Barking Dog: July 9, 2026
Jim Nollman - The 47 Whale Raga
He’s a composer and environmental activist from Massachusetts who began collaborating on music with animals in the 1970s
Nollman founded Interspecies in 1978, which sponsored efforts to communicate with animals through music and art, and through the organization, he undertook a 25-year-long project that aimed to develop sonic relationships with orcas and other sea creatures in a cove in British Columbia
This track is from the forthcoming Smithsonian Folkways album Orcas’ Greatest Hits, featuring hydrophone recordings selected from over 60 hours of interspecies collaboration recorded between 1985 and 2002
Pharis & Jason Romero - Cannonball
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
Lonesome Ace Stringband - Lost John
Contemporary stringband based in Toronto
This one is from their new album, Afield 2, which came out on June 21st
Eugene Rhodes - I Keep Wondering
He was a musician from Kentucky who travelled through the southern states as a one-man-band until he ended up in Indiana State Prison, where he continued to play
Folklorist Bruce Jackson went to the prison to record an album of Rhodes’ music in 1963 called Talkin’ About My Time, which is where this song comes from
He wrote this song in 1962, and used common blues verses for many of the lyrics
Frank Proffitt - Poor Man
Proffitt was an Appalachian banjo player, known for preserving the murder ballad “Tom Dooley”
He worked as a carpenter, tobacco farmer, and in a spark plug factory
His carpentry skills also extended to making instruments—he was a talented luthier and the banjos he played were homemade
It’s unusual to hear Frank Proffitt play something other than a banjo on a recording, but he accompanies himself on dulcimer for this one
Proffitt wrote this himself during a terrible drought in his region of North Carolina in 1932
The drought was followed by a storm, which led the crops of corn, cabbage, and potatoes that had survived to be washed down the valley by the flood
Gail Ceasar - Going Down the Road Feeling Bad
She’s a bluegrass and blues musician from Pittsylvania County, Virginia who grew up in a musical family and began playing guitar when she was 10 years old
This is off her 2023 album Guitar Woman Blues
It’s a traditional song that’s been widely recorded by many well-known artists like Woody Guthrie, Elizabeth Cotten, and Doc Watson
It’s also known as “Lonesome Road Blues”
Druhá Tráva - Goin’ to Acapulco
They’re a Czech bluegrass group that formed in 1991
Czech bluegrass bands began cropping up in the mid-1960s after Pete Seeger toured the region in 1964 and spread traditional American music
This is off their 2004 album Good Morning, Friend
It’s a song by Bob Dylan and the Band, from their 1975 album The Basement Tapes
Old School Freight Train - New Pollution
They were a band from Virginia that played a combination of jazz, bluegrass, Latin, and Celtic music
They recorded several albums for the Pickin’ On album series that turns music from popular artists from various genres into bluegrass tunes
This is from the 2005 album Pickin’ on Beck
Beck released the song on his 1996 album Odelay
Bridget St. John - If You’ve Got Money
She’s an English musician who’s been playing professionally for over 50 years
This is from the 1995 expanded edition of her 1972 album Thank You For…
It’s a live track recorded in Montreux, Switzerland in April of 1972
Bert Jansch - Downunder
Bert Jansch was a founding member of the English folk group Pentangle and a leading member of the English folk revival of the 60s
This is from his album Crimson Moon, from 2000
It’s his own composition
Suzumeno Tears - Hietsuki Bushi
They’re a Tokyo-based traditional folk duo who perform Japanese and Balkan traditional songs
Their name translates to “sparrow’s tears,” which is an expression that means “small amount of money” in Japanese
This is off their debut album, Sparrow’s Arrows Fly so High, from 2024, and it’s a Japanese folk song from Miyazaki Prefecture on Kyushu Island that’s used as a work song for pounding millet into an edible state
The Weather Station - Seemed True
Toronto
Fronted by Tamara Lindeman
This is from their 2014 EP What am I Going to Do with Everything I Know
Magpie - Limited Access
They’re a folk duo from Ohio that formed in 1973 and focuses on topical music
This is off a 1978 live album, recorded at the Dunham Inn Studio in Potomac, Maryland
One half of the duo, Greg Artzner, wrote the song
El Grupo Jatari - Arquitectos
They were a pioneering Ecuadorian folk group that was formed in the early 1970s by brothers Carlos and Patricio Mantilla
Their name means “rise up” in the indigenous Quechua language
This comes from their 1976 album Ecuador: The Cry of Freedom!
They took the tune from Malvina Reynolds’ song “Little Boxes,” though their version is about consumerism and cultural imperialism in Latin American architecture
Will McLean, Paul Champion - Osceola
McLean was a Floridian singer-songwriter called the “Father of Florida Folk”
This was recorded for Volume 4 of the Broadside Ballads record series, released in 1967 by Broadside Magazine, an independent underground publication based in Greenwich Village, NYC that circulated original songs by artists including Bob Dylan, Malvina Reynolds, and Pete Seeger between 1962 and 1988
This song is about the Seminole leader Osceola, who led a group of Seminole warriors during the Second Seminole War in 1836, when the United States government tried to remove the tribe from their lands in Florida to an area along the Mississippi River
He was imprisoned in 1837 when he was deceived into going to Fort Peyton under a flag of truce to participate in peace talks, and died of malaria in custody at a fort in South Carolina
Mustafa al-Kurd - Song Against Imperialism
He was a Palestinian musician, actor, and composer who started writing political songs after the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, and became known as the “Voice of Palestine”
In 1976, the Israeli army arrested al-Kurd during a theatrical performance, and he was interrogated and held in detention without trial for six months before being deported to Jordan and then Lebanon, where he continued his work as a musician and actor
Al-Kurd was able to return to Jerusalem in 1985, where he established the Jerusalem Centre for Arabic Music, and he also undertook several tours, including one throughout the United States and Canada
This is from his 1980 album I Dream of Tomorrow, which he recorded in the Netherlands
Gordon Lightfoot - The Lost Children
This is a demo recorded in the mid-1960s for Warner Brothers
Ferron, Bitch - Army of You
Ferron is a Canadian musician and poet from the same generation as people like Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Cockburn, though she’s less widely known even within Canada
This is off her 2013 album Lighten-ing, and she’s joined by Boston-based musician Bitch
John Sherfey, Elsie Sherfey McNally, Don Sherfey - Precious Memories
This is off a 1982 album of music, sermon, and oral history recorded at an Appalachian Baptist Church in rural Virginia in 1977 and 1978 by the folklorist and ethnomusicologist Jeff Todd Titon
The song is a traditional gospel hymn written by Tennessee composer JBF Wright in 1925
Alex Campbell - Dreadful Memories
He was a Scottish musician, and one of the first folksingers to tour Europe and the UK during the folk revival of the 1960s
Though he was never commercially successful, he’s said to have recorded over 100 records, and he collected his songs from many different sources and believed in recording quickly, in the style of early American bluesmen
This is from his 1971 album This is Alex Campbell, Vol. 2
Both Sarah Ogan Gunning and Aunt Molly Jackson claimed ownership over this song
Gunning claimed to have written it in New York around 1938 and taught it to Molly later on
This song is sung to the same tune as “Precious Memories”
Lisa Null - Only Remembered
Null was a folk musician who performed around the Washington, DC area for more than 40 years, and also pursued graduate studies in history, folklore, and anthropology
This one is from the 1980 album American Primitive, which she recorded with Connecticut musician Bill Shute
Null found this gospel song in Vance Randolph’s collection of Ozark folk songs
She writes that she “responded to its mystical lyricism and all-purpose theology”
Pete Scott - Armageddon
He was a musician from Newcastle upon Tyne in England who began releasing music in the 1970s, and left behind a large catalogue of unreleased music when he died in 2023, which his family has slowly been releasing since then
This is one of those songs, recorded in 1981 and released in March of 2025
Bruce Cockburn - When the Spirit Walks in the Room
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
Archie Fisher - Witch of the West-Mer-Lands
He was a Scottish folksinger, songwriter, and radio host who came from a musical family and began performing professionally in the early 1960s
He’s known for writing songs including “Dark Eyed Molly,” “The Final Trawl,” and this one, which he included on his 1976 album The Man with a Rhyme
Cootie Stark - Someday Baby
He was a Piedmont blues musician from South Carolina who was born with poor eyesight and began busking on the streets of Greenville to earn money, learning from musicians like Josh White, Pink Anderson, and Baby Tate
This song is from his 1999 debut album Sugar Man, and it was first recorded as “Someday Baby Blues” by Sleepy John Estes and Hammie Nixon in 1935
Uncle Sinner - Jack of Diamonds
From Winnipeg
Off his 2008 album Ballads and Mental Breakdowns
Traditional folk song made popular by Blind Lemon Jefferson
Dave Rawlings Machine - How’s About You
Rawlings is a well-known contemporary roots musician from Rhode Island, known particularly for his musical partnership with Gillian Welch
Rawlings formed the Dave Rawlings Machine in the late 2000s, and its members included Welch, Willie Watson of Old Crow Medicine Show, and Brittany Haas of Crooked Still, among others
This is from the 2009 album A Friend of a Friend
Josephine Miles - How I Caught Up on My Reading
She was a poet and literary critic from California who wrote dozens of books and was the first woman tenured in the English department at the University of California, Berkeley
This is from a reading she gave at San Francisco State University in October of 1973
Keiichi Sokabe - Hot Thinking in This Summer
He’s a Japanese musician known as a member of the band Sunny Day Service and as a solo artist
This is off his 2025 album Pineapple Rock
Etulu and Susan Aningmiuq - Ulutama Tutsiaquyaugata (Daily Thanks)
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
Daniel Koulack, Karrnnel Sawitsky - Skene’s Beautiful Waltz
From Winnipeg
Off the 2010 album Fiddle and Banjo
