Barking Dog: September 10, 2026
Ellen Stekert - Farewell Dearest Nancy
Stekert is a folklorist, musician, and scholar from New York (now based in Minnesota) who began her career in Greenwich Village in the 1950s
Recently, 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 photos, music, and memories from her archives
This is from her latest release, All My Friends: A Queer Folk Songbook
It’s a traditional English song that appeared in print as early as 1855 and features the common theme of a woman volunteering to dress as a man and accompany the sailor she loves on his travels
In some songs with this theme, she does actually follow through with the plan, though in this song, her lover dissuades her from going
Mama’s Broke - Heaven
They’re a duo from Nova Scotia who have been playing together for a decade
This is from their new album Reunion, which came out on August 28
Jake Xerxes Fussell - Boney
Fussell is a North Carolina artist who was raised in an artistic family and apprenticed with the blues musician Precious Bryant from a young age
This is a new single from his upcoming album The Old Beloved Path, out on September 18
The song was likely a “short drag”—a maritime shanty sung while performing a brief task aboard a ship—and it’s vaguely about the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, though, as Fussell notes, it’s “somewhat out of order and at times half-wrought”
Carsie Blanton, The Burning Hell - Fascists Are Good
Blanton is a musician originally from Virginia, now based in New Jersey who released her first album in 2005
The Burning Hell are a rural PEI-based band whose members are Ariel Sharratt and Mathias Kom
This one is off their recent collaborative album Everything is Great, which came out in April
The McMillan’s Camp Boys - Moon Behind the Hill
They’re a band originally from British Columbia, now based in Nova Scotia
This is from their new album Runty in the Tallgrass, which came out on September 4th
It’s a traditional tune, popularized by West Virginia fiddle player Melvin Wine
Cara Luft - The Snows They Melt the Soonest
From Winnipeg
This is from her new album My Heart Will Always Be, which came out at the end of July
This is an English folk song that dates to at least the 1820s and was popularized again during the folk revival of the 1960s
Peter Isaacson - Long Way Back Home
He’s an American folk musician also known as Clay Canfield, who spent a brief period in Greenwich Village, New York City in the late 1960s
This is from his 1971 album Peter Isaacson Sings Songs Of, which he originally recorded as a demo while living in Wichita, Kansas in 1968
The song is by Gordon Lightfoot, who released it in 1968 on his album Back Here on Earth
Thomas Fraser - I Ain’t Got No Home in This World Anymore
He was a Scottish fisherman and farmer who left behind thousands of home recordings when he died in 1978, the majority of which were country and blues songs
His grandson rediscovered the tapes and began releasing his music in 2002
This is from the 2013 album For the Sake of Days Gone By
The song is by Woody Guthrie, and it’s based on the old gospel song “Can’t Feel at Home”, though it reflects more specifically the plight of those made homeless by the Dust Bowl that afflicted prairie states and provinces in the 1930s
Alice Stuart - Take It Slow and Easy
She was a musician from Washington who got her start in folk music at the Berkeley Folk Festival in 1964, and later toured with musicians like Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, Van Morrison, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott
This is from her 1964 debut album All the Good Times
It’s a blues song by Jesse Fuller, who released it in 1961
Chris Smither - Visions of Johanna
He’s a musician from New Orleans who began playing in the late 1960s
This is from the 2016 compilation album Younger Than That Now, a collection of Bob Dylan covers to celebrate his 70th birthday
Dylan included it on his 1966 album Blonde on Blonde
The Camperdown Family Band - Dandelion Honey
They’re a band based in British Columbia, and this is from their 2022 album The Camperdown Family Band Vol. 2
Laura P Schulman - Red Rocking Chair
She’s a banjo player, singer, and doctor who travelled from Chicago to North Carolina in 1978 to learn to play the banjo from legendary folk musician Tommy Jarrell and his friends
This is off her 2003 album Pretty Little Dog
It’s a traditional American old-time song known variably as “Sugar Baby,” “Honey Babe Blues,” and “Red Apple Juice”
John Bon - Keyp Yok Adud Ged
From a 1964 album of Aboriginal Australian music from Western Australia, North Queensland, and the Torres Strait
John Bon was about 20 when he recorded music for this album, and he belonged to the Meriam people of the inner eastern Torres Strait Islands
The title translates to “Cape York is a Bad Place”
Beginning in 1990, the Cape York Land Council fought for Aboriginal land rights and by 2018 it had won back rights for over 45% of the Cape York region
Kev Carmody - Cannot Buy My Soul
Carmody is an Aboriginal Australian musician who’s been playing professionally since the 1980s
This is from his 1991 album Eulogy (For a Black Person)
Willie Dunn - Old Crow’s Great Idea
Dunn was a Mi’kmaq musician, politician, and film director from Montreal
This is off his 2004 album Son of the Sun
Sam Amidon, Sam Wilkes - Cuba
Amidon is a contemporary folk artist from Vermont, now based in England
Wilkes is a musician and composer from California
This is from their new EP Froggy, which came out on August 21
The song comes from Dock Boggs, who learned it from his brothers
Uncle Sinner - Want to Go to Cuba, Can’t Go Now
Based in Winnipeg
He recorded this one in 2008 and released on his 2014 album A Pocketful of Glass Eyes
