Barking Dog: August 21, 2025
Kacey Musgraves - gracias a la vida
She turns 37 today
She’s a musician from Texas who’s been performing since she was a child
This is from her 2021 album star-crossed, and it’s a song by influential Chilean musician and songwriter Violeta Parra
The Silver Sardines - The Vulture
They’re an alt-folk band from Montreal, and this is from their forthcoming EP Little Man, What Now?, which was written on a journey through western Europe in early 2024
They say that the song is “about living out a comfortable everyday life: work, friends and love in the face of other peoples’ pain and persecution, and about the allure of helplessness.”
Willi Carlisle - Beeswing
He’s a musician from Kansas, now based in Arkansas, who was raised in a musical family and he’s been performing professionally for nearly a decade
This is from his album Winged Victory, which came out in June
Mississippi Joe Callicott - Going Away Blues
He was a Delta blues musician from Mississippi
This was recorded in July of 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee, with Bill Barth playing backup guitar and Booker White whistling
Nightingale - J’entends le moulin (I Hear the Mill)
This is off the 1999 Smithsonian-Folkways album Mademoiselle, Voulez-Vous Danser?: Franco-American Music from the New England Borderlands
It’s a collection of songs from French-Canadians who immigrated to the northern States and became Franco-Americans
Nightingale were a Vermont-based band
None of the musicians were from a French background, but they played music from Quebec, Newfoundland, Ireland, France, and Scandinavia
This is a French folksong that’s known as “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain” and “Red River Valley” in English-speaking regions
Ali Farka Touré - Radio Mali
Touré was an internationally known Malian musician who blended traditional Malian music with North American blues
He collaborated with many musicians, including Boubacar Traoré, Ry Cooder, and Taj Mahal
This is from the 1996 compilation album Radio Mali
The tracks were originally recorded for broadcast on Radio Mali throughout the 1970s
The song is dedicated to Radio Mali’s policy of broadcasting in rural areas of the country, and it likens the station to an old man with a grey beard who tells children stories
Joan O’Bryant - The Stern Old Bachelor
She was a folksinger and folklorist from Kansas who taught folklore and English at the University of Wichita
This is off her 1958 album American Ballads and Folksongs
This is a traditional folk song found on both sides of the Atlantic in different forms
O’Bryant learned this rarer version of the song from Arlene Sherman of Fayetteville, Arkansas
Fiddlin’ John Carson - The Cat Came Back
He was a fiddle player and singer from Georgia who was one of the early performers of country music and the first rural fiddler to be recorded
This song was written by Harry S Miller in 1893, and has since become a folk and children’s song
This recording of the song was made in April of 1924 for OKeh Records
Bill Ballantyne - Pa Ti Ma (Later)
He’s a Cree elder, musician, and author from Saskatchewan, now based in Manitoba
This is from his second album, Encore, which seems to be from the 1980s
John Greenway - Old Man Atom
He was an American folklorist who specialised in social protest songs
Greenway recorded an album called Talking Blues in 1958 on the Folkways label, which includes 15 covers of songs by different artists
This is one of those songs, and it was written in 1946 by Vern Partlow, an American reporter and folksinger
Unlike many protest songs at the time, this one became well-known through the many recordings made of it, rather than through word of mouth
Greenway learned his version from Sam Hinton
Gordon Lightfoot - Pride Of Man
Written by Hamilton Camp in 1964, released by Lightfoot on his album Lightfoot! from 1966
Richie Havens - What About Me?
He was a musician from New York City who got his start as a kid singing doo-wop with his neighbourhood friends, and later moved to Greenwich Village to join the folk scene
He later signed with Bob Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman, and was the opening act at Woodstock in 1969
This is from a compilation album of live performances from the Bread and Roses Festival of Acoustic Music in Berkeley, California, which was founded by Mimi Fariña
The song is by Jesse Oris Farrow, also known as Chester Powers of Quicksilver Messenger Service
Alphabetical Four - I Just Can’t Help From Crying Sometimes
NYC Jubilee gospel quartet that recorded between 1938 and 1943
This is a traditional gospel song, and this version was made in New York City in November of 1943
Sacred Harp Singers - Antioch
Sacred Harp is a type of traditional sacred choral music that originated in New England, and uses shape notes, a kind of musical notation that was designed to more easily facilitate congregational singing
This was recorded on a portable tape recorder by Marie Ivey at her home on Sand Mountain in Alabama on New Year’s Eve in 1972
The hymn is by English minister and hymn-writer Samuel Medley, who wrote it in 1775
Ye Vagabonds - The Lowlands of Holland
They’re an Irish folk duo made up of brothers Diarmuid and Brían Mac Gloinn
This is from a 2018 compilation of live recordings from the 2018 Celtic Colours music festival
It’s a Scottish folk song narrated by a young woman whose husband has been press-ganged into the English army to fight against the Dutch, indicating that it likely originated in the 17th century during the Anglo-Dutch Wars
Paul Clayton, The Foc’sle Singers - Haul on the Bowline
From the 1959 album Foc’sle Songs and Shanties sung by sailors at work on ships
This one is led by Dave Van Ronk, but we also hear Paul Clayton, Bob Brill, Roger Abrahams, and Bob Yellin
This song apparently originated in 1869; the bowline stopped being a rope worth singing about in the early 17th century, however, as it could be tightened by just one or two hands at this point
The oldest versions have been found all across the east coast of North America and in Scotland
Uncle Sinner - Milkcow Blues
He’s from Winnipeg, and this is from his 2015 album Let the Devil In
It’s a blues song originally recorded by Kokomo Arnold in 1934 which made Arnold a star and which has been recorded by many other artists as wide ranging as Robert Johnson, Elvis Presley, and Aerosmith
Damien Dempsey - Wave Hill Walk Off
Dempsey is an Irish musician who’s been playing since the mid 1990s
This is from his 2016 album No Force On Earth
This song is about the Wave Hill Walk Off, also known as the Gurindji Strike, which was undertaken by 200 Aboriginal Gurindji stockmen–or cowboys–servants, and their families beginning in 1966 and lasting for seven years
The strike was first interpreted as a protest against work conditions, but it later became clear that those who participated were primarily demanding about 3250 km of land back, which they were granted in 1975
It was a very significant event in the movement for Aboriginal land rights in Australia
Blind Willie McTell - Dying Crapshooters Blues
He was a piedmont blues and ragtime artist who made many recordings with different companies under different names, but who never had a major hit
Despite his lack of commercial success, he actively played and recorded during the 40s and 50s, unlike many of his peers
He did not live to see the folk revival of the 1960s through which many other bluesmen were rediscovered, but he influenced many artists, including Taj Mahal and The White Stripes
This was recorded in Atlanta, Georgia in 1949
John Jacob Niles - Go Find My True Love
He was an American musician, composer, folklorist, and collector of traditional ballads
This is from his 1964 album John Jacob Niles Sings Folk Songs
This song comes from the nursery rhyme “Betty Pringle’s Pig”
Niles learned this version from a group of candlewick bedspread weavers in Ringgold, Georgia in 1934
Ensemble Tengir-Too - Küidüm Chok (I Burn, I Smoulder Like Charcoal)
They’re a Kyrgyz band whose name translates to “Celestial Mountains,” the translated name of the mountain range that links Kyrgyzstan and China
This is from the 2006 album Mountain Music of Kyrgyzstan
This one is by famous Kyrgyz songwriter and musician Atai Ogonbaev, and it’s an autobiographical song about a youthful romance with the daughter of a wealthy neighbour
Sis Cunningham - Wild Rippling Waters
Cunningham was an important member of the folk community for many years
