Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss & Gillian Welch - Go to Sleep Little Baby

 #Emmylou Harris #Alison Krauss #Gillian Welch #Americana #folk #traditional #movie soundtrack #O Brother Where Art Thou

Most famously heard in the movie "O Brother, Where Art Thou", the traditional lullaby "Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby" is performed by artists Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, and Gillian Welch. This song appears to be a southern folk song, and was also previously recorded by Sidney Hemphill Carter in 1959 and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax in 1942. What is the history, origins and meaning of the lyrics in this song? It appears to be a song born out of the anguish of slavery (as noted by former slave Annie Little in the Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 16). I have however, heard that this may depict a father trying to keep his baby quiet by giving it morphine in order to hide him from a slaveowner (perhaps on the underground railroad, or possibly in order to commit infanticide). Is there any reputable, authoritative evidence that this is the case?

My grandmother, who recently passed at 98 years old, used to sing this to me and she said her grandmother who was a slave sang it to her. She said all the mammies used to sing this to their children.

This is a Black American folk song, originating in the slavery era. At that time, it was dangerous for enslaved people to speak openly about their concerns, so many songs of the era have hidden or concealed meanings. As a folk song, however, neither the lyrics nor the interpretations are fixed, so it can be difficult or impossible to make a definitive determination. Like many of the most popular lullabies and nursery rhymes of many traditions (compare Rock a Bye Baby or Ring Around the Mulberry Bush) there's some dark and ominous imagery here. It's perhaps most instructive to compare it to All the Pretty Horses, another lullaby with similar origins, and a more established meaning. As in that song, we can surmise that this song is being sung by an enslaved caretaker of a baby belonging to the slavemasters, leading to a mix of tenderness and anger in the lyrics.

    Your momma gone away and your daddy's gone to stay
    Didn't leave nobody but the baby

The "momma" having gone away indicates that the woman singing is not the baby's actual mother. Likewise, the baby's father is also out of the home.

    Everybody’s gone in the cotton and the corn
    Didn't leave nobody but the baby

With all the masters gone, the baby is at the mercy of its caretaker.

    She's long gone with her red shoes on
    Gonna need another loving baby

The mother is out having fun, and doesn't care what happens to her child. She might need a new one, because her current child may not have long to live.

    You and me and the devil makes three
    Don't need no other loving baby

This moves more into pure speculation, but "don't need no other loving baby" may be a veiled reference to her being unable to take care of her own children (as in All the Pretty Horses) because of being forced to caretake her master's child. The devil is present, because she is having fantasies about killing the baby in revenge.

    Come lay your bones on the alabaster stones
    And be my ever loving baby

This seems like the most clear threat in the song - the alabaster stones, are, of course, the headstones in the graveyard. Compare also "Summertime," as discussed here: What's the origin of the phrase "Rise Up Singing"? Although not an authentic slave-era lullaby, "Summertime" draws upon many of the same themes, including the caretaking of someone else's child, and the veiled threat.

This is a song that seems to have originated among slaves in the southern US and has been passed on orally from generation to generation by people who might not even have been able to write, so there is no 'authoritative' version of the lyrics. So, of course, no interpretation of those lyrics is going to be 'authoritative'. There are probably almost as many different interpretations as there have been attempts at interpretation. A recurring theme in these is that the baby has been abandoned by both parents and the singer is preparing to poison it, but there are plenty of other variations.

Funny. I’ve been singing this to my kids for the last 12 months. They love it. Knocks them out every time. But I always forget the words because I can’t think of the story. Really interesting. I mentally started to wonder if it was a seductive song, but mostly because of the imagery from “Oh Brother Where Art Thou”. If you think of it from the perspective of someone trying to seduce a man while his “momma’s gone away” you can almost force some meanings as well. Don’t need another lovin’ babe - you and me and the devil make three. And then a bit of a Romeo and Juliet moment. Or maybe now that I’m reading that it was maybe a slave song. Then there’s the inevitable death that will occur if the mistress is a black caretaker and she’s singing the song for the husband of a partying wife.

From: https://musicfans.stackexchange.com/questions/10086/origin-and-meaning-of-didnt-leave-nobody-but-the-baby

David Crosby - Music Is Love

 #David Crosby #Crosby, Stills & Nash #folk #folk rock #West coast folk rock #singer-songwriter #contemporary folk #ex-The Byrds #1970s

Contrary to popular opinion, the most stacked supergroup of the early 1970s was not Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. CSNY were not even, in fact, the most auspicious collective to include David Crosby, Graham Nash and Neil Young at the time. That honor went to a bigger, wilder, albeit less-heralded amalgam known briefly as The Planet Earth Rock And Roll Orchestra. It’s discography was sketchy, its personnel fluid, but PERRO pivoted around Crosby, Nash and most of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, with auxiliary memberships for Young and Joni Mitchell, among others. Named by Jefferson Airplane guitarist Paul Kantner, they convened for his late 1970 album, Blows Against The Empire; a baroque psych gang show that recast the counterculture’s desire to escape urban life as a sci-fi mission to distant planets rather than as a rural property grab in Laurel Canyon or Marin County.
Crosby had moved next door to Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart’s Marin ranch in late 1969, and the Orchestra members had many other things in common, not least a fondness for Wally Heider Studios in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, and for Kantner’s awe-inspiring “Ice Bag” weed. It was at Heider’s that CSNY had battled through Déjà Vu, and where the Dead had crafted the sepia-toned epiphanies of American Beauty. As sessions for that last album were winding down in the summer of 1970, the Orchestra’s amorphous jams began to coalesce into their finest achievement. The stories that have become legend about Crosby and his circle often fixate on feuding, egomania, and patterns of behavior that in most every light look morally unconscionable. But If I Could Only Remember My Name reveals an alternative, parallel truth: a solo album, predicated on one man’s grief, where a musical community came together to help him transcend it.
On the morning of September 30, 1969, the same week that the first CSN album went gold in the States, Crosby’s girlfriend Christine Hinton handed over a few joints to Crosby and Nash, loaded her cats into a green Volkswagen bus, and left their Marin place on the way to the vet. En route, she crashed into a school bus coming in the opposite direction; Crosby would have to identify her body later in the day. The tragedy did not derail work on Déjà Vu, and by the summer of 1970 Crosby was still processing his loss. “I didn’t have any equipment to deal with that,” he told Jesse Jarnow for the Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast in 2020. “The only place that I knew I wouldn’t be utterly terrified and crying and distraught was in the studio. They all knew that the only time I was happy was when I was singing, so they got me singing every chance they could get. It was an act of kindness, but it was also joy.”
If I Could Only Remember My Name had a large cast, but they moved with great discretion. There were communal healing rites like the opening Music Is Love, and one solemn indictment of The Man – What Are Their Names, featuring a chorale of Nash, Young, Mitchell, Kantner, Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Grace Slick and David Freiberg. Mostly, though, their presence was blurred and indistinct, giving Crosby the space to express himself in the distrait way – abstracted tunings, wordless harmonies, an aesthetic at once psychedelic and medieval – that he’d been finessing since his time in The Byrds.  From: https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/new-music/david-crosby-his-masterpiece-revisited/

Silly Wizard - Glasgow Peggy

 #Silly Wizard #Andy M. Stewart #Phil & Johnny Cunningham #Scottish folk #Irish folk #Celtic music #traditional

Silly Wizard were pioneers in developing the modern Scottish folk group blueprint, popularizing Scottish music around the world through playing traditional music with a never-before-heard energy, spirit and spontaneity and introducing original songs and tunes written from within the tradition.
Formed in 1972 by guitarists Gordon Jones, Bob Thomas and Bill Watkins and named after a character who shared their Edinburgh flat, Silly Wizard began playing at the capital’s Triangle Folk Club. Soon after singer Chris Pritchard replaced Bill Watkins they added a teenager who would go on to play a crucial part in the band’s image as well as their music, Johnny Cunningham. A tremendously exciting, virtuosic fiddler, who was still at school and often had to be picked up from and returned to the school gates after overnight drives from gigs, Johnny energized the band’s live performances and helped to generate a new young following for folk music.
By the time they released their first album, Silly Wizard in 1976, the band had become a sextet, including Andy M. Stewart, a singer and songwriter with the tradition in his soul, and bass guitar powerhouse Martin Hadden, and were touring regularly throughout the UK and Europe. They were shortly to add a second virtuoso named Cunningham, with Johnny’s younger brother, Phil, replacing Freeland Barbour on accordion, and went on to break into the American market in the most spectacular manner.
Booked to play an opening twenty-minute spot in front of an audience of thousands at Philadelphia Folk Festival in 1979, Silly Wizard, now in its classic five-piece line-up (Bob Thomas having left) won a standing ovation and almost instantly created a huge demand in the US for a brand of folk music that could be as passionate in the low gears as it could be rousingly intense at full tilt and was always presented with wit and an infectious sense of fun.
So began a golden era as Silly Wizard not only headlined folk festivals on both sides of the Atlantic and were capable of selling out the 3000-plus capacity Playhouse in their home town but also branched out into theatre work with the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool and composed and performed the theme tune for Scottish Television’s Take the High Road as well as releasing a succession of consistently high quality, strong-selling albums.
Silly Wizard continued working at a frenetic pace until 1988, when the band that had also included singer Maddy Taylor, bassists Neil Adam and Alastair Donaldson and Dougie Maclean deputising for Johnny Cunningham on fiddle left a gap in Scottish music that has never been filled.
Gordon Jones, Bob Thomas and Martin Hadden went to achieve success in the production side of the recording business.  Andy M. Stewart formed acclaimed duos, first with Manus Lunny then with Gerry O’Beirne. Phil Cunningham remains at the forefront of traditional music in his partnership with Aly Bain and his role at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Johnny Cunningham, after settling in New York, died tragically young in 2003.  From: https://projects.handsupfortrad.scot/hall-of-fame/silly-wizard/

Laboratorium Piesni - Karanfilče Devojče

 #Laboratorium Piesni #world music #European folk #Eastern European folk #traditional #polyphonic chant #Slavic folk music #a capella #white voice #Polish #music video

Things you can learn from traditional folk music: You know what’s the least cool thing on Earth when you’re a teenager in Poland? Traditional folk music, that’s what. Only village grandmas would perform it when I was a kid, they sang in regional dialect which sounded weird and archaic, and the lyrics never made any sense. “A rose grew in my garden, tell me dear Marysia if you’ll marry me. How can I tell you this, how can I know if my mom will agree.” Totally relatable for a kid who’s not going to marry anyone for at least the next six hundred years, and is certainly not going to ask her mom for permission if she finally decides to do so.
But the worst thing of all was “Marysia”. In Polish and other Eastern European languages every name comes in several different forms. There’s an official version for adults you don’t know very well, there’s a “naughty kid” version which in my days was the only acceptable form to be used among teenagers, and there’s Marysia. This is a form of my name Maria used either when speaking to little children or to someone you’d like to be tender with. When you’re a teenage punk rebel it almost sounds like an insult. Somehow in the old times people weren’t as creative in naming kids as they are now, so literally every traditional Polish song had a Marysia or Kasieńka in it. Being the only Marysia in class that had a lot of such songs assigned in the school curriculum was a great opportunity for all other kids to make fun of you. It took me many years to find traditional music pleasant to listen to, or even acceptable.
The first band that did this for me was Arkona, who sneakily smuggled traditional folk influences into their heavy metal songs. They sang in Russian, so even if the lyrics were still ridiculous and archaic it didn’t bother me at all cause I only understood a few words. I fell in love with Arkona because of their incredible lead singer, a five foot blonde girl with the most Earth-shattering voice. She could start with a touching, lyric melody and change it into a demonic growl a few seconds later. I hadn’t thought I would find female growl attractive, but Masha carries such power in hers it’s fucking unbelievable.
With time I got to enjoy other traditional Eastern European songs, even if they didn’t come together with growl and heavy guitar riffs. I learned to appreciate the ancient wisdom in these ridiculously archaic lyrics that puts my remarkably modern life in perspective. Yes, I’m an independent, self-sufficient woman who can choose whether or whom to marry, but this simply wasn’t the case for my female ancestors. Life in a village used to be incredibly hard, and making a living independently wasn’t an option for anyone, not only women. No one would think about independence when they struggled to survive. Even my own grandma got married at the age of eighteen to a 30-year-old she just met, as she explained, mostly to escape from her abusive stepfather.
It also serves as a guiding anchor through different stages of life. This is not a kind of music you would create as a masterpiece to be performed on stage. These were ordinary songs sung by ordinary people as they went through different events in their lives. There were at least a few for every occasion. Birth and death, love and heartbreak, work and rest, joy and sorrow, marriage and pesky in-laws, sowing and reaping, there was a song that could help you make sense of any of these experiences, and process the emotions that arise with it.
Music creates a kind of emotional resonance that words alone will never do. Singing together synchronizes minds and souls in a way that is difficult to describe, as I learned in traditional music workshops. If you’re going through childbirth, death, marriage, or breakup, everyone singing with you validates your experience, shows you that they understand what you’re going trough, and that what is happening is a normal part of life. It integrates your emotions into the whole community, and helps you heal the challenging ones.
I have my own wedding coming soon and I want a ceremony that won’t be just a government official talking about civil rights and obligations. Even if they prepared the most touching speech, it would still be processed through the rational parts of the brain first. I’d rather go directly into the hearts and souls. So though the irony is not lost on me, I’m going to bring some of the ancient wedding ritual songs I used to despise so much as a kid to guide us and all of our guests through the most important moment of our lives so far. I even put a “Marysia” on our wedding invitation cards.  From: https://madeincosmos.net/things-you-can-learn-from-traditional-folk-music/ 

Circulus - Little Big Song

 #Circulus #psychedelic folk #progressive folk #folk rock #British folk rock

A fanciful blend of traditional British folk, prog rock, psychedelia, and folk-rock, with a cultural mindset that is rarely seen outside of a revival screening of The Wicker Man, Circulus is the brainchild of Michael Tyack, a songwriter and musician who has set out to create music that exists in the 20th and 16th centuries at once. Based in South London, with Tyack the only constant member after dozens of personnel shifts, Circulus incorporate the drums, guitars, and Moog synthesizers you'd expect from a rock band with a retro early-'70s approach, but also features a variety of medieval instruments, including crumhorns, recorders, and a reed instrument called the rauch pfeifer, whose intense volume Tyack declares "isn't really acceptable to modern ears." Circulus are nearly as well-known for their collective fashion sense as for their music, with Tyack costuming himself and his accompanists in thrift-shop capes, caftans, hats, and masks that are equally influenced by the British hippie scene and Tyack's self-proclaimed model in style, Philip the Good, who was the Duke of Burgundy in the 13th century. Add to this the stated belief of Tyack and his bandmates in pixies, fairies, and "old gods" and you get a group whose reputation for eccentricity precedes it, but Circulus have also won a loyal audience for the strength of their music, with fans ranging from traditional music enthusiasts to death metal addicts. Circulus made their recorded debut in 1999 with an EP entitled Giantism, but it wasn't until 2005 that the band found a sympathetic record label interesting in financing an album-length recording - Rise Above Records, an extreme metal label that issued Circulus' full-length debut, The Lick on the Tip of an Envelope Yet to Be Sent. A second album, Clocks Are Like People, followed a year later.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/circulus-mn0000306289/biography

With its rauch pfeifers and crumhorns, psychedelic guitar solos, squealing vintage synthesizers and songs about pixies and burning scarecrows, Circulus' debut album, The Lick on the Tip of an Envelope Yet to Be Sent, is so far removed from anything else currently available, so blithely unconcerned with any contemporary notions of cool, that it makes for genuinely shocking listening. It is by turns preposterous, unsettling, tear-jerkingly beautiful and wonderfully refreshing: the one thing it is not is a concerted effort to storm the charts by sounding a bit like Coldplay or Franz Ferdinand, which may explain the flurry of critical excitement the band are currently generating. But it is merely the tip of the iceberg, the musical wing of a wilfully skewed world view that vocalist and band "auteur" Michael Tyack has been formulating since a visit to America in the late 80s, when homesickness led him to begin attending Elizabethan music concerts: "When I discovered Elizabethan music I was like, wow," he says. "It was exactly what I was pining for, some ancient culture. I didn't really want to hear any modern music at all. All I did was go to early music concerts and mix with early music boffins for about five years, discovering a whole world of ..." His voice trails off as he searches for the right phrase. "Something great," he decides, with a beatific grin. The medieval era, he says, "is my ideal, the whole style and the music. I mean, I like tights. I like the way those dresses look on women. It's all just beautiful. Take away the diseases and the brutality and it's a very stylish period. Very, very long pointy shoes." As a result, he says, he has dedicated his life to creating his own world, "which has nothing to do with Tesco or anything. You get people in Finland doing it, they live their lives as Iron Age people and have a good time. That's the plan, to set up an alternative way of life, where all like-minded people can congregate."  From: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2005/jun/17/worldmusic.folk

Blanche - Jack On Fire

 #Blanche #alt-country #Americana #folk blues #Southern gothic #country folk #gothic folk

The packaging for ‘If We Can’t Trust the Doctors’, the debut album by Detroit-based Blanche, includes an old time medicine ad for Blanche’s Nepenthe. The elixir claims to “induce forgetfulness of sorrow, dolor, ennui and wretchedness for those afflicted with melancholia, fits and tempers, neurasthenia, or the vapors”. The music that Blanche makes could easily be the promotional soundtrack for the Nepenthe sales pitch, the accompaniment to its traveling medicine show. It’s a collection of near-spooky gothic country-blues, dirges for sanity and laments for optimism wrapped in reverb, banjos, autoharp, pedal steel, and dank Poe atmospherics. Led X-ishly by the husband and wife duo of Dan and Tracee Mae Miller, Blanche plays old-timey Midwestern twang with one foot in authenticity and the other in well-versed satire.
Blanche was formed after the Millers’s short-lived band Two-Star Tabernacle called it quits in the late ’90s. (Another member of Two-Star Tabernacle — Jack White — would go on to find surprising success with the White Stripes, and later used members of Blanche as Loretta Lynn’s backing band for the critically acclaimed Van Lear Rose.) ‘If We Can’t Trust the Doctors’ was released by Detroit label Cass Records in 2003, was nominated for the 2004 Shortlist Music Prize, and is now finding a new life through distribution with V2 Records. Blanche is not yet a touchstone of the alt-country community, but it shows major promise as a potential bearer of folk fringe oddities.  From: https://www.popmatters.com/blanche-ifwecant-2495847373.html

Writhing and preening like a fistful of wild-eyed Southern preachers, Blanche sells sweet snake oil by the wagonload on their debut release ‘If We Can't Trust the Doctors’. Fronted by the enigmatic Dan Miller (the artist formerly known as Goober in the hillbilly-punk prototype Goober and the Peas) and his ethereal wife Tracee, the band weaves a hypnotic blend of old-timey medicine show theatrics and down-home acoustic pickin', all threaded through with a spooky string of murder ballads and women scorned. Along with assistance from Brendan Benson and His Name Is Alive's Warn DeFever, the album was handcrafted by the understated Dave Feeny, whose production reveals layers of banjo, pedal steel, autoharp, and subtly distorted guitars, all toothing together like rusting gears in a Model 'A' Ford rolled off the Detroit lines a century ago. While on the surface the songwriting seems straightforward and simple, the pages within peel back like crumbling photos in a black paper photo album lost in the drawers during the Eisenhower era.
While much of the energy from the album seems tied to the power of the old church, ‘If We Can't Trust the Doctors’ is no gospel album, but rather it taps deep into Greil Marcus' "old, weird America" of dusty 78's on Vocalion and Okeh, and the dusty-toothed wayfaring strangers of the Depression era circuit. The amazing thing about the album is that for all of its folkways influences, it still feels very much a contemporary work; certain to be found on iPods and peer-to-peer lists worldwide. Shining deep underneath the dust of the last hundred years are little glints of Blanche's sunnier moments, and while the band certainly proves that every silver lining has a cloud, the album is perfectly spooky and uplifting, chilling and rewarding, haunting and beautiful.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/if-we-cant-trust-the-doctors-mw0000396906

The Kentish Spires - You Better Shut Your Mouth

 #The Kentish Spires #progressive rock #retro-Canterbury Scene #progressive folk rock #progressive jazz rock

Lucie Vox has a very English voice, and at times I find myself being reminded of Maggie Bell or Chrissie Hammond. Musically The Kentish Spires have obviously been heavily influenced by the Canterbury scene, and there is just no way that this sounds as if it has been released in 2018. The use of a real sax makes a huge difference in the sound, while the Hammond organ is used to provide wonderful footnotes and trills, and Lucie either sings in a distinctively English accent or can provide 'Great Gig In The Sky" style vocals in the background while the instruments take the lead. Perhaps it isn't surprising, given the pedigree of those involved, that this never comes across as a debut album from a virtually unknown band, as it is incredibly polished yet still contains the exuberance and stylings of bands such as Procol Harum, and it certainly feels as if it was recorded fifty years ago as opposed to now. There is a sense of fun and enjoyment in the album, one can almost feel everyone looking at each other and smiling as the songs are recorded. Numbers such as "Spirit Of The Skies" are bright and full of light, even if again it all sounds very dated indeed. It doesn't take long for the listener to feel that this sense of authenticity and return to the early days of the progressive rock movement is very much part of the overall sound and it is to be welcome and enjoyed for what it is. When the flute and piano are bouncing off each other all the listener can do is close their eyes and just go with the flow, become one with it all. Traditional progressive music, if there is such a thing, is rarely better than this, and it is incredible to realize that this is just the debut.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=10638 

Mediaeval Baebes - 10th Anniversary Live

 Part 1

Part 2

 #Mediaeval Baebes #medieval music #choral music #traditional #crossover #a capella #vocal ensemble #ex-Miranda Sex Garden #live music video

Mediaeval Baebes have been called classic music's Spice Girls and early music Pussy Cat Dolls for their sexy contemporary approach to medieval music. Katherine Blake founded the group in 1996 after she left the goth music group Miranda Sex Garden. Katherine explains, "One of the inspirations for forming the Baebes was my participation in (another) Mediaeval ensemble called Synfonie, performing mostly Hildegard plainsong. The group also introduced me to a song called Salva Nos which I performed in a cabaret in Berlin. That song was the first we ever sang together and also the name of the first album we made." After returning to England she called her girl friends together and taught them the song then outlined her vision for an all female choral group. Her timing couldn't have been better. The music scene which had been dominated by male groups was about to be kicked over by a new breed of gutsy female vocalists starting with the Spice Girls. Even before the Spice Girls’ first album was released, the Mediaeval Baebes were working up enough songs for their first concert, which was held in a cemetery. Soon they made a demo tape and sent it off with high hopes but low expectations. Within days they were signed by Virgin Records sight unseen. The executives must have died and gone to heaven when they saw the Baebes for the first time and realized what a sizzling effect these young, sexy women in flowing white gowns produced on their audience as they wove an enchanting tapestry of heavenly music.
In the years that followed they have produced six albums, a live performance DVD, a songbook, a book of erotic art called Songs of the Flesh, and have toured all of Great Britain, Europe, and North America. In the USA they toured with Lilith Fair where they developed quite a reputation for pranks. Rachael Van Asch, the band's only blond, recalls those days, "like when our drummer boys Hans and Trevor dressed up in our spare long white dresses with full make-up and came onstage with us on Lilith Fair to perform the closing number with Sarah Maclaughlin." The band swelled to thirteen women at one time and now has settled on just seven voices, Katherine Blake (music director), Audrey Evans, Emily Ovenden, Marie Findley, Maple Bee, Cylindra, and Rebecca Dutton. The Baebes are all talented individuals, so the band makes time for everyone to develop personal projects.
Rachael, who left the band in 2004 to get married and have a baby, grew up in rock music. Her mother was a member of New Zealand band Ragnarock. For eight years Rachel Van Asch performed and served as costume designer for the Baebes. Rachael has also produced fashion clothes based on her costume designs under the labels Sacred Clothing and Van Asch. Now she is in the process of moving to Sweden where she will be opening a clothing store.
Audrey Evans has been with the band since the beginning but when she isn't performing she teaches in a nursery school. In November of 2005 she also gave birth to a son, Lewis, who is the love of her life.
Emily Ovenden is the daughter of famous English Ruralist artists Graham & Annie Ovenden but her talents are manifested in music and writing. She has written and published one book, Vulpes Vulpes, and has just finished her second novel, The Ice Room. Currently she is working on songs for an upcoming Celtic album.
Maple Bee, the dark haired mezzo soprano, joined the band in 2003. She spent her childhood on board a yacht, traveling the world and living in the Middle East. She has made two techno solo albums and just released a new dance album, Huski.
Mediaeval Baebes celebrated an important anniversary in May this year. Maple Bee tells, "the Baebes had their 10th anniversary party which involved lots of singing loudly in a pub called the Boogaloo on Highgate Hill, followed by lots of strange baebeish antics and fake champagne." In June, she says, they performed at "an amazing show in Cornwall inside a real life stalactite-ridden cave called Carnglaze Caverns - then on to the sunrise festival near Glastonbury.”
From: https://stores.renstore.com/art-and-music/mediaeval-baebes

Baskery - With Every Heartbeat

 #Baskery #folk rock #Americana #contemporary folk #alt-country #banjo punk #music video #Robyn cover #Swedish

No matter where they go in the world, people tell the sisters that they’ve never heard or seen anything like it, that their sound is completely unique and that they perform with what seems to be an inexhaustible energy. That’s Baskery’s aim, to never stop surprising. The music is not to be confused with country or bluegrass just because the instrumentation involves a double bass, a six string banjo and acoustic guitar. They use their instruments in an unconventional way to create their very own genres: banjo punk, rock-hop and Nordicana.
The three sisters can’t recall when or why they started playing, the music’s always just been there. “Performing live has become the most natural thing to us”. That’s where the high energy level on stage hails from, a pure and reckless love for the art of performing music. In their late teens the sisters joined forces with their dad, who for decades was a one man band playing old blues and country tunes for a living. “Playing with dad was the best education we could have wished for. Performing in rowdy pubs and bars gave us the backbone that carries us through every imaginable situation one may come across in the music biz. It’s doesn’t get much more real than that.” This foundation of classic roots music and Americana settled in their hearts, but also awoke the urge of breaking the rules of traditional music. Baskery is a band built on what three people can do together and it’s all about turning the music on its head, blending the straightforwardness of punk with the subtlety of singer/songwriting.
Their first album, “Fall Among Thieves” (2008) was recorded in Stockholm, co-produced by Lasse Martén (Pink, Peter, Bjorn and John, Kelly Clarkson). “New Friends” (2011) the follow up, the band refer to as the “gypsy album” since it was mainly tracked on the road in various hotel rooms and band apartments, then mixed in Berlin by Blackpete (Depeche Mode, Joe Jackson, Peter Fox). As a contrast to the first two albums which took several months to make, the third one “Little Wild Life” was recorded during ten days in an old dance studio converted to a recording studio in former east Berlin, co-produced by Matt Wignall (Cold War Kids, J. Roddy Walston). All three albums received great acclaim in the press and were released in numerous countries. The releases in combination with relentless touring have given the band a reputation as one of the music scene’s most noticeable live acts.
From: https://ridefestival.com/artists/baskery/

Planxty - 'P' Stands For Paddy, I Suppose

 #Planxty #Christy Moore #Andy Irvine #Irish folk #world music #Celtic folk #traditional #1970s

 Irish stalwarts Planxty begin Cold Blow and the Rainy Night -- their third record for Shanachie -- with a rousing version of the Scottish battlefield classic "Johnnie Cope." It's a fitting opening to a record that essentially rounded out their recording heyday as the members splintered off to form equally influential Celtic acts like the Bothy Band, Moving Hearts, and De Danann. Co-founder Dónal Lunny, despite contributing instrumentally to a few tracks and taking a seat in the production chair, left the group, allowing newest member Johnny Moynihan to take over bouzouki and -- along with Andy Irvine and Christy Moore -- vocal duties. The title track is one of the finest of their career, utilizing Liam O'Flynn's expert uillean pipes and the band's peerless harmonizing to a tee. Moore's gorgeous "Lakes of Pontchartrain" and Irvine's moving closer, "Green Fields of Canada," showcase the group's timeless mastery of balladry, a style that would greatly inform their later solo works. Cold Blow and the Rainy Night, along with The Well Below the Valley, and their legendary debut, are essential listening for those in love with, or merely intrigued with, the genre.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/cold-blow-and-the-rainy-night-mw0000206988

P Stands for Paddy / T Stands for Thomas

Planxty sang ‘P’ Stands for Paddy, I Suppose on their 1974 album Cold Blow and the Rainy Night. They noted: We first heard ‘P’ Stands for Paddy a long time ago from Joe Heaney but we didn't get the words until recently. These came from a recording of Colm Keene of Glinsk Co. Galway. The verses are a strange mixture as if made up from different songs and it has a fine air.

Lal and Norma Waterson sang T Stands for Thomas on the Watersons' 1975 album, For Pence and Spicy Ale, Norma Waterson sang it on the Holme Valley Tradition cassette Will's Barn, and Waterson/Carthy sang it live at the Beverley Folk Club in June 1992. A.L. Lloyd noted on the Watersons' original album: These B for Barney, P for Paddy, J for Jack songs are usually Irish in origin though common enough in the English countryside. Often the verses are just a string of floaters drifting in from other lyrical songs. So it is with this piece, which derives partly from a version collected by Cecil Sharp from a Gloucestershire gipsy, Kathleen Williams. Some of the verses are familiar from an As I Walked Out song sung to Vaughan Williams by an Essex woodcutter, Mr Broomfield. The verses about robbing the bird's nest recall The Verdant Braes of Skreen.

Peter and Barbara Snape sang T Stands for Thomas on their 2008 CD Take to the Green Fields. Barbara Snape noted: This particular version of the song is an Irish/English hybrid! I first heard it in Liverpool some time ago, sung by an Irish singer, Davy Brennan. Having never forgotten it, but never quite fully remembering it either, I have used the version published in The Wanton Seed to supplement the bits I had lost.

Niamh Boadle sang P Stands for Paddy in 2010 on her CD Wild Rose. She commented on this Irish traditional song: A conversation overheard and dwelt on to learn about love. Not a strictly orthodox method of teaching but there you go.

From: https://mainlynorfolk.info/watersons/songs/tstandsforthomas.html

Amanda Palmer - Want It Back

 #Amanda Palmer #ex-The Dresden Dolls #alternative rock #dark cabaret #dark folk #punk cabaret #singer-songwriter #music video

Last month it was announced that self-styled "punk cabaret" performer Amanda Palmer had managed to raise $1.2 million through crowd-sourcing site Kickstarter, with nearly 25,000 fans donating money to fund her forthcoming album Theatre Is Evil. To celebrate, she performed in a car park in Brooklyn wearing a dress made out of balloons, encouraging any of her fans with pins to come forward and slowly burst each balloon until she was left completely naked.
There's probably a metaphor in there somewhere relating to the open relationship Palmer has with her fans, but it also displays her willingness to bare all for her art. This feeling of being comfortable in her own skin can be seen in the stop-motion video for the excellent Want It Back, in which the lyrics to the song are scrawled on her body (bed sheets, walls and iPad). Talking about the making of the video, Palmer says: "I'm so comfortable being naked at this point that I almost forget. I’m also proud that that video has nudity, but it isn't sexual or erotic. it's using the body as a raw canvas, which I love."
Filmed by Australian director Jim Batt, it's a brilliantly intimate and anarchic representation of the song, the line "it doesn't matter if you want it back, you've given it away" made even more open and honest. Mind you, it could also refer to her no-refunds policy for fans who donated money.  From: https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2012/jul/09/amanda-palmer-want-it-back-video

This Friday, Amanda Palmer — the boob-showing, armpit-hair-wearing, theatre-loving cabaret-rock misfit who might be reinventing the music industry one tweet at a time — is coming to play a show in San Francisco. It's sold-the-fuck-out, of course (you can catch her again Sept. 26 at the Fillmore) but that shouldn't at all diminish your enjoyment of her excellent (and, coincidentally, NSFW) new video for “Want it Back.”
Here again we get Amanda in the nude, but not to especially erotic ends. Rather, her skin becomes a canvas for the beautifully scrawled lyrics of the song, which race over her chest, around her body, then down her leg and off to the walls of the room, someone's iPad, and a bunch of other places before returning to from whence they came, as Amanda herself turns black with ink. The concept is simple but totally arresting, with the type of the writing (and even some words) changing throughout, and the he whole thing working in a kind of bewildering stop-motion courtesy of editor/producer/director Jim Batt. Musically, Palmer's band, the Grand Theft Orchestra, is in full-on piano-rock mode, with a meaty arrangement of agile, ear-friendly pop. Palmer's voice is always a bit more growly than we remember; she's distinctive and evocative and powerful, although not sweet. All in all this is top-notch stuff — definitely worth that million-dollar Kickstarter campaign.  From: https://www.sfweekly.com/music/amanda-palmers-nsfw-want-it-back-video-the-naked-truth-is-not-necessarily-sexy/article_e89b909a-6068-5e4a-bbd3-2945de572db7.html

Carolina Chocolate Drops - Hit 'Em Up Style

 #Carolina Chocolate Drops #folk #Americana #African-American folk #old-time string band #traditional #music video

From their beginnings in 2005, the Carolina Chocolate Drops revived the almost-forgotten Black string-band tradition and introduced this music to millions of fans across the world. The original band members — Rhiannon Giddens, Dom Flemons and Justin Robinson — learned their core repertoire straight from the source, an African American fiddler, Joe Thompson, then 85 years old, of Mebane, North Carolina. The Carolina Chocolate Drops’ success proved that the old-time, fiddle-and banjo-based music they had so scrupulously researched and passionately performed could be a living, breathing, ever-evolving sound. The Drops’ 2010 Nonesuch debut, “Genuine Negro Jig”, garnered a Best Traditional Folk Album Grammy. Starting with material culled from the Piedmont region of the Carolinas, they sought to reinterpret this work, not merely recreate it, highlighting the central role African Americans played in shaping our nation’s popular music from its beginnings more than a century ago. The virtuosic trio’s approach was provocative and revelatory. Their concerts, The New York Times declared, were “an end-to-end display of excellence. They dip into styles of Southern Black music from the 1920s and ’30s — string-band music, jug-band music, fife and drum, early jazz — and beam their curiosity outward. They make short work of their instructive mission and spend their energy on things that require it: flatfoot dancing, jug playing, shouting.”
The Carolina Chocolate Drops roster fluctuated over time, and Rhiannon, Dom, and Justin have gone their separate ways. Each member has gone on to pursue impressive and meaningful careers maintaining the spirit of The Carolina Chocolate Drops. Rhiannon Giddens has released solo albums and has worked on collaborative projects such as “Our Native Daughters” and releases with Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi. In 2017, she received a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant. Dom Flemons continues to perform and is known as “The American Songster” because of his breadth of knowledge of American music. In 2012 Music Maker released the album “Buffalo Junction” with Dom Flemons and artist Boo Hanks. Justin Robinson, in addition to recording and performing solo, is a food historian and botanist. In all of his work, Justin explores African American history in the South and aims to connect people to their culture.  From: https://musicmaker.org/artist/carolina-chocolate-drops/

Varttina - Laulutyttö

 #Varttina #Scandinavian folk #worldbeat #Finnish folk #world fusion #traditional #folk rock #contemporary folk #Finland

They are one of Finland's biggest musical exports but they could hardly be described as typically Finnish. They are, simply, Värttinä: musicians with a unique sound, with their feet firmly rooted in Finnish ground, in its language, culture and history, yet with the courage to develop over nearly two decades, something no-one else in the world has been able to copy.
Värttinä’s devoted and loyal fans all over the world may not all be Finnish speakers but they are intoxicated by the voices of Susan, Mari and Johanna, singers with the stage presence of a Wagnerian soprano, acting out roles from fishwives to lovers, while the guys lure the listeners with beguiling bouzouki, sax, accordion playing to die for, searing drums, guitar and bass.
Driving all this forward is the Finnish language itself, with its unique rhymes and rhythms, and spitting throaty sounds; words that launch themselves into the atmosphere and return several syllables later. Think of the pumping rhythms of Longfellow’s Hiawatha and you’re half way there.
For Värttinä it all began in the Finnish village of Rääkkylä in 1983 when a few mothers and grandmothers encouraged the children to sing and play some of the old songs from the Karelian region. Ancient stories once told with a simple accompaniment on the kantele (the Finnish zither-like instrument) suddenly woke up to find saxes, fiddles and guitars in their midst. This wasn’t important just for the birth of Värttinä but for the revival of Finnish folk music in general.
What emerged though wasn’t a folk band but, eventually, a ten-piece pop/rock style ensemble which established the formula of female voices at the front, boys at the back. Blessed by the no-nonsense and sometimes shocking lyrics of the ancient traditional sagas of blood, sweat and a lot of tears, the confrontational style of singing and song-writing won the music world over until the band was propelled into Finnish stardom in 1991.  From: https://realworldrecords.com/artists/varttina/

DakhaBrakha - Live Music Hall Daile, Latvia 2015

Part 1

 

Part 2

#DakhaBrakha #folk #Ukrainian folk #world music #Eastern European folk #folk rock #cabaret #music video

DakhaBrakha has been on the frontlines of Ukraine’s cultural struggle against Russian domination for the past decade, reaching a global audience by infusing raucous traditional music from rural villages with a cosmopolitan mélange of instruments and influences. But the folk-punk quartet didn’t expect to find themselves literally under the gun last year, fleeing Kyiv as Russian troops tried to take the Ukrainian capital on Feb. 24. When shells started falling near the Kyiv airport, the musicians scattered as they sought safety, but by mid-March they’d reassembled in France for a series of solidarity concerts. Vocalist, percussionist and accordionist Iryna Kovalenko made her way to Hungary as the Russian army poured over the border, abandoning her car in a miles-long queue to cross the border. She eventually rejoined her husband and daughter in Seattle, where they had settled about six years ago.
“My wife and my two children are temporarily in France,” wrote Marko Halanevych in an email. Like his DakhaBrakha bandmates, he contributes on vocals and multiple instruments, including the goblet-drum darbuka, tabla, didgeridoo, accordion and trombone. Nina Garenetska, who plays cello and bass drum, is with her family in Lviv, “the western part of Ukraine, which is quite far from the front line,” Halanevych wrote. “But still, Russian missiles fly there from time to time.” Olena Tsybulska, who plays bass drums, percussion, and the button-accordion garmoshka, is with her family in Kyiv, “as well as the rest of the team,” Halanevych wrote. “However, we have relatives who live close to the frontline and even in the occupation.”
Now global ambassadors for a country fighting for its existence, DakhaBrakha hasn’t been able to perform at home since the invasion. Their audiences, particularly in Europe, increasingly include fellow Ukrainians displaced by the war who are eager for reminders of what they’ve left behind. “Often we met with them before or after the concerts, and we felt that these concerts were very important to them,” Halanevych wrote. “For some it is support, therapy. For some it is memories of home.” Supporting each other on the road the band has become a self-contained pod that manages to deliver walloping performances while keeping one eye on the news stream from home. They know they’re in an enviable position far from danger, but anxiety about loved ones serves as both fuel and a distraction.
“More than once I had to go on stage knowing that Russia fired about a hundred missiles,” Halanevych recalled. “Will all your relatives and friends survive these two hours? Being outside Ukraine, we are in constant contact with them, monitoring air alarms, battles at the front, and the needs of volunteers.” Marked by galloping rhythms, extended vocal harmonies, and striking instrumental textures, DakhaBrakha’s music has always evoked extreme emotions and situations. Responding to the conflict with Russia the group has added material directly inspired by the struggle, like the band’s 2018 requiem “Lament,” which is dedicated to all those who’ve died during the war. The women tend to perform with little visible expression, but the song “causes a wave of dramatic emotions,” he wrote. “It’s important for us that it is heard. There is also the composition ‘Boats,’ which is dedicated to all those who are currently defending our freedom, and to those who lend us their friendly shoulder.” American audiences have certainly been lending their eyes and ears as Ukrainian culture has become more visible in the U.S. than ever before. San Jose Jazz’s Winter Fest’s “Counterpoint With Ukraine” programing, which runs through March 3, features some of the Eastern European nation’s most acclaimed improvisers. And Dakh Daughters, an all-women music and theater project from Kyiv, present “Ukraine Fire” at Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage April 24.
Garenetska, DakhaBrakha’s cellist and vocalist, was a founding member of Dakh Daughters, and both ensembles grew out of Kyiv’s influential avant-garde Dakh Theater. She’s been too busy with DakhaBrakha to tour with the Daughters recently, but Garenetska made the Hollywood Palladium performance presented by Sean Penn last June that raised $1 million for Ukraine. Buoyed by enthusiastic audiences and words of support, they cherish their role in the struggle, knowing “that we are doing extremely important things for the victory of good over evil,” Halanevych wrote. “We believe that our concerts can influence public opinion, and civilized countries will be more willing and faster to help us with modern weapons.”
From: https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/02/28/after-fleeing-war-ukrainian-band-dakhabrakha-back-in-bay-area/

Swans - You Know Nothing

 #Swans #Michael Gira #Jarboe #experimental rock #post-rock #noise rock #industrial #no-wave #neofolk #industrial rock #gothic rock #dark folk #apocalyptic folk

In a half-decade span beginning in the mid '80s, Swans swiftly transformed from bone-crushing no wave brutalists to God-fearing gothic rockers, and then to featherweight neo-folkies. White Light from the Mouth of Infinity and Love of Life, originally released in 1991 and 1992, respectively, marked the end of that metamorphosis, as the band settled into a sound at once songful and vast, luminous as a glass menagerie and forceful as a falling anvil. The two albums have long been treated as minor works in Swans' discography: out of print for years, they were cherry-picked (alongside selections from 1989's major-label fiasco The Burning World and the Gira/Jarboe side project the World of Skin) for 1999's inauspiciously titled Various Failures 1988-1992. "I'm ambivalent about much of it, but then what do I know?" Gira has written of the music on that anthology. "Some of it is genuinely good I think. Anyway, I was learning how to write a song as I went."
It's true that the period marked a shift from pummeling mantras to something more "musical," with singing instead of shouting and cascading chords instead of just drop-tuned gut-punches. That said, even here, Gira's concept of "songwriting" remains idiosyncratic: there's little in the way of verse/chorus structures, mainly just mantra-like incantations and chords wreathed around gleaming pedal tones surrounded by wide-open expanse. Drummers Anton Fier (White Light) and Vincent Signorelli and Ted Parson (Love of Life) lay into their snares with military gusto, driving the music forward in surging tattoos, and their nonstop rattle contributes to a sensation of overwhelming excess. Close your eyes, and you can practically see the sounds exploding like fireworks against the darkness of your lids.
The textures and tone colors are well suited to Gira's favorite themes, like love, death, and the sublime. Where early Swans lyrics were notable largely for their grueling power dynamics and limitless abjection—see "Raping a Slave", "Filth", "Cop", etc.—here Gira explores a more nuanced perspective. It's hardly all kittens and rainbows; both albums are littered with ugliness, from the dirge-like "Better Than You" ("So glad I'm better than you," he sings, in the world's most dead-eyed Dear John letter) to the claustrophobic "Amnesia", where he tells us "sex is a void filled with plastic" and "everything human's necessarily wrong." Gira has rarely wallowed as beautifully as he does on "Failure", one of the great nadirs—in the best way possible—of the band's catalog. Over bluesy acoustic guitar and frigid digital synthesizers, his preacher's drawl drips like blood from a stone; it would be hard to imagine a voice with more gravitas. But Gira has never met a dichotomy he could resist—he eats love and hate, sprinkled with a bit of good and evil, for breakfast—and here we can see the pendulum beginning to tip from darkness back to daylight.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21259-white-light-from-the-mouth-of-infinity-love-of-life/

Comus - Song to Comus

 #Comus #acid folk #freak folk #folk rock #progressive folk #British folk rock #psychedelic folk #1970s

A guitar is hit hard and strummed with abandon, another is plucked and joined by a flute, the demented voice of Roger Wootton breaks in to sing: “Bright the sunlight summer day, Comus wakes he starts to play. Virgin fair smiles so sweet, Comus’ heart begins to beat’. Each of the ending words are echoed out in repeat, “play, play, play, play.” The song continues on to tell a form of the Comus story, based on John Milton’s masque of the same name, in which he ensnares a lady in a forest. “Comus glare, Comus bare, Comus rape”.
In 1630 a heinous charge of sodomy and rape was brought upon the head of the Earl of Castlehaven, who was tried and convicted of sodomy with his page, and accused of provoking and assisting another to rape his wife – part of a twisted plan to produce an alternate heir. Described by the judge as an ‘unnatural crime’, he was found guilty and beheaded three weeks later on Tower Hill. Four years after this event, his brother-in-law John Egerton, the 1st Earl of Bridewater, arrived at Ludlow castle to take up his new appointment as Lord President of Wales. To celebrate the occasion, the poet John Milton wrote a masque, named ‘Comus’. It is said that the masque was performed to cleanse the family’s past and to help forget the crimes of the Earl of Castlehaven.
John Milton (born in 1608), worked as a civil servant under Oliver Cromwell, and was a renowned poet and scholar, best known for his epic poem ‘Paradise Lost’, that ruminates on the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan. His masque ‘Comus’ tells the story of two brothers and a sister who find themselves lost in a forest. When the sister, known as the Lady, stops to rest, her brothers search on for food. Comus then appears to her, a kind of god of chaos based on the Greek god of the same name, disguised as a villager. He tricks and captures her, and takes her to his pleasure palace, putting her on a bewitched chair where he uses a necromancers wand and entices her to drink from his magical cup. She refuses in the name of chastity and temperance. Eventually she is rescued by her brothers with help from The Attendant Spirit, a kind of angel. Who manage to chase Comus away, but they can’t free their sister from the chairs spell. The Spirit gives them aid by calling the water nymph Sabrina with a song, who subsequently frees the Lady. The three siblings return home to be reunited with their parents in jubilation. ‘Song to Comus’ uses the middle part of the poem, where the demon finds the Lady in the forest, as its basis. Roger Wootton sings wildly with glee as he enacts Comus, ‘hands of steel, crack you open and your red flesh peel.’ The band ramp up the darkness with theatre, as they do with on most of the songs on their unique debut ‘First Utterance’.
Comus formed tentatively in 1967 with the meeting of guitarists Roger Wootton and Glenn Goring at Ravensbourne college. During that period they started to play folk clubs together and later met David Bowie at the Arts Lab in Beckenham, who then asked them to perform regularly at his curated evenings. They met their manager Chris Youle at the college, as well as a violinist, Colin Pearson, who was studying Milton at the time and suggested the band name. The bass player Andy Hellaby was found at the Arts Lab, and singer Bobbie Watson was invited to join after the rest of the band heard her harmonizing at a local house. Flautist Rob Young was found through an advert.
In 1970 they toured and played across the country like any other working band. During that year, Canadian director Lindsay Shonteff asked them to contribute to her film ‘Permissive’, a story of groupies in London. Shonteff had been impressed by a gig at which Roger cut his hand and continued to play on, bleeding on to his guitar during the song ‘Drip Drip’. Various members of Comus went on to score another three films for Shonteff, who’s ‘Permissive’ is part of the BFI flipside collection. In June of the same year, the band performed at the Purcell Rooms in London’s Royal Festival Hall supporting David Bowie. Their mesmerizing and frenetic act brought them much attention and led them to ink a contract with label Pye/Dawn. The following year they released ‘First Utterance’, with its cover depicting Comus in all his evil glory, drawn by Roger himself. Unfortunately the album had no commercial success and they disbanded in ’72. On ‘Song to Comus’ the intensity of the rest of the album is continued. ‘First Utterance’ really is a one of a kind – bizarre compelling vocals by Roger, lush foil-vocals from Bobbie, urgent guitars, apocalyptic violin playing, head nodding percussion and a burrowing flute.  From: https://www.spookyisles.com/john-miltons-tale-of-rape-and-necromancy/

Sally Rogers & Claudia Schmidt - Way Down The Road

 #Sally Rogers #Claudia Schmidt #folk #traditional #Americana #contemporary folk #singer-songwriter #a capella

Sally Rogers is a singer/songwriter and educator, who is originally from Beulah, Michigan and now resides in Pomfret, Connecticut. In her youth, Sally lived by the family farm and was exposed to music at an early age, as her mother was a pianist and the organist for the local church. Folk music was very popular in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, and singers like Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez and Judy Collins, were dominating the charts. After receiving a guitar for Christmas, Sally began to learn and explore songs from these and other popular artists. During her college years at Michigan State University, she studied Music Education and frequented the legendary coffee house The Ark… which showcased popular touring folk artists of the day. At The Ark, she attended ballad workshops, hoots, guitar and folk gatherings. During this time, she added the dulcimer and banjo to her arsenal and continued to expand her repertoire. After graduating college with a teaching degree, Sally began to perform regularly at local venues and clubs. She met the established Canadian folk singer Stan Rogers and he persuaded her to audition for a booking agency in Toronto. This turned out to be a good move because after passing the audition, she began to perform at major festivals and fine venues throughout Canada and the United States.  From: https://musicguy247.typepad.com/my-blog/2020/05/sally-rogers-interview-mountain-dulcimer-music-teacher-claudia-schmidt-howie-bursen-quilts.html

I first heard Craig Johnson sing "Way Down the Road" at the North Country Folk Festival in Ironwood, Michigan, where I was also performing. The version of "Way Down the Road" that I transcribed from Craig's set at the North Country Folk Festival is quite close to the version attributed to Sally Rogers. The differences are minor, mainly in syntax and punctuation. Since I was sitting next to Sally during Craig's performance, it is reassuring to know that our versions are nearly identical. Although I lost my transcription a while ago, I was able to reconstruct it from the information on this thread.
- Brian Humphrey

I remember back in '33
When we were still down in Tennessee,
Just gettin' by took all your time,
Away down the road.
The word went out in '41
Uncle Sam said get the big job done,
So we hired out at Willow Run
Away down the road.

Blow your whistle up through the pines
Out across the mountains and the Clinchfield Line
Blow for better times
Away down the road

Well we come from the mountains and the damp coal mines,
Started in to working on Henry's lines,
Eight hours steady and overtime,
Away down the road.
The city folks didn't want us 'round,
So they moved us out to the edge of town,
Salt box houses on the bulldozed ground,
Away down the road.

Chorus

We were strong backs bending in the welder's light,
Rivet guns pounding on a windy night,
A rich man's war, a poor man's fight,
Away down the road.
Punch in, punch out, make your time,
Hurry with the turret boys, you're getting behind,
The bombers roared low in the blacked-out skies,
Away down the road.

Chorus

You try to pay the rent man, try to save a buck,
Patching up the tires on a wore-out truck,
City folks pass and holler "Hey Kentuck",
Away down the road.
You say you'll move back south when the war gears down,
But your dreams die easy when your check comes round,
Caught between the mountains and a factory town,
Away down the road.

Chorus

Now the plant's closed down and the gates are closed,
New cars rust in the rain and snow,
Let me sleep where the gunstick laurel grows,
Away down the road.
You can bury me down in Tennessee,
'He lived for a dollar' - let my tombstone read
And died unknown in a strange country,
Away down the road.

From: https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=534

Mellow Candle - The Poet And The Witch

 #Mellow Candle #folk rock #progressive folk #acid folk #Celtic folk #1970s #Irish

Although they are anything but a household name today, in their time, Irish folk-rock band Mellow Candle were frequently mentioned in the same breath as more enduring names from the Emerald Isle's late-'60s generation of rock bands, such as Steeleye Span, The Chieftains, Thin Lizzy, Horslips, et al. The origins of Mellow Candle can be traced back to 1963, when precocious young ladies Clodagh Simonds, Alison Bools, and Maria White formed a vocal trio named the Gatecrashers while enrolled at Dublin's Holy Child Convent. After several years of impromptu performances, covering hits of the period inside the school walls, 14-year-olds Simonds and Bools (White had already left) sent a demo to Radio Luxembourg DJ Colin Nichol, who in turn brought it to respected producer Simon Napier-Bell, then manager for the likes of The Yardbirds and John’s Children, among others. Napier-Bell was duly impressed and soon arranged for a recording session from which emerged the 1968 single "Feeling High" b/w "Tea with the Sun," released through his own short-lived SNB label imprint and credited to the already renamed Mellow Candle.
The single's poorly rendered approximation of psychedelic girl group sounds failed to chart, however, and Simonds' parents strategically intervened by shipping her off to school in Italy, while Bools began attending art college back in Ireland and singing with local covers group Blue Tint. This paired her with guitarist and future husband David Williams, so that, with the addition of bassist Pat Morris and Simonds' return from Italy, Mellow Candle were relaunched in 1970, making their debut performance in support of The Chieftans. Numerous concerts and festival appearances alongside fellow rising Irish acts such as Horslips, Taste, and Thin Lizzy helped build the band's public profile over the next year, and Simonds even contributed harpsichord and Mellotron to Thin Lizzy’s Shades of a Blue Orphanage LP. By the time this was released, Mellow Candle were already hard at work on their own debut album for Deram Records, having replaced the unsuitably straight-laced Morris with former Creatures bassist Frank Boylan and augmented their formation with a drummer for the first time in ex-Kevin Ayers man William Murray. That debut album, Swaddling Songs, was produced by David Hitchcock (Genesis, Caravan, etc.) and released in April 1972 -- a month that also saw Mellow Candle supporting Steeleye Span at Dublin's National Stadium.
But this reputable concert booking unfortunately did not reflect the public reaction to Swaddling Songs, which, for reasons unknown, was generally either ignored or dismissed by critics of the time (the NME famously calling it a "tax loss"), only to subsequently transform into a paradigm of overlooked British folk-rock in the decades that followed. In fact, come the 1990s, its magical musical amalgam of Celtic folk, progressive, goth, psych, and rock, topped with Simonds and Williams' otherworldly vocals (honed to telepathic interaction over years of partnership), was being hailed as a lost masterpiece, and exchanging collectors' hands for hundreds of dollars until long overdue CD reissues began covering some of the demand. All too late to save Mellow Candle, of course, which had initially weathered Swaddling Songs' commercial failure with tours alongside Genesis and Curved Air, then briefly changed their name to Grace Before Space, but ultimately crumbled altogether and went their separate ways toward the end of 1973.  From: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4wbGwhI4lo3t4mpQt727o4

 

 

Andy M. Stewart - By the Hush

 #Andy M. Stewart #ex-Silly Wizard #Scottish folk #Irish folk #traditional #singer-songwriter

Andy M. Stewart was a Scots singer and songwriter who was at the forefront of a resurgent contemporary Scottish folk scene in the 1970s as the voice of the Edinburgh-formed group Silly Wizard. In their early days the band held a residency at the small but popular Triangle Folk Club in the city, a Saturday night haunt which typified Edinburgh’s rich folk scene of the time alongside venues like the Crown and Edinburgh Folk Club; at the height of their popularity they toured to great appreciation in Europe and the United States – and sold out an annual engagement at the Playhouse during the Edinburgh Festival. The reasons for Silly Wizard’s success were many, but easy to broadly sum up: on the one hand, the striking musical virtuosity of the prodigiously talented young brothers Johnny and Phil Cunningham from Portobello, on the other the marvelously soft but powerful vocal ability of Stewart, and in between the skills of key prime-era members Gordon Jones and Martin Hadden.
A well-spoken raconteur on the live stage, whose ability to introduce his songs informatively and with genuine humor enhanced the experience of hearing them, Stewart wrote music and lyrics which are – particularly in the case of his ballads – rich and still freshly emotive. A skilled banjo player who used his middle initial to distinguish himself from the elder Scots singer who shared his name, Stewart’s skills lay in interpreting Scottish folk standards and in writing additions to the canon which were at once traditional and modern. His songs ran a range of emotions from the delicate romance of The Queen of Argyll to the knowing humor of The Ramblin’ Rover.  From: https://www.scotsman.com/news/obituaries/obituary-andy-m-stewart-singer-and-songwriter-1997406

By the Hush / Paddy's Lamentation

O.J. Abbott from Hull, Quebec, sang the emigrant and Civil War song By the Hush, Me Boys in a 1957 field recording made by Edith Fowke. It was included in 1961 on his Folkways album Irish and British Songs from the Ottawa Valley, and in 1975 on the Leader album Far Canadian Fields, which was offered as the acoustic companion to Fowke's Penguin Book of Canadian Folk Songs. She noted in the Leader album's booklet:
Although this song obviously came out of the American Civil War it seems to be unknown in the United States. O.J. Abbott learned it from Mrs. O'Malley, the wife of an Ottawa valley farmer, for whom he worked back in the 1880s. We can only surmise that she must have heard it from some Irish-American who wandered up to Canada after the Civil War.
This is an interesting combination of two themes common in many Irish songs: that of emigrating, and of becoming involved in other countries' wars. Of course thousands of Irish emigrants did ‘fight for Lincoln’, and the ‘General Mahar’ mentioned was probably General Thomas Francis Meagher, commander of the famous Irish Brigade that distinguished itself on the heights of Fredericksburg and in the battle of Richmond. His promise of a pension ‘if you get shot or lose your head’ is a fine example of Irish graveyard humour.

Edith Fowke collected this song, also known as Paddy's Lamentation, in 1957, from O.J. Abbott (1872-1962) who was born in Enfield, England, and came across to work in Ontario lumber camps. It has been found in print as a broadside ballad called Pat in America, but it appears that Abbott's version might be the only one collected in oral tradition. The realisation that Irish immigrants were essentially drafted off the ships into the Union Army during the Civil War provides the distressing backdrop for this song. General Meagher led the renowned Irish-American Sixty-Ninth Brigade from New York.

Will Finn and Rosie Calvert sang Paddy's Lamentation in 2018 on their Haystack album Beneath This Place. They noted: A song from the Irish Diaspora, this story was unfortunately true for millions of Irish immigrants who fled terrible conditions in Ireland for the promise of a new start in America, only to be conscripted into a civil war that they had no stake in.

More Maids sang By the Hush on their 2021 CD Fourmaids. They noted: This song is among the first ones Barbara Coerdt learnt when she started getting interested in Irish Music, and she is very grateful to have come across it on Andy M. Stewart's epic solo recording. It is one of the saddest emigrant songs as it tells the story of a man who gets no chance to start a new life but is drawn into the American Civil War, loses his leg and is denied the pension he was promised. In the end he only wishes to be back home, poor in “dear old Erin”—“dear old Ireland”.

From: https://mainlynorfolk.info/folk/songs/bythehush.html

Laboratorium Piesni - Lecieli Zurauli

 #Laboratorium Piesni #world music #European folk #Eastern European folk #traditional #polyphonic chant #Slavic folk music #a capella #white voice #Polish #music video

Laboratorium Piesni (polish: Song Laboratory) is a female-run collective music project, founded in Poland in 2013. The vast majority of their songs are from Polish and Eastern European folk traditions, though they also incorporate other sources. They also host workshops to help people develop their voice and “awaken the human musicality.” Laboratorium Piesni’s primary musical focus is polyphony (multiple voices with little to no musical accompaniment), which is the dominant form of ritual and folk music for animist cultures, also  surviving into Europe as a dominant form into the 1500’s. This music is also known as “a capella,” but many groups have moved away from this Christian label (“a capella” literally means, “in the way of the chapel”).  From: https://abeautifulresistance.org/pagan-music-list/2019/3/23/the-pagan-music-list-2

The band Laboratorium Pieśni can attest to the fact that local and indigenous culture is becoming more and more popular in the globalized world. Let the question of quantity not be an indicator of their quality, but the fact that the Facebook group is followed by over 80,000 people is telling and shows that such music arouses interest. Their white voice is interesting and very eloquent in the 21st century. Thanks to this, the eight-member band also serve as anthropologists who, traveling around various corners, bring various traditional songs into the workshop to present them in their own polyphonic interpretations.
Laboratorium Pieśni draws a vocal map of Central and Eastern Europe (Belarus, Poland, Ukraine), and also the Balkans, Georgia and Scandinavia. It seems that there are no limits, and the singers' heads are full of ideas and enthusiasm for finding songs from different cultures. Many of the songs are sung a capella, but some of them gain accompaniment in the form of subtly introduced shamanic drums, bells or percussions. Thanks to this, the vocals gain a multidimensional character and space. At the same time, they do not obscure the content, on which you can fully concentrate thanks to the simplicity prevailing here. "Rosna", the long-awaited album, collects all these interests on one release. It shows the band in more mystical songs, those taken straight from indigenous villages, but also more lively songs, such as the Finnish "Käppee", which breaks with its Slavic origin. Girls often choose love topics for the workshop, devoted to interpersonal relationships - the album comes with lyrics with translations, thanks to which the songs are more communicative and understandable. But even if we don't decipher them during the first listening, the music still sounds mysterious, shamanic and blunt. In the era of post-produced recordings and sound-packed tracks, such clean vocals, devoid of effects, are perfect hygiene for the ear, because they remind us that something seemingly simple can be complex and multi-threaded at the same time.  Translated from: http://noweidzieodmorza.com/pl/9212-laboratorium-piesni-rosna/