Folk Roots/Folk Branches with Mike Regenstreif: American Patchwork Quartet

Showing posts with label American Patchwork Quartet. Show all posts

Thursday, November 28, 2024

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – December 3, 2024: Top 10 for 2024

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/595/67938.html

Theme: Songs from my top 10 folk-rooted and folk-branched albums of 2024.

The annotated and illustrated list is posted on the Folk Roots/Folk Branches blog at this link. https://frfb.blogspot.com/2024/11/top-10-for-2024.html

Number 10 – Heartbreak, Misery & Death by Grayson Capps

Grayson Capps- Hallelujah

Heartbreak, Misery & Death (Royal Potato Family)

Number 9 – Lonesome Road: Suite for Solo Guitar and Voice – Songs of the Lost Generation 1924-1928 by Joel Mabus

Joel Mabus- The Lonesome Road

Lonesome Road: Suite for Solo Guitar and Voice – Songs of the Lost Generation 1924-1928 (Fossil)

Number 8 – American Patchwork Quartet by American Patchwork Quartet

American Patchwork Quartet- Shenandoah

American Patchwork Quartet (Carolina Jasmine)

Number 7 – Heart of the Swan by Carla Sciaky

Carla Sciaky- Standing by a River

Heart of the Swan (Propinquity)

Carla Sciaky- This Forsaken Garden

Heart of the Swan (Propinquity)

Number 6 – Two Sides to Your Story by Chris Rawlings

Chris Rawlings- Bastille Day

Two Sides to Your Story (Cookingfat Music)

Chris Rawlings- Smoker’s Lullaby

Two Sides to Your Story (Cookingfat Music)

Number 5 – Live at the Scala Theatre and In the Real World by Eric Bibb

Eric Bibb- Bring Me Little Water, Sylvie

Live at the Scala Theatre (Stony Plain)

Eric Bibb- Best I Can

In the Real World (Stony Plain)

Number 4 – American Railroad by Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens

Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens- Swannanoa Tunnel/Steel-Driving Man

American Railroad (Nonesuch)

Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens- Tamping Song

American Railroad (Nonesuch)

Number 3 – Feel with Blood by Lenka Lichtenberg

Lenka Lichtenberg- Feel with Blood

Feel with Blood (Six Degrees)

Lenka Lichtenberg- Wintry Dusk

Feel with Blood (Six Degrees)

Number 2 – Bandits, Ballads and Blues by James Talley

James Talley- The Love Song of Billy the Kid

Bandits, Ballads and Blues (Cimarron)

James Talley- If We Could Love One Another

Bandits, Ballads and Blues (Cimarron)

Number 1 – A Letter to Leonard Cohen: Tribute to a Friend by Perla Batalla

Perla Batalla- A Singer Must Die

A Letter to Leonard Cohen: Tribute to a Friend (Mechuda Music)

Perla Batalla- You Want It Darker

A Letter to Leonard Cohen: Tribute to a Friend (Mechuda Music)

I’m taking the next four weeks off and Stranger Songs will feature some repeat shows from 2022. You can see the playlists and stream the shows at the following links.

December 10: Songs of the Mountain City Four and Kate & Anna McGarrigle. https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/595/57707.html

December 17: “Acapella Stella” and other a capella songs. https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/595/57170.html

December 24: Happy Holidays. https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/595/58701.html

December 31: Songs of – or inspired by – Jesse Winchester. https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/595/56097.html

New programs will resume on January 7.

--Mike Regenstreif

Wednesday, November 27, 2024

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 – Bandits, Ballads 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 Bandits, Ballads 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 is already available 24/7 for on-demand streaming at this link. https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/595/67938.html

–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