Top 10 for 2024

Here are my picks for the Top 10 folk-rooted or folk-branched albums of 2024. I started with a list of about 30 superb albums released between December 2023 and November 2024. I’ve been over the 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. Any new albums that arrive between now and the end of the year will be considered for my 2025 list. 

1. Perla Batalla – A Letter to Leonard Cohen: Tribute to a Friend (Mechuda Music). Early in her career, in the late-1980s and ‘90s, Perla Batalla toured the world as a backup singer in Leonard Cohen’s band. I remember being mesmerized by her singing as I sat front row, centre at the St. Denis Theatre in Montreal in 1988. In 2004, Perla released the superb collection, Bird on the Wire: The Songs of Leonard Cohen, and now follows up with this sublime album. She includes superb versions of eight of Leonard’s songs; a version of “The Partisan,” a song from the French Resistance in the World War II that Leonard made his own; and two of Perla’s original songs inspired by her friend and mentor.

2. James Talley – Ballads, Bandits and Blues (Cimarron). James Talley has been one of my favorite singer-songwriters since he released Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, but We Sure Got a Lot of Love in 1974. On Ballads, Bandits and Blues, James sings compassionate songs about old west outlaws, family, a missed dog, and – most importantly – common folk victimized by forces beyond their control.

3. Lenka Lichtenberg – Feel with Blood (Six Degrees). Feel with Blood by Lenka Lichtenberg, the second album that Lenka has done based on poems written by Anna Hana Friesová, her maternal grandmother, while she was a prisoner at the Theresienstadt concentration camp during the Holocaust. While Thieves of Dreams, her first album of this material was largely sung in Czech, this album is largely sung in English translation.

4. Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens – American Railroad (Nonesuch). The Silkroad Ensemble is a multicultural group of musicians founded by Yo-Yo Ma and now under the artistic direction of Rhiannon Giddens. As explained on the Silkroad Ensemble website, American Railroad, was inspired by the impact that African American, Chinese, Indigenous, Irish, and other immigrant communities had on the creation of the transcontinental and connecting railways in North America.

5. Eric Bibb – Live at the Scala Theatre (Stony Plain) and In the Real World (Stony Plain). The always inspiring Eric Bibb, who has been a favorite folk and acoustic blues performer for many years, released both a live album, Live at the Scala Theatre, and a studio album, In the Real World, this year and both are deserving of inclusion on this list, so I decided to bend my list and have two albums share a slot.

6. Chris Rawlings – Two Sides to Your Story (Cookingfat Music). I’ve known Chris Rawlings since circa 1970 and I think that Two Sides to Your Story – featuring stellar backup from Henry Heillig and Jim Hoke – is his best (and best sounding) album yet. Among the highlights is a new version of “Smoker’s Lullaby,” a piece that Chris sang the first time I heard him about 55 years ago, featuring slightly edited lyrics that make a great song even better – and whose opening line gives the album its title.

7. Carla Sciaky – Heart of the Swan (Propinquity). Heart of the Swan, the first solo album in about 30 years by Carla Sciaky, marks a triumphant return of a fine singer and songwriter who was unheard from for too long. This is an album of quiet power with several tracks featuring recurring instrumental or vocal passages from the traditional ballad, “Polly Vaughn,” about a hunter mistakes the woman he loves for a swan.

8. American Patchwork Quartet – American Patchwork Quartet (Carolina Jasmine). American Patchwork Quartet is a multicultural group whose members are both ethnically and musically diverse, traits which they bring to their delightfully re-imagined versions of 14 traditional folksongs that demonstrate how relevant and powerful traditional source material remains for contemporary music.

9. Joel Mabus – Lonesome Road: Suite for Solo Guitar and Voice – Songs of the Lost Generation 1924-1928 (Fossil). Joel Mabus, a longtime veteran of the folk music scene, is a fine singer and player of many stringed instruments. Joel is also an excellent songwriter whose work is well informed by his knowledge of diverse styles including traditional balladry, old-time country, bluegrass, jazz, vintage pop and blues. On Lonesome Road: Suite for Solo Guitar and Voice – Songs of the Lost Generation 1924-1928 Joel offers fine versions of 14 classic songs written between 1924 and 1928.

10. Grayson Capps – Heartbreak, Misery & Death (Royal Potato Family). On Heartbreak, Misery & Death, Grayson Capps, a singer-songwriter from Alabama well-versed in folk and blues styles, turns his attention to really nice versions of traditional folksongs and contemporary folk classics written by the likes of Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot, Jerry Jeff Walker and Randy Newman.

I will be featuring songs from each of these albums on Stranger Songs, Tuesday December 3, 3:30-5 pm (ET), on CKCU. The program will also be available 24/7 for on-demand streaming and the link will be posted here as soon as it is available. 

–Mike Regenstreif