Barking Dog: August 13, 2026
Ellen Stekert, Milt Okun - The Brazos River
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 couple of years, she’s been working with the producer Ross Wylde on cleaning up archival recordings, and with writer Christopher Bahn on a website where they share music, writing, and photography from her archives
This is her latest release
She’s accompanied on vocals by Okun, who was a record producer, conductor, and singer from New York who founded Cherry Lane Music Publishing Company and produced for well known artists including Peter, Paul and Mary, Miriam Makeba, and John Denver
This is a recording from the 1957 album Traditional American Love Songs
The song was first collected by Vance Randolph in 1942 from Irene Carlisle of Fayetteville, Arkansas, who learned it from a man from Texas who had boarded with her while he was cutting timber in the Ozarks
Cara Luft - Lagan Love
Winnipeg
This is from her new album My Heart Will Always Be, which came out at the end of July
It’s a traditional Irish folk song, first collected in 1903
Irish poet Joseph Campbell is credited with the English lyrics
Uncle Sinner - Chilly Winds
Winnipeg
This is his latest demo
The song is related to “Going Down the Road Feelin’ Bad,” with both categorised as versions of “Lonesome Road Blues”
All these songs come from a traditional Ozark fiddle tune
His version is mainly inspired by Dan Gellert’s version, as well as John Snipes’ “Going Where I Never Been Before”
Bud White - White Horses
He was a blues musician from Georgia who learned his music from other musicians who travelled through his region, and music historian George Mitchell recorded some of his music in February of 1969
This song uses verses from several other blues songs, including “St. James Infirmary Blues”
Eagle Jubilee Four - No More Weeping and Wailing
They were a gospel group that recorded for ARC records in South Carolina in 1938
Traditional gospel song often known as “Soon I Will Be Done” or “Trouble of This World”
Ella Hanshaw - When the Time is Right
She was a country and gospel singer from West Virginia who wrote her own songs rather than performing traditional hymns
Her music was never professionally recorded, but her granddaughter recently collaborated with Spinster Records to release her home recordings and church performances on an album called Ella Hanshaw’s Black Book, which came out last year
That’s where this one comes from
Mick Moloney - Invisible Man
He’s an Irish musician and folklorist
In 1999, he received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for his work in public folklore, which is the highest honour in the folk and traditional arts
This is from his 1973 album We Have Met Together
It’s a song by Leon Rosselson
Bob Wiseman - For Joseph K
He’s a founding member of Blue Rodeo, as well as a solo artist, author, and film composer
This is from his 1993 album City of Wood
Tamer Abu Ghazaleh - Mir’ah (Mirror)
He’s a Palestinian musician, and this is from his 2008 album of the same name
The lyrics are a poem by Palestinian poet and writer Hussein Barghouthi
Hazel Dickens - Fire in the Hole
She was a musician from West Virginia who was born into a mining family and later moved to Baltimore, Maryland with her family, where she met members of the Seeger family and became active in the folk scene there, forming a collaborative relationship with musician Alice Gerrard
This comes from the soundtrack to the 1987 film Matewan, which is about coal miners attempting to unionize in 1920s West Virginia
This song is by the film’s director John Sayles and the composer, Mason Daring
Bill Phillips - Hear the Mountains Cry
He was a country musician from North Carolina who moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 1957 and later appeared on the Grand Ole Opry
This is a track from his 2007 album of the same name
Sky Lambourne, Sasha Fergusson - Who Hath Woe
They’re both musicians based in Lillooet, BC, and this is off Lambourne’s 2020 album Singing with Sasha
It’s his own song
Phu Thao Tène, Thao Seng, Thao Bunkeud - Pheng phi fa
From a 1973 album of Laotian music compiled by Jacques Brunet, a musicologist who studies the music of Southeast Asia and Indonesia
We hear the khène on this recording, a 2 1/2 foot long mouth organ made from seven or eight pairs of bamboo pipes that sounds similar to a violin
The liner notes state that the title can’t be translated because it “consists of words that have been handed down traditionally, the meaning of which is now forgotten”
Luigi Lai - Deus ti salvet, Maria
He’s an Italian musician who began playing the launeddas as a child, which are a traditional Sardinian instrument composed of three pipes that produce a polyphonic sound
This is from his 1997 album Canne in armonia, which translates to “Reeds in Harmony”
It’s a Sardinian devotional song, written by 18th century poet Bonaventura Licheri
Willie Clancy - The Trip Over the Mountain