She was the founding editor of Broadside Magazine, an important publication for the Greenwich Village folk scene, and she was one of the first people to be blacklisted as a communist sympathiser in post WWII America
This is from the 1976 album Sundown
It’s a traditional English folk song largely known as “The Nightingale” or “One Morning in May,” though this is an American version
Roy Bailey - The Enclosure Song
Bailey was an English sociologist and musician, known as a member of the group Three City Four
This one is off the 1969 album Cobweb of Dreams, which he recorded with his wife Val and Leon Rosselson
It’s a song by Rosselson and Joy Masefield
The liner notes state that the song “expresses the feelings of a farmer who was unable to fence off his share of the common land when an Enclosure Act was passed for Towersey in [1822]”
Towersey is a village in Oxfordshire, England
In the early 19th century, a series of Enclosure Acts in England removed the existence of many common lands and allotted them to various landowners
In Towersey, residents responded by rioting, but the enclosures went through, and landowners began building on what was previously the village green
Ken Whiteley and the Beulah Band - Quite Early Morning
Ken Whiteley is a musician from Toronto who’s been playing folk music since the early 1970s
He formed the Beulah Band in 2015 with his son Ben, Rosalyn Dennett of the band Oh My Darling, and Frank Evans of the Slocan Ramblers
This song is from their 2015 self-titled album
The song is by Pete Seeger, who said in 2012, “I still think the human race has a 50/50 chance to be here in a century from now, and I still stick with the song I wrote about 40 years ago, ‘Quite Early Morning’”
Old Man Luedecke - Quiet Creek
From Chester, NS
Off his 2005 album Hinterland
Roscoe Holcomb - Swanno Mountain
He was a construction worker, coal miner, and farmer much of his life
Holcomb was an older artist who became popular during the folk revival of the 1960s, and didn’t have a music career at all before then—though he was born in 1912, he was first discovered by John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers playing on his front porch in Daisy, Kentucky in 1958
He learned this song from men in a lumber camp who were from North Carolina
It’s his version of a song commonly known as “Ashville Junction” or “Swannanoa Tunnel”, related thematically and melodically to the song “Take This Hammer”
David Rovics - Contras, Kings and Generals
He’s a musician and writer based in Oregon who’s been touring internationally since the 1990s
This is from his 1998 album We Just Want the World
Rovics believes it to be the first song he wrote about US policies in Iraq
Bernice Johnson Reagon - Since I Laid My Burden Down
She was a song leader, activist, scholar, and composer who was a founding member of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee’s Freedom Singers in the 1960s, and with them recognized the potential in collective singing to bring diverse groups together
This is from her 1986 album River of Life: Harmony One
It’s a traditional gospel song that has been recorded in a number of genres
The melody is very similar to “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”
Sarah Hawkes - Returning Sweetheart
She was born in Virginia and was was an elderly woman living in Pennsylvania when she was recorded for the album Ballads and Songs of the Blue Ridge Mountains: Persistence and Change in the late 1960s
This is one of many, many songs about a lover who returns in disguise to test his sweetheart’s love then reveals his identity by showing her a token, often a ring, that they had broken together
The song family also includes songs like “John Riley”, “The Dark-Eyed Sailor,” and “The Plains of Waterloo”
This version has appeared in many parts of the United States and Canada under titles like "The Pretty Fair Maid" and "The Broken Token"
Eugene Powell - Dark Road Blues
More commonly known as Sonny Boy Nelson, he was a Delta blues musician from Mississippi who played guitar, banjo, mandolin, violin, horn, and harmonica
Gianni Marcucci made this recording for the Blues at Home record series in 1976
Marcucci travelled from Italy to the United States five times during the 70s and 80s to document blues music
Kilby Snow - Greenback Dollar
American autoharp virtuoso from Virginia
Awarded the title of Autoharp Champion of North Carolina at the age of 5
This is from his 1969 album Country Songs and Tunes with Autoharp
He learned the song from a record in the 1930s
Lonesome Ace Stringband - The Moon Is Down
