Barking Dog: September 21, 2023
David Francey - Absolution
Scottish-born Canadian folksinger who worked as a railyard worker and carpenter for 20 years before pursuing folk music at the age of 45
This is from his new album The Breath Between, which came out on September 15th
Lonesome Ace Stringband - The Echo
Contemporary stringband based in Toronto
This is from their forthcoming album Try to Make it Fly, which comes out October 13th and is their first album of all-original songs
They say the song is “about the information feedback loop our modern world seems uniquely plagued with. While obviously a death knell for any belief system[...] it’s at the same time so alluring for the ease and comfort it affords its participants.”
Mike Seeger - The Virginian Strike of ‘23
Seeger was a folklorist and musician who co-founded the New Lost City Ramblers in the 1950s
This is from his 1966 album Tipple, Loom & Rail: Songs of the Industrialization of the South
This song is about a railroad strike that occurred in Virginia in November of 1923, the result of which was the railroad hiring scabs and forming a company union that continued for several decades
The writer of this song, Roy Harvey, was a member of the striking union and refused to cross the picket line
He recorded this song along with Earl Shirkey in October of 1929 for Columbia Records
Ian & Sylvia - Darcy Farrow
Ian & Sylvia performed together from 1959 until their divorce in 1975
Song written by Steve Gillette and Tom Campbell
This is from the 2019 album The Lost Tapes, a collection of professional live recordings from the early 70s that Sylvia found in her attic early in 2019 while gathering memorabilia for the National Music Centre in Calgary
Adelaide Van Wey - Scissors Grinder
She was a classically trained musician and folk song collector from North Carolina with an interest in the music of the southern states
This is from her 1956 album of street cries and Creole songs from New Orleans
It’s a recreation of a street call she heard from a scissors grinder in New Orleans
Adam Hurt - Josie-O
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 of gourd banjo music, called Earth Tones
This is a traditional American song
Dillard Chandler - I Wish My Baby Was Born
He was an Appalachian folksinger from North Carolina who knew hundreds of traditional ballads from his region
He was described by other locals as a “mysterious man" who "didn't live in one specific place, but would just show up from time to time”
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 (the song can also be found here)
It seems to be a traditional song that originated in England but has a long history in the Appalachian region of the US
Uncle Tupelo - I Wish My Baby Was Born
They were a band from Illinois that was active between 1987 and 1994
Jeff Tweedy, who later formed Wilco, was one of its members
This is from their 1992 album March 16-20, 1992
Kaia Kater - Moonshiner
Grenadian-Canadian folksinger based on Toronto
Origins of this song are disputed, as some believe it comes from Ireland and made its way over to the US, though most signs point to the song coming from the US and later making its way to Ireland
Her version is from her 2015 album Sorrow Bound
The Almanac Singers - Hold the Fort
Founded by Millard Lampell, Lee Hays, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger in 1940
This is off their 1955 album Talking Union and Other Union Songs
The music to “Hold the Fort” is by Philip Bliss, and the lyrics are purported to have been written for a British Transport Workers Union strike, though it may have a longer history than that
John Angaiak - I’m Lost in the City
A Yup’ik singer-songwriter born in Nightmute, Alaska in 1941
After serving in Vietnam in the US Armed Forces, he enrolled in the University of Alaska and became active in the school’s indigenous language workshop
This song comes from his 1971 album also called I’m Lost in the City, which was inspired by his work preserving his native language, with the first side entirely in the previously exclusively oral Yup’ik language, and the second in English
Leonard Cohen - Les Vieus
From a 1957 album of poems by six Montreal poets
He wrote the poem in 1954
Mississippi John Hurt - Ain’t No Tellin’
American country blues singer and guitarist from Avalon, Mississippi
He made a couple of recordings for OkEh Records in the late 1920s but they were commercial failures, and when OkEh Records closed shop during the Great Depression, Hurt returned to his work as a sharecropper, continuing to play music at local events
His OkEh recordings were included on the incredibly influential 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music, and in 1963 a copy of his song “Avalon Blues” was discovered, which led the musicologist Dick Spottswood to find Hurt in Avalon
Hurt performed at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, which brought further attention to his music, and he toured extensively throughout the US and recorded 3 albums
This is one of his OkEh Records recordings from 1928
Bob Dylan - Let Me Die in My Footsteps
Dylan wrote this song in 1962 while experiencing the constant threat of nuclear attack during the height of the cold war between Russia and the United States
The government ran civil defence drills during this time, ordering citizens to go into subway tunnels or local bomb shelters when they heard the alarm
Many felt the possibility of surviving a nuclear attack was near zero, and that governments implying otherwise was intentionally misleading
Dylan protested at New York City Hall with hundreds of other people during one of these drills in 1961 and refused to go underground
This is a demo from 1962
Lou Reed - Baby, Let Me Follow You Down
A home recording from 1963 or 1964
It’s a traditional folk song that was popularised by musician Eric Von Schmidt in the 1950s
Old Man Luedecke - I Wanna Go
From Chester, NS
Off his 2019 album Easy Money
Henry Thomas - The Little Red Caboose
American country-blues musician born 1874
His style was an early example of Texas blues guitar and he influenced artists like Bob Dylan, Taj Mahal, and Canned Heat
The flute-like instrument you hear on this recording (and really any other Thomas song) is quills, a folk instrument made from cane reeds
This was recorded in 1928 for Vocalion Records
Freeman Stowers - Railroad Blues
He was apparently a field hand in Texas, and recorded a few tracks for Gennett Records in the 1920s, most of them vocal or harmonica imitations of things like farm animals, hunts, and, as is the case with this recording, trains
Leonard Bowles, Irvin Cook - I Wish to the Lord I’d Never Been Born
This is from an album of non-blues secular African American music from Virginia
Cook and Bowles were from Henry County, Virginia
Cook plays the banjo and sings on this one, and Bowles plays the fiddle
Recorded in October of 1976
They both learned the tune in the 1940s, and it’s related to songs like “The Longest Train I Ever Saw,” and the two songs we’ll hear after it
Dan Gellert - Fall on My Knees
He’s a multi-instrumentalist from New Jersey
It’s an old-time tune from the Appalachian region of the United States
Shirley Collins - The False True Love
She’s an English folk singer, and likely one of the best-known names from the English folk revival of the 1960s and 70s
This is from her 1959 album False True Lovers
The song comes from the southern Appalachian area, though it evolved from a tragic ballad called “Young Hunting,” which was widespread throughout Britain and North America
Alphonse Sutton - Franklin
This is from an album of songs from the outports of the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland, compiled by MacEdward Leach and released in 1966
These outports had been settled by Irish immigrants during the famine
This is a ballad inspired by the failed 1845 Franklin Expedition, headed by Sir John Franklin, which set out to find a north-west passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific
It’s from the perspective of a sailor dreaming about Lady Franklin talking about the loss of her husband
It was written in England at the time the search for the Expedition was going on, and first appeared in a printed broadside around 1850
This is the only full version of the song that had been collected in Newfoundland at the time the album was recorded
The Carter Family - When the World’s On Fire
Very influential American country and folk singing family from Virginia
They recorded this one in 1930
You might have recognized the tune—Woody Guthrie used it for “This Land is Your Land”
Willie Dunn - Louis Riel
Was a Mi’kmaq musician, film director, and politician from Montreal
This is his ballad about Louis Riel, the founder of Manitoba
Off his 1972 self-titled album
Pharis & Jason Romero - Souvenir
From Horsefly, BC
Off their 2022 album Tell 'Em You Were Gold, which was recorded live over six days in a 60-year-old barn beside the Little Horsefly River
It’s a banjo-centric album, created to highlight the sound of the banjos that Jason makes
He plays a banjo named Big Blue on this one
Pharis wrote the lyrics for it
Frederick McQueen - Sailboat Malarkey
This is off a 1966 compilation album of music from the Bahamas, recorded on location by Peter K Siegel and Jody Stecher
McQueen was a well-known singer and sailor from Andros Island in the Bahamas
Shel Silverstein - Hector the Collector
He was a cartoonist, playwright, and songwriter, though he was best known as the author of popular children’s books like The Giving Tree and Where the Sidewalk Ends, which is where that poem is from
Bessemer Sunset Four - Climbing Jacob’s Ladder
They were an Alabama jubilee quartet that formed in 1925
They recorded 27 songs for Vocalion records between 1928 and1930
This is an African American spiritual that originated among enslaved people between the mid-18th and early 19th century
Kenneth Benfield - Jacob’s Ladder
Autoharp player Kenneth Benfield from North Carolina who first learned autoharp from his father Neriah, who was also a skilled player
Recorded in 1961
Napoleon Strickland - Cryin’ Won’t Make Me Stay
He was a country blues musician from Mississippi known especially for his fife and drum music
In fact, he was (self-)described as the "fife-blowingest man in the state of Mississippi”, an impressive title considering the amount of fife-blowing going on at the time
This seems to be from the mid-1970s
David Nzomo - Mwei Nuuya
He’s a musician from Kenya who recorded six albums of traditional Kenyan songs for Folkways records while he was studying at Columbia University in the 1960s and 70s
This is from his 1975 album Children’s Songs from Kenya
The song begins “The moon is over there / Holding a cooking implement / With which to pound stiff porridge / Till it tastes so good / As if it has been spiced with oil”
Algia Mae Hinton - Honey Babe
She was a Piedmont blues musician from North Carolina who learned to play the guitar from her mother, an expert in the Piedmont fingerpicking style who often played at local parties and gatherings
She met the folklorist Glenn Hinson in 1978, who arranged for her to perform at the North Carolina Folklife Festival
She gave several concerts outside of North Carolina after that, even travelling to Europe to perform in 1998
This is off her 1999 album, also called Honey Babe
Joe Hickerson - Joe Hill’s Last Will
He’s a folk singer and songleader from Illinois, and was Librarian and Director of the Archive of Folk Song at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress for 35 years
He’s known for his work as a lecturer, researcher, and performer
This is from his 1976 album Drive Dull Care Away Vol. 1
Joe Hill was a Swedish-American labour activist and union songwriter who was convicted of the murders of a former police officer and his son after a controversial trial and was executed in 1915
He wrote this as his will the night before his execution, and Ethel Raim wrote the tune for it in 1961
Lamont Tilden - The Murder of FC Benwell
From the 1958 album Folk Songs of Ontario
Tilden was a radio announcer from Toronto
The ballad is about a famous Ontario murder case that happened in 1890
Tune comes from the American ballad “Charles Guiteau,” which is about President Garfield’s assassin
Jackson C Frank - Gospel Plow
Lived a rough life with many personal issues, some of which came from a fire that broke out at his elementary school as a child and killed his friend
He was also so shy that he had to perform behind screens when recording
Known for his song “Blues Run the Game,” though he made many other recordings
Traditional American folk song based on a biblical passage from Luke
He recorded it in 1961
John C Reilly - My Son John
You may know him better as an actor and comedian who’s starred in movies like Boogie Nights and Step Brothers, but he’s also a really skilled musician with an interest in traditional music
He recorded this song for the 2006 compilation album Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys
This is an Irish folk song, the narrative of which takes place during the Peninsular War of the early 1800s
It’s about a woman whose son goes off to war to fight Napoleon and returns seven years later with his legs blown off by cannonballs
Morley Loon - Agajee Dona Nooch
He was a Cree musician and actor from Mistissini, Quebec
That one’s from his debut album, Northland, My Land, from 1981
The title translates to “To Hunt No More?”
Cora Fluker - Move, Daniel
She was a musician from Alabama who learned to play guitar from her uncle when she was a child
Uncle Sinner - Move Daniel
From Winnipeg
Off 2015 album Let the Devil In
This is a traditional slave shout song from Georgia
Unspecified - Stethoscope Sounds: Normal Sounds
From the 1955 Folkways Records album Sounds of Medicine
Sheesham & Lotus - We All Go to Heaven When the Devil Goes Blind
