Saturday Morning with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – Saturday April 29, 2017

Saturday Morning is an eclectic roots-oriented program on CKCU in Ottawa heard live on Saturday mornings from 7 until 10 am (Eastern time) and then available for on-demand streaming. I am one of the four rotating hosts of Saturday Morning and base my programming on the Folk Roots/Folk Branches format I developed at CKUT in Montreal.

CKCU can be heard at 93.1 FM in Ottawa and http://www.ckcufm.com/ on the web.

This episode of Saturday Morning can be streamed on-demand at http://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/128/32143.html.

Extended theme – Songs of Ian & Sylvia

Scott Cook- Further Down the Line

Further Down the Line (Scott Cook)

Chaim Tannenbaum- Coal Man Blues

Chaim Tannenbaum (StorySound)

Kate & Anna McGarrigle & Roma Baran- Willie Moore

Tell My Sister (Nonesuch)

Jim Kweskin & Geoff Muldaur- Diamond Joe

Penny’s Farm (Kingswood)

Kaia Kater- White (Long Time Traveling)

Nine Pin (Kaia Kater)

Jayme Stone, Moira Smiley, Sumaia Jackson, Joe Phillips, Felicity Williams & Denzal Sinclaire- Candy Gal

Jayme Stone’s Folklife (Borealis)

Doug McArthur- Tears Like Rain

Tears Like Rain (Doug McArthur)

David Clayton Thomas- Early Mornin’ Rain

Canadiana (Antoinette/ILS)

Michael Earnie Taylor Orchestra- Calgary Song

$3 Pants (Laughing Cactus Music)

Katy Moffatt- Love Made a Gypsy Out of Me

Where the Heart Is (Centerfire Music)

Skinner & T'witch- England’s Spring

The Fool’s Journey (Skinner & T’witch)

Joe Newberry & April Verch- I’m Going Home

Going Home (Slab Town)

David Olney- My Lovely Assistant

Migration (Loudhouse)

Brock Zeman- The Moon Ain’t Full

The Carnival is Back in Town (Busted Flat)

Andy Cohen- Spread the News Around

Road Be Kind (Earwig)

Happy Traum- Careless Love Blues

Just for the Love of It (Lark’s Nest Music)

Guy Davis & Fabrizio Poggi- Step It Up and Go

Sonny & Brownie’s Last Train (M.C.)

Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee- Freight Train

Back to New Orleans (Fantasy)

Spook Handy- Banks of Marble

Keep the Flame Alive: Pete, Woody & Me – Volume 1 (Akashic)

Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer- Get Up and Do Right

Get Up and Do Right (Community Music)

Penny Lang- Never Turning Back

Carry On Children (She-Wolf)

Pete Seeger- L’Internationale

Singalong, Sanders Theatre, 1980 (Smithsonian Folkways)

Tom Russell- Play One More

Play One More: The Songs of Ian & Sylvia (True North)

Dave Van Ronk- Four Strong Winds

Live in Monterey (Omnivore)

Judy Roderick- You Were On My Mind

Woman Blue (Vanguard)

Ian & Sylvia- Maude’s Blues

Early Morning Rain (Vanguard)

Tom Russell- Rio Grande

Play One More: The Songs of Ian & Sylvia (True North)

Rosalie Sorrels- Trucker’s Café

Travelin’ Lady Rides Again (Green Linnet)

Ian & Sylvia- Smiling Wine

Great Speckled Bird (Stony Plain)

Michael Earnie Taylor Orchestra featuring Carol Miller- Someday Soon

$3 Pants (Laughing Cactus Music)

Tom Russell- Short Grass

Play One More: The Songs of Ian & Sylvia (True North)

Bill Garrett- Red Velvet

Bill Garrett (Borealis)

Bill & Bonnie Hearne- Wild Geese

Diamonds in the Rough (Warner Western)

Ian & Sylvia- Lonely Girls

Play One More (Vanguard)

Tom Russell- The Renegade

Play One More: The Songs of Ian & Sylvia (True North)

Fourtold- Four Rode By

Fourtold (Appleseed)

Nanci Griffith & Tom Russell- Summer Wages

Other Voices, Too (A Trip Back to Bountiful) (Elektra)

Ian & Sylvia- Farewell to the North

Nashville (Vanguard)

Sylvia Tyson & Mike Regenstreif (1997)

Bill Staines- The French Girl

Beneath Some Lucky Star (Red House)

Sylvia Tyson- Chocolate Cigarettes

Gypsy Cadillac (Silver City)

Ian Tyson- Navajo Rug

Live at Longview (Stony Plain)

Tom Russell- These Friends of Mine

Play One More: The Songs of Ian & Sylvia (True North)

Fourtold- Darcy Farrow

Fourtold (Appleseed)

Ian & Sylvia- Rocks and Gravel

Ian & Sylvia (Vanguard)

String Madness- Barrow Street Dream

Eye of the Beholder (String Madness)

I’ll be hosting Saturday Morning next on May 27.

Find me on Twitter. @MikeRegenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Michael Earnie Taylor Orchestra – $3 Pants

MICHAEL EARNIE TAYLOR ORCHESTRA

$3 Pants

Laughing Cactus Music

Michael Earnie Taylor Orchestra on Facebook

Once upon a time – or, more accurately, the 1970s – my favorite Canadian band was a folk-bluegrass-country-jug band from Saskatoon called Humphrey & the Dumptrucks. I met the Dumptrucks – guitarists and lead singers Michael “Earnie” Taylor and Graeme Card, banjo and Dobro maestro Gary “Humphrey” Walsh and acoustic bassist Michael “Bear” Millar – for the first time, circa 1972, when I was helping to run the Yellow Door Coffee House in Montreal and they came to play a weekend gig.

The band was tight, they wrote great original material, and their shows and LPs were always a guaranteed good time. Graeme left the band in 1973 and Humphrey & the Dumptrucks carried on as a trio that was just as good and just as entertaining. I brought them back to Montreal to play at the concert series I was running at Dawson College in ‘73 – which I recall being one of the best attended shows ever during that two-year series – and they played at the Golem, the folk club I was running in Montreal in 1976 when they came to town for an extended run at Centaur Theatre of “Cruel Tears,” the country-and-western opera they co-wrote with playwright Ken Mitchell, as part of the cultural programming for the Summer Olympic Games. “Cruel Tears” was one of the most memorable Canadian theatrical productions of that era.

While none of the terrific LPs recorded by Humphrey & the Dumptrucks has ever been reissued on CD, you can hear some of them on YouTube.

The Dumptrucks broke up in the early-1980s and Michael “Earnie” Taylor settled in Stratford, Ontario where he worked for the Stratford Festival for many years and continued playing music. He formed a band called Me & My Uncle (with Humphrey on banjo) which released a terrific self-titled CD in 1996. He followed that with an equally terrific CD called Folk ‘n’ Western released under his own name in 2002.

Now, 15 years since the last CD, comes $3 Pants by the Michael Earnie Taylor Orchestra (METO). In addition to Michael on guitar, kazoo and most lead vocals, METO includes Jeff Laughton – who was in Me & My Uncle and also played on Folk ‘n’ Western – on acoustic bass and harmony vocals; Ross Mulligan on electric and nylon-string guitars; and Terri Dans and Carol Miller on kazoo and vocals. Terri and Carol each take the lead vocal on one song.

The album opens with a fun version of “Ring of Fire,” a Johnny Cash hit from 1964. Cash’s version of the song featured an instantly recognizable intro and fills played by a mariachi horn section while METO’s kazoo trio plays those parts here. You can tell that METO’s arrangement is both tongue-in-cheek and respectful.

Then comes a new version of “Calgary Song,” one of Michael’s original songs from Six Days of Paper Ladies, the first Humphrey & the Dumptrucks LP. Hearing it again after all these years reminded me of great times listening to the Dumptrucks and of the time Michael showed me the guitar chords for “Calgary Song” about 45 years ago. $3 Pants also includes a new version “Clyde Beattie,” also first recorded on Six Days of Paper Ladies, Michael’s memory of the lion tamer in a circus that came through Saskatoon when he was 10.

There are also new versions of “Lady of the Prairie” and “One More for the Women,” two of the songs from “Cruel Tears.” Although it’s been more than 40 years since I’ve seen the show, hearing them on this CD brought back visual memories of the scenes in “Cruel Tears” in which they were sung.

Among the other highlights on $3 Pants are Michael’s “Tourist Town,” an infectious boogie modeled on Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee’s “Spread the News Around” that spoofs Stratford (the opening line is taken from William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”) and a deeply-felt version of Bruce “Utah” Phillips’ emotional “Rock Salt and Nails”with countrypolitan harmonies by Terri and Carol.

This album will certainly be appreciated by anyone who remembers Humphrey & the Dumptrucks – and should also win lots of new fans for the Michael Earnie Taylor Orchestra.

Pictured: The Michael Earnie Taylor Orchestra – (from left) Ross Mulligan, Michael “Earnie” Taylor, Terri Dans, Carol Miller and Jeff Laughton.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif