Folk Roots/Folk Branches with Mike Regenstreif

Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – November 26, 2024: Immigration, Part 2

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif finds connections and develops themes in various genres. The show is broadcast on CKCU, 93.1 FM, in Ottawa on Tuesdays from 3:30 until 5 pm (Eastern time) and is also available 24/7 for on-demand streaming.

This episode of Stranger Songs was recorded and can be streamed on-demand, now or anytime, by clicking on “Listen Now” at … https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/595/67838.html

Theme: Immigration, Part 2.

Maria Dunn- Immigrant Dreams

Piece By Piece (Distant Whisper)

Joe Jencks- I’m a Stranger in This Land

The Forgotten: Recovered Treasures from the Pen of Si Kahn (Turtle Bear Music)

Rude Girls- Crossing the Border

Mixed Messages (Flying Fish)

Si Kahn- Lady of the Harbor

Best of the Rest (Strictly Country)

John McCutcheon- Third Way

Leap! (Appalsongs)

David Massengill- My Name Joe

Coming Up for Air (Flying Fish)

Grit Laskin- Sewing Machines

Unabashedly Folk (Borealis)

Mara Levine- Immigrant Dream

Jewels and Harmony (Mara’s Creations)

Brendan Nolan- The Curse of the Immigrant

Across the Great Divide (Ould Sagosha)

Martha Trachtenberg & Dede Wyland- Ticket Back

It’s About Time (Mom and Pop)

Crabtree & Mills- Across the Borderline

Flight of Fancy (Free and Easy Music)

Diana Jones- El Chaparral

Song to a Refugee (Goldmine)

Jackson Browne- The Dreamer

Downhill from Everywhere (Inside Recordings)

James Talley- Christmas on the Rio Grande

Ballads, Bandits and Blues (Cimarron)

Guy Clark- Immigrant Eyes

Old Friends (Sugar Hill)

Eric Andersen- Eyes of the Immigrants

Woodstock Under the Stars (Y&T Music)

C. Daniel Boling- All of Us are Immigrants

Love, Dan (Berkalin)

Carla Sciaky- For Nyla

Heart of the Swan (Propinquity)

Ben Caplan- Traveller’s Curse

Old Stock (Rhyme and Reason)

Ben Caplan- You’ve Arrived

Old Stock (Rhyme and Reason)

Next week: Songs from my Top 10 Folk-Rooted and Folk-Branched albums of 2024.

--Mike Regenstreif

Wednesday, November 13, 2024

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – November 19, 2024: Immigration, Part 1 – The Man from God Knows Where

This episode of Stranger Songs was recorded and can be streamed on-demand, now or anytime, by clicking on “Listen Now” at … https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/595/67731.html

Theme: Immigration, Part 1 – The Man from God Knows Where.

As I wrote in Sing Out magazine in 1999 … Thomas Russell was a leader of the United Irish Rebellion in the 1790s. Two centuries later, singer and songwriter Tom Russell was playing a gig in Downpatrick, Ireland when he was approached by an old man in a bar. “Thomas Russell,” he said, “we hung you across the road in 1798.” Tom bought the old man a pint of beer and heard the story of his namesake and of the narrative poem about him called “The Man from God Knows Where.”

For several years prior to that encounter, Tom had been working on a song-cycle that began when a phrase, “American primitive man in an American primitive land,” occurred to him. Originally, Tom conceived the piece as a long tone-poem that would tell some of the history of America absent from the standard history texts. But as he wrote, Tom soon recognized that his own family’s history would provide much of the raw material he needed to tell a compelling story of immigration and the pursuit of the American Dream.

So, more than 200 years after Thomas Russell’s hanging, the man from God knows where is resurrected to observe and to chronicle the struggles, tragedies and joys of the Russells and Malloys who immigrate to the United States from Ireland in the nineteenth century, and of the Larsens and Olsens who come from Norway, and of their lineage through to today’s Tom Russell.

Tom Russell’s The Man from God Knows Where is more than just a song-cycle, it’s a fully realized folk-opera featuring Tom and a superb cast of American, Irish and Norwegian singers. Using singers with authentic Irish, Norwegian and rural and urban American accents helps provide authenticity to the voices of Russell’s ancestors and to the other characters who are brought to life in the folk-opera. As well, Tom frequently utilizes distinctly Irish and Norwegian instruments and musical forms to complement the more familiar American folk styles that run through the score to The Man from God Knows Where.

Tom wrote most of the songs we hear in The Man from God Knows Where. There are also some traditional folksongs, a song written by David Massengill, and a poem by Walt Whitman.

Tom Russell- The Man from God Knows Where