Here are my picks for the Top 10
folk-rooted or folk-branched albums of 2020. As in past years, I started with
the list of hundreds of new albums (including reissues) that I listened to over
the past year and narrowed it down to a short list of about 30. I’ve been over
the short list several times over the past couple of weeks and came up with
several similar – not identical – Top 10 lists. Today’s list is the final one.
The order might have been slightly different, and there are several other
worthy albums that might have been included, had one of the other lists
represented the final choice.
1. Joni Mitchell –
Archives –
Volume 1: The Early Years (1963-1967) (Rhino). When we first meet 20-year-old
Saskatoon folksinger
Joni Mitchell (then
Joan Anderson) in a 1963
radio station demo session and at a coffeehouse concert the following year, on
the first of this set’s five CDs, she was singing traditional songs and a
couple of
Woody Guthrie classics, accompanying herself on a ukulele. In
short order, though, through more demo recordings, radio and TV show
appearances, and live sets, we hear her rapid development into one of
the most accomplished singer-songwriters of our time and, through her use of
open tunings, an influential guitarist as well. Many of the songs would later
appear on Joni’s first four albums and some are rarities not heard for
more than a half-century.
2. Laura Smith –
As Long As I’m
Dreaming (Borealis). The untimely loss of beloved folksinger and
singer-songwriter
Laura Smith from pancreatic cancer in March was one of
the first blows in what became a most difficult year. Last year, Laura began
work on assembling a best-of collection and, indeed, 11 of the 18 excellent songs
on this set are drawn from the four albums –
Laura Smith,
B’tween the
Earth and My Soul,
It’s a Personal Thing and
Everything is Moving
– she released between 1989 and 2013. There are also three superb songs
recorded in the 1970s; a poignant version of “Passchendaele,”
Tony
Quarington’s song inspired by devastating Canadian losses in a First World
War battle; a jazz standard; and two sublime new songs, including the title
track, recorded just weeks before Laura passed.
3. Bob Dylan –
Rough and Rowdy Ways (Columbia).
On his first album of new songs in eight years,
Bob Dylan, at 79, has
given us his some of his most fascinating songs in decades. From the opening
song, “I Contain Multitudes,” an exploration of complicated identity, to the
final, epic song, “Murder Most Foul,” ostensibly about the assassination of
John
F. Kennedy, but also much about iconic music, cinema and literature, Dylan
continues to use a musical foundation drawing on folk music, blues and the
Great American Songbook composers to complement his often-spellbinding lyrics.
4. John McCutcheon –
Cabin
Fever: Songs from the Quarantine (Appalsongs).
John McCutcheon spent the early months of the COVID-19 lockdown
writing and recording songs that astutely capture, in one way or another, the
experiences that most of us have shared in these strange days. Among the
highlights of these 17 songs are the poignant “Front Line,” written from the
perspective of a healthcare worker on the frontlines during the first few weeks
of the pandemic; “The Night John Prine Died,” which expresses the sorrow so many
of us felt at the loss, from COVID, of one of our greatest singer-songwriters;
and “My Dog Talking Blues,” which gives us something to smile about at a time
when something to smile about is desperately needed.
5. Leyla McCalla –
Vari-Colored
Songs: A Tribute to Langston Hughes (Smithsonian Folkways). This compelling
album, an expanded version of
Leyla McCalla’s first solo album released
by Music Maker Relief Foundation in 2014, includes
Leyla’s musical settings of poems by Langston
Hughes, as well as other original songs, and several traditional Haitian
folk songs. Singing and playing cello, banjo and guitar, Leyla’s powerful
performances draw the listener in – whether on pieces like Hughes’ “Song for a
Dark Girl,” an explicit exploration of racism and lynching which takes on even
more meaning in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, or “Manman Mwen,”
a young girl’s lament over an unwanted pregnancy.
6. Eliza Gilkyson –
2020 (Red
House). Even though
Eliza Gilkyson recorded this album before the
pandemic, much of it obviously as food-for-thought in the American election year,
the album does capture the zeitgeist of 2020, beginning in the first verse of
the first song, “Promises to Keep,” when she sings, “I’ve been crying in the
dark of night/I can’t find my way to sleep/Thoughts and prayers will never make
things right/And I have promises to keep.” Among the other outstanding songs is
“Beach Haven,” which Eliza adapted from a letter written in 1952 by
Woody
Guthrie, to
Fred Trump, his racist landlord, after discovering Trump
would not rent to non-whites.
7. Steel Rail –
Coming Home (Crossties).
Finally, 15 years after their third album,
Steel Rail – the trio of
Dave
Clarke (lead guitar, harmony vocals),
Tod Gorr (guitar, lead
and harmony vocals) and
Ellen Shizgal (bass, lead and harmony vocals) –
has released its fourth album combining finely-crafted songs (all three
contribute songs, some in collaboration with
Lucinda Chodan) with
sublime singing and playing from the three-way corner of folk, bluegrass and
country music.
8. Lynn Miles –
We’ll Look for
Stars (Must Have Music). As she sings in “Old Soul,”
Lynn Miles
“knows how to spot trouble and heartache a mile away. She doesn’t ignore it,
she goes and explores it, to see what it has to say.” Indeed, in this set of 11
fine songs, Lynn combines astute observations about affairs of the heart and
the state of our troubled world with beautiful melodies and always-gorgeous
singing. And, as she reveals in the album’s finale, it’s “because we love,”
that it’s all worthwhile.
9. Kronos Quartet –
Long Time
Passing: Kronos Quartet and Friends Celebrate Pete Seeger (Smithsonian
Folkways). To pay tribute to the great
Pete Seeger,
the
Kronos
Quartet, for decades among the most visionary and daring of classical
ensembles, with help from singers
Sam Amidon,
Maria Arnal,
Brian
Carpenter,
Lee Knight,
Meklit, and
Aoife O’Donovan has
gloriously reimagined a group of songs from Pete’s repertoire (plus “The
President Sang Amazing Grace,” a song they note, “could not exist but for the
life’s work of Pete Seeger”). As well, there is the album’s centerpiece,
“Storyteller,” an extended audio collage created by
Jacob Garchik which
uses Pete’s own voice, among others, to tell some of his story.
10. Suzzy Roche & Lucy Wainwright Roche –
I Can Still Hear You (StorySound). In many ways, it almost seems as
if the mother-daughter duo of
Suzzy Roche and
Lucy Wainwright Roche
is carrying on the traditions of
The Roches, the longstanding trio that
Suzzy formed with her sisters, the late
Maggie Roche, and
Terre Roche,
in the 1970s. Like The Roches, Suzzy and Lucy give us unique, sometimes quirky songs
(and I use the word “quirky” in the most complementary of ways) dressed up in
often stunning harmonies. Among the highlights here are Lucy’s title song,
which I interpret as a plea, in these COVID times, to remember one another and
those we’ve lost; Suzzy’s “Joseph D,” a commentary on an abusive husband that I
also hear as an indictment of trumpian behavior; “Factory Girl,” a traditional
Irish folk song recorded four decades ago by The Roches; and “Jane,” a previously
unrecorded song of Maggie Roche’s.
I will be featuring songs from
each of these albums when I host the Saturday Morning program on CKCU on
Saturday, January 2, 7-10 am. (The program is now available 24/7 for on-demand streaming at this link.)
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–Mike Regenstreif