It’s a song by American banjo player Shorty Ralph Reynolds
Carlos Puebla Y Sus Tradicionales - Que le Pregunten al Pueblo
This is from the 1975 album Cuba: Songs for Our America
Puebla was a Cuban musician and songwriter, and a member of the Trova movement, which was started by 19th century troubadours who earned a living performing songs they or their contemporaries had composed
The title translates to “Let Them Ask the People,” and the chorus translates to “There are those who prefer things to continue as they are. But the people are tired, so very tired, of the ‘American way of life’”
Che Guevara - Los Revolucionarios no son Gente Normal (Revolutionaries are not normal people)
He was an Argentinian revolutionary, author, politician, and guerrilla leader who was a key figure in the Cuban Revolution
This is from the 1973 Paredon album Che Guevara Speaks, which is a collection of his speeches taken from events including addresses to the United Nations and to a group of Cuban construction workers
Bill McAdoo - Cuba
He was a blues singer from Detroit, Michigan, who recorded two albums in the early 1960s while living in New York City
He later became head of Africana Studies at Stony Brook University in New York
This is from his 1961 album Bill McAdoo Sings, Vol. 2
He states that he wrote the song after the Cuban Revolution because of his “strong sympathy for the Cuban people and what their new social order means to them”
Carsie Blanton - You Ain’t Done Nothing (If You Ain’t Been Called a Red)
This song is by the folksinger Eliot Kenin, who’s been performing and teaching music since the 1950s
Faith Petric - The Trusty Lariat (Cowboy Fireman)
She was a folksinger and activist originally from Idaho who was the head of the San Francisco Folk Music Club for 50 years
Petric was involved in activism for her entire life, assisting Spanish Civil War refugees, participating in the Selma to Montgomery civil rights marches of 1965, and sitting on anti-fascism committees
She died in 2013 at the age of 98
The song is by Haywire Mac McClintock, a musician, cowboy, miner, hobo, and author known for writing “The Big Rock Candy Mountain” and “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum”
He recorded it in 1929, and “fireman” in this context means the person who shovels coal into the firebox of a steam engine to heat the water—the worst job on the railroad
Wyndham Baird, Eli Smith - Engine 143
Smith is a folk singer, banjo player and guitarist from NYC
Baird is a musician from North Carolina, now based in New York City, and this one is from his 2024 debut album After the Morning
There are a number of American train wreck songs from the early days of the steam locomotive
This one is based on the true story of the wreck of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway’s Fast Flying Virginian on October 23, 1890
The Tannahill Weavers - The Flowers of Bermuda
They’re a traditional Scottish band that formed in 1968 and continue to perform and release music
The band is named after 18th century Scottish poet Robert Tannahill, who apprenticed as a weaver under his father in their home weaving shop
This is a song by Canadian folk musician Stan Rogers, who wrote it in the Spring of 1978
Peggy Seeger, Ewan MacColl - Blast Against Blackguards
MacColl was a British folksinger and labour activist known for his involvement in the 1960s folk revival
Seeger is an American folksinger and member of the Seeger family who’s been living and performing in the UK for over 60 years
This is from their 1978 album Hot Blast
Alistair Hulett - Dirty Old Town
He was a folksinger from Glasgow, Scotland, known as a member of the folk punk band Roaring Jack
This one is from the 2012 album Live in Concert, recorded at the Melbourne Folk Club in Australia in November of 2009, just a few months before his death in January of 2010
Ewan MacColl wrote it in 1949 as an interlude for a scene transition in a play called Landscape With Chimneys, and it was popularised later on by The Dubliners and The Pogues
Neil Young - My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)
This is the acoustic counterpart to Young’s song “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black),” and the two songs bookend his 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps
This is a previously unreleased live version of the song, which Young recorded at The Boarding House night club in San Francisco in May of 1978
Reverend Pearly Brown - Goodbye
He was a blues musician from Georgia who was known mainly as a street performer
He was blind from birth, but received an education at a school for blind people and completed eight grades in six years
He was later ordained a minister and began singing on the streets in 1939
This one is off his 1975 album It's A Mean Old World To Try To Live In
It’s a traditional hymn
Evening Four - Got a Mother ‘Way Over Yonder
They were a gospel quartet that recorded several sides for Bluebird records in North Carolina in 1937
This is a traditional spiritual related to “Down by the Riverside”
David Campbell - The Corn and Potato
He’s a Guyanese-Canadian musician based in Vancouver who began playing professionally in the 1960s
This is from his 1977 album Pretty Brown
Dom Flemons - Oh My Baby Blues
He’s from Phoenix, Arizona, and was a founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops
His repertoire covers almost a century of American traditional music
This is off his 2009 album American Songster
Kalos - Miss MacGregor’s / The First Pint / Ladies of Boston Harbor
They’re a trio from Tacoma, Washington whose music is inspired by Scottish, Irish, Scandinavian, and North American maritime music
This is from their forthcoming album Tamarack, which is out on October 9th
