Saturday Morning with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – Saturday November 4, 2023

Saturday Morning is an eclectic roots-oriented program on CKCU, 93.1 FM, in Ottawa on Saturday mornings from 7 until 10 am (Eastern time) and available for on-demand streaming anytime. I am one of the four rotating hosts of the Saturday Morning show. 

This episode of Saturday Morning was recorded and can be streamed on-demand, now or anytime, by clicking on “Listen Now” at … https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/128/62598.html

Julie Felix- Mr. Tambourine Man

Starry Eyed and Laughing… Songs by Bob Dylan (Remarkable)

Orit Shimoni- Winnipeg

Winnipeg (Orit Shimoni)

The Fugitives- (No Help)

No Help Coming (Fallen Tree)

The Fugitives- Edge of the Sea

No Help Coming (Fallen Tree)

Bob & Sarah Amos- The Hills That I Call Home

Ever Onward (Bristlecone) 

Kathy Kallick Band- It’s Lonesome Everywhere I Go

The Lonesome Chronicles (Live Oak)

Daniel Kahn & Jake Shulman-Ment- Yeder Eyner Veys (Everybody Knows)

The Building and Other Songs (Oriente Musik)

Leonard Cohen- Everybody Knows

I’m Your Man (Columbia)

Art of Time Ensemble featuring Steven Page- A Singer Must Die

Songs of Leonard Cohen Live (Art of Time Recordings)

Jennifer Warnes- First We Take Manhattan

Famous Blue Raincoat: The Songs of Leonard Cohen 20th Anniversary Edition (Shout! Factory)

Connie Kaldor- Leads to a Kiss

Keep Going (Coyote Entertainment)

Shelley Posen- I Want to Write a Standard

Old Loves (Well Done Music)

Mike Regenstreif & Missy Burgess (2014)

Missy Burgess- Smile

Play Me Sweet (Missy Burgess) 

Paul Mills- Doc’s Guitar

The Other Side of the Glass (Borealis)

Too Sad for the Public featuring Ana Egge- G. Burns in the Bottom (pt 1)

Vol.2 – Yet and Still: Traditional American Folk Song-Stirring by Dick Connette (StorySound)

Orit Shimoni- What Does It Matter

Winnipeg (Orit Shimoni)

Colin Cutler with Laura Jane Vincent, Dashawn & Wendy Hickman, Aaron Pants, Rebekah Todd, David Childers- Temple of the Holy Ghost

Tarwater (Colin Cutler)

Too Sad for the Public- G. Burns in the Bottom (pt 2)

Vol.2 – Yet and Still: Traditional American Folk Song-Stirring by Dick Connette (StorySound)

Deborah Holland- Brother, Can You Spare a Dime

The Panic is On: Songs from the Great Depression (Gadfly)

Deborah Holland- Do Re Mi

The Panic is On: Songs from the Great Depression (Gadfly)

Wenzel- I Don’t Feel at Home on the Bowery No More

Ticky Tock: Wenzel Sings Woody Guthrie (Conträr Musik)

Woody Guthrie- This Land is Your Land – alternate version

This Land is Your Land: The Asch Recordings Vol. 1 (Smithsonian Folkways)

Daniel Kahn & Jake Shulman-Ment- Dos Land iz Dayn Land (This Land is Your Land)

The Building and Other Songs (Oriente Musik)

Ray Bonneville- Night Cab

On the Blind Side (Stonefly)

Last Birds- After Dark

Endless Turn of Day into Night (Last Birds)

Kerri Powers- Someone Else’s Prayer

Love is Why (Must Have Music)

Tom Paxton & John McCutcheon- Do the Work

Together (Appalseed)

Alice Gerrard- Sun to Sun

Sun to Sun (Sleepy Cat)

Misty Blues- How Long Blues

Tell Me Who You Are: A Live Tribute to Odetta (Guitar One)

Odetta, Dave Keyes & Mike Regenstreif (2008)

Odetta- Careless Love/St. Louis Blues

Blues Everywhere I Go (M.C.)

I will be joining Ron Olesko of the Folk Music Notebook to MC the Greenwich Village Folk Festival's free online concert on Sunday, November 5, 7 pm (ET). You can watch the concert live at this link. It will also be archived for later viewing.

Andrew Calhoun- John’s Wife

Staring at the Sun: Songs 1973-1981 (Waterbug)

Mary Flower- Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams

Ragtime Gal (Bluesette)

Cliff Eberhardt- Man in the Moon

Knew Things (Tin Pan Ally)

Tret Fure- The Language of Love

Lavender Moonshine (Tomboy girl)

Dean Friedman- Ariel

Dean Friedman (Real Life)

Windborne- Grey Funnel Line

Recollections/Revolutions (Wand’ring Feet)

David Francey- Harbour

The Breath Between (Laker Music)

Orit Shimoni- Witness

Winnipeg (Orit Shimoni)

Tom Waits- Tom Traubert’s Blues

Small Change (Asylum)

Daniel Kahn & Jake Shulman-Ment- Tom Trauberts Kloglid (Tom Traibert’s Blues)

The Building and Other Songs (Oriente Musik)

Finest Kind- Give Me Just a Little More Time

Lost in a Song (Fallen Angle)

I’ll be hosting Saturday Morning next on December 2. I also host Stranger Songs on CKCU every Tuesday from 3:30-5 pm. 

--Mike Regenstreif

Various Artists – Big Bend Killing: The Appalachian Ballad Tradition

VARIOUS ARTISTS

Big Bend Killing: The Appalachian Ballad Tradition

Great Smoky Mountain Association

smokiesinformation.org

While much of the attention in modern folk music circles is centered on contemporary singer-songwriters, traditional folk music rooted in ancient balladry remains a vital force in the music. And while there is much to be said for the argument that that the oral folk tradition through which these traditions were passed from generation to generation began to disappear with the advent of recording and mass media in the 20th century, there are still musical families in areas like the Appalachian mountains in the U.S. who continue to maintain their traditions of passing down songs, and traditional revivalists who have learned the music through contact with both source singers and recordings who have maintained and expanded the traditions.

Big Bend Killing: The Appalachian Ballad Tradition is a compelling 2-CD exploration of traditional folksongs found in the Appalachian Mountains – some of them well-known, some of them more obscure – performed by a range of artists, likewise some well-known and some not, including both contemporary members of traditional singing families and revivalists.

Each of the 32 performances – 31 of them previously unreleased and most recorded specifically for this project – on Big Bend Killing is performed with both reverence for tradition and compelling vitality.

The first CD includes 13 performances of songs that originated in the British Isles and that became staples of the traditional Appalachian repertoire. While most of the songs are performed by American artists, there are four tracks by artists from across the pond. Scottish ballad singer Archie Fisher turns in lovely versions of two long ballads, “Thomas the Rhymer” and “Tam Lin” in which the events described in the songs unfold vividly, while the British trio of Martin Simpson, Andy Cutting and Nancy Kerr offers equally gripping versions of “The Sheffield Apprentice” and “Willie Taylor.”

Other highlights on the first CD include versions of “Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender” by veteran Appalachian traditional singer Sheila Kay Adams and “Mathy Groves” by her younger cousin Donna Ray Norton; and two versions of “Barbara Allen” by Carol Elizabeth Jones and Rosanne Cash.

The 19 songs on the second CD include several distinctively Appalachian versions of British Isles ballads but centres mostly on ballads that were originally sung in the Appalachians – including “Tom Dula,” perhaps the best known Appalachian ballad thanks to its popularization as the Kingston Trio’s hit, “Tom Dooley.” The rendition here, sung sadly by Laura Boosinger with backing by the Krüger Brothers, draws the listener into the sad tale of the murder of Laura Foster.

Murder is a theme explored in many traditional ballads and other compelling performances of murder ballads on the second CD include “Pretty Polly,” sung by Amythyst Kiah with backing by Roy Andrade; “Omie Wise,” sung by Hasee Ciaccio with fiddler Kalia Yeagle; the familiar “Banks of the Ohio,” performed by Doyle Lawson; “Knoxville Girl,” sung by Kristi Hedtke and Corbin Hayslett; “Big Bend Killing,” a song I’d not heard before, performed by the great Alice Gerrard; and “Old Joe Dawson,” another one I’d not heard before, sung a cappella by Bobby McMillon.

Other highlights on the second CD include a great version of the well-known African American blues ballad, “John Henry,” by Amythyst Kiah with Roy Andrade; Elizabeth LaPrelle’s captivating version of “West Virginia Mine Disaster,” a contemporary ballad written by the late Jean Ritchie; and Rosanne Cash’s gorgeous, album-closing version of “The Parting Glass.”

And make no mistake, I could go on and on about the songs and singers that I haven’t mentioned.

The album was produced by Ted Olson, a professor of Appalachian studies and bluegrass, old-time, and country music studies at East Tennessee State University, who contributes essays on traditional Appalachian balladry and extensive notes on each of the songs to the album’s 74-page booklet.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Kathy Mattea – Calling Me Home

KATHY MATTEA

Calling Me Home

Sugar Hill

mattea.com

In a career dating back to the 1980s, Kathy Mattea had a bunch of country hits. In 2008, though, she shucked all commercial pretence and released Coal, a thematic folk and bluegrass album of songs about the lives of Appalachian coal miners. It was her finest work ever. Whether singing about lost ways of life or of lost lives, she found the emotional essence of each song and brought it, sometimes powerfully, sometimes beautifully, to the fore.

Although only a few of the songs on Calling Me Home explicitly deal with coal miners, the album, both thematically and musically, does continue in the vein of Coal and at least equals, if not surpasses, the predecessor’s achievement.

The deep Appalachian roots of the album are signaled from the beginning of the first song, Michael and Janet Dowling’s “A Far Cry,” when the first sound heard is the fiddle and the second is the mandolin. The song itself, memorably recorded years ago by Del McCoury, is a powerful song of regret from the perspective of someone who forsook their life in the Appalachians, and the love they had there.

As noted, several songs deal directly with coal mining issues. Jean Ritchie’s quietly powerful “West Virginia Mine Disaster,” sung from the perspective of a woman whose husband was one of many men lost in the latest mining disaster and who fears a similar fate could await her sons. “Black Waters,” also written by Jean, and equally quietly powerful, is a lament for the environmental devastation the coal industry has wreaked in states like Kentucky, where Jean comes from, and West Virginia, where Kathy comes from. In Larry Cordle’s “Hello, My Name is Coal,” the narrator is coal itself contrasting its virtues and its sins.

Most of the other songs are drawn from writers who are either from the Appalachians like the late Hazel Dickens, or who have immersed themselves in the traditional culture and/or music. Among the most compelling are Si Kahn’s “Gone, Gonna Rise Again,” in which a beloved and wise grandfather is recalled; and Alice Gerrard’s “Calling Me Home,” sung a cappella with chilling harmonies by Tim Eriksen, in which a dying man says his farewells.

The mostly-acoustic arrangements featuring such musicians and harmony singers as Bryan Sutton, Stuart Duncan, Tim O’Brien, Emmylou Harris, Aoife O’Donovan, Mollie O’Brien and Alison Krauss serve the songs perfectly.

I'm now on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

I'm also on Facebook. www.facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Hazel Dickens 1935-2011

Like virtually all in the folk music world, I was deeply saddened to learn that Hazel Dickens, the great Appalachian singer and songwriter, and pioneering woman of bluegrass, had passed away early today in a Washington, D.C. hospital where she was being treated for pneumonia.

Hazel’s importance cannot be underestimated. At a time when most of the artists coming into the folk music world were revivalists, she was a tradition-bearer, born and raised in “the green rolling hills of West Virginia,” who brought generations of authenticity to the songs she sang, and the songs she wrote, and the music she played.

In the mid-1960s, Hazel formed a duo with Alice Gerrard that fronted bluegrass bands as bandleaders and lead singers – which was very rare for the day. They recorded two LPs of bluegrass for Folkways in the ‘60s that were among the first bluegrass albums to feature women as leaders. When Smithsonian Folkways reissued the LPs on a single CD, they rightfully named it Pioneering Women of Bluegrass.

I first encountered Hazel and Alice in the early- or mid-‘70s at a folk festival – I think it was Mariposa – around the time that Rounder put out their masterpiece album, Hazel and Alice. That album of traditional and neo-traditional old-time Appalachian music, is one of the most important and influential folk music recordings of the past half-century.

Hazel went on to record another fine album with Alice, several solo albums, and several collaborations with other artists all of which I played enthusiastically over the years on the radio show.

I didn’t know Hazel very well, but enjoyed hearing her perform and chatting with her when our paths crossed at folk festivals over the years.

Art Menius, who knew Hazel much better than I did, said this in an e-mail this afternoon:

“The greatest takeaway for me with Hazel is her courage on all matters except flying and revealing her age. The courage to leave home in the hills for the industrial harshness of Baltimore a half century ago. The courage to play bass in the hostile male world of bluegrass. The courage to partner with Alice Gerrard and record bluegrass albums with male sidemen. The courage to write bluegrass songs that raised issues a lot of people would rather not discuss. The courage to be honest and confrontational. The courage to speak truth to power in her art and to keep alive the tradition of hillbilly radical singers like Sarah Ogun Gunning and Aunt Molly Jackson while working in a genre that had little model or precedent for that save for odds and ends like Vern & Ray's ‘To Hell With the People, To Hell With the Land.’ Hazel combined two of my passions -- hillbilly music and political art.”

“Well I paid the price for the leavin'
And this life I have is not one I thought I'd find.
Just let me live, love, let my cry, but when I go just let me die
Among the friends who'll remember when I'm gone.”
-Hazel Dickens, “West Virginia, My Home”

--Mike Regenstreif

BTW, the line in quotation marks, “the green rolling hills of West Virginia,” is the title of, and a lyric from, a song written by Bruce (Utah) Phillips. Some of what's in that song accurately parallels Hazel's real life. The song's definitive version, with an added final verse, was on the Hazel and Alice album. --MR