Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – October 15, 2024: Finest Kind's Kind of Songs

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/595/67256.html

Theme: Finest Kind’s Kind of Songs

Finest Kind is the now mostly-retired trio of Ottawa based singers Ann Downey, Shelley Posen and Ian Robb – a trio best known for its superb vocal harmonies. All the songs on this show were recorded by Finest Kind over the years.

Finest Kind- The Faded Roses of December

Lost in a Song (Fallen Angle Music)

Utah Phillips- The Goodnight Loving Trail

The Telling Takes Me Home (Philo)

Jody Stecher & Kate Brislin- Blue Mountain

Stay Awhile (Rounder)

Blue Murder- The Banks of Sweet Primroses

No One Stands Alone (Topic)

Windborne- Gimme Just a Little More Time

Recollections/Revolutions (Wand’ring Feet)

Finest Kind- The Storms May Roll the Ocean

Lost in a Song (Fallen Angle Music)

Peggy Seeger- Going to the West

The Folkways Years 1955-1992: Songs of Love and Politics (Smithsonian Folkways)

Derek Lamb- The Miner’s Dream of Home

She was Poor but She was Honest: Nice, Naughty and Nourishing Songs of the London Music Hall and Pubs (Folkways)

Sneezy Waters- I Heard the Bluebirds Sing

Sneezy Waters (Sneezy Waters)

Martyn Wyndham-Read- Sussex Drinking Song

A Rose from the Bush (Greenwich Village)

David Parry- In Praise of Alcohol

The Man from Eldorado: Songs and Stories of Robert W. Service (Borealis)

Coope, Boyes & Simpson- John Barleycorn

Coope, Boyes & Simpson (World Music Network)

Finest Kind- John Barleycorn Deconstructed

For Honour & For Gain (Fallen Angle Music)

Bill Staines- Only Remembered

Looking for the Wind (Red House)

John Roberts & Tony Barrand- A Pilgrim’s Way

Twiddlum Twaddlum (Golden Hind Music)

Bill Garrett & Sue Lothrop- No More Fish

Red Shoes (Borealis)

Finest Kind- Lowlands Low

For Honour & For Gain (Fallen Angle Music)

The Carter Family- Fond Affection

When the Roses Bloom in Dixieland: Their Complete Victor Recordings 1929-1930 (Rounder)

The Greenbriar Boys- At the End of a Long Lonely Day

Best of the Vanguard Years (Vanguard)

The Brothers & Sisters- The Times They are A-Changin’

Dylan’s Gospel (Columbia)

Ben E. King- Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow

Ben E. King Sings for Soulful Lovers (Rhino)

Finest Kind- Jack the Jolly Tar

Silks & Spices (Fallen Angle Music)

Tom Lewis- Bully in the Alley

Tinker Tailor Soldier Singer (Self Propelled Music)

Finest Kind- Who will Sing for Me

Heart’s Delight (Fallen Angle Music)

Next week: Remembering Nick Gravenites, Kris Kristofferson, JD Souther, and Billy Edd Wheeler.

--Mike Regenstreif

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – Tuesday June 14, 2022: Songs of Wade Hemsworth and Songs of Bill Morrissey

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif finds connections and develops themes in various genres. The show is broadcast on CKCU in Ottawa on Tuesdays from 3:30 until 5 pm (Eastern time) and is also available 24/7 for on-demand streaming.

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

This episode of Stranger Songs was prerecorded at home and can already be streamed on-demand by clicking on “Listen Now” at … https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/595/56556.html

Theme: Songs of Wade Hemsworth (1916-2002) and Songs of Bill Morrissey (1951-2011).

Wade Hemsworth

Wade Hemsworth, who died in 2002 at age 85, was probably the first important songwriter to come out of the Canadian folk music scene. Although Wade was not very prolific – he wrote less than 20 songs – many of those songs have become classics of Canadian folk music. After serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War, Wade worked as a surveyor in Northern Ontario, Quebec and Labrador and those experiences were the basis for many of his songs. He moved to Montreal in 1952 to work as a draftsman for the Canadian National Railway and began performing on the Montreal folk music scene.

Bill Morrissey

Bill Morrissey, who died in 2011 at age 59, was one of the finest songwriters of my generation of folk musicians. Bill lived in New Hampshire and many of his songs reflect life in the mill towns of that part of New England. Bill also wrote an excellent novel, Edson, about a folksinger, not unlike himself, living in one of those mill towns.

Bill Staines- The Black Fly Song
Just Play One Tune More (Folk-Legacy)
Wade Hemsworth- In the Wintertime
The Songs of Wade Hemsworth (Blackfly Music)
Dan Berggren/John Kirk/Chris Shaw with Ann Downey- Log Driver’s Waltz
North River/North Woods (Sleeping Giant)
Wade Hemsworth with the Mountain City Four- Quiet on the River
Wade Hemsworth with the Mountain City Four (Peter Weldon)

Mike Regenstreif & Bill Morrissey (2005)

Bill Morrissey