Clancy was an uilleann pipe, flute, and whistle player from County Clare, Ireland
This is from the 2009 compilation album The Gold Ring, a collection of recordings made between 1947 and 1972
It’s a traditional Irish tune popular among musicians in the Northern Burren area of County Clare
Bob Dylan - Tombstone Blues
This is a track from his 2023 album Shadow Kingdom, a collection of new recordings of thirteen songs from the first half of his career
He originally released the song on his 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited
Iron Horse - Come As You Are
They’re a bluegrass group that formed in 2000 in Muscle Shoals, Alabama
They have released several of their own albums, and they were also commissioned by CMH Records to record a series of albums for the Pickin’ On series, which turns music from popular artists from various genres into bluegrass tunes
This is from the 2017 album Pickin’ On Nirvana
Nirvana released the song on their 1991 album Nevermind
Stanley Triggs - Bury Me Beneath the Willow
He was originally from Nelson, BC, and worked throughout the province in different industries, including in forestry, on survey crews, and on railroad gangs, and he collected songs and stories from his colleagues as he worked
He was also a freelance photographer and earned a living playing in coffee houses in the 1960s
This is from an album of recordings he made on a house boat on False Creek in Vancouver in 1964
It’s a traditional American folk song that was first collected in Missouri in 1906, and first recorded by Henry Whitter in 1923
Angel Parra - Miguel Enriquez
He was a Chilean singer and songwriter, and the son of Violeta Parra, a composer, musician, folklorist, and artist
He often travelled internationally, helping to preserve the Nueva Canción tradition in Chilean communities around the world
This is from the 1975 album Chile: Songs for the Resistance
Miguel Enriquez was a Chilean physician, and a founder of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left who was killed by Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s secret police in October of 1974 at the age of 30
The song ends: “I want to write a letter / that will say in letters of gold / Miguel Enriquez has not died / he gave his life to Chile”
Neil Young - Helpless
This is a live recording made at The Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut in 1971The song was first recorded by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young for their 1970 album Deja Vu
Adam Hurt - Jack Wilson
He’s a contemporary American banjo player who moved to the southern US 20 years ago and has placed in or won most of the major old-time banjo competitions since moving there
He also has an interest in gourd banjos, and this one is off his 2010 album Earth Tones
It’s a tune by Kentucky fiddle player John Salyer
Odetta - One Man’s Hand
She was born in Birmingham, Alabama and 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 she sings the song in Japanese
The words are by Alex Comfort, with music by Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger - The Last Time I Heard Woody Sing
Seeger was a folk singer and an activist from New York who advocated for countless social causes through his music for 75 years
This is from his 2012 album Pete Remembers Woody
Colter Wall - Do Re Mi
From Swift Current, SK
This is off the 2021 album Home In This World: Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads
The song was included on Guthrie’s first album, Dust Bowl Ballads, in 1940
Ernest Stoneman - All I Got’s Gone
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
Uncle Dave Macon wrote this song, and his 1924 recording of it was one of his first hits
Stoneman covered it as one of his earliest recordings, though this recording was made in 1961
Cannon’s Jug Stompers - Viola Lee Blues
The band was led by Gustavus “Gus” Cannon, and was known for helping to popularise jug bands
This song was written by Noah Lewis, a country blues and jug band musician from Tennessee, known mainly for playing the harmonica
He could even play two harmonicas at once, one with his mouth and the other with his nose
He plays harmonica on this recording with the Jug Stompers, made in 1928, though he also recorded a version with his own band
Hammie Nixon - Viola Lee Blues
Nixon was a Tennessee harmonica player and singer known for his partnership with Sleepy John Estes, which lasted from the 1930s until the 1970s when Estes died
This recording is from the mid 1970s
Gabriel Brown - Talking in Sebastopol
He was a Piedmont blues musician from Florida who was recorded by folklorists Zora Neale Hurston and Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1935
That same year, he moved to New York City and joined the Federal Arts Theatre under the direction of Orson Welles
This recording was made in June 1935
Lonesome Ace Stringband - Jeff Davis
Mendelson Joe - Oh Travene
