicely of Gerardes Herball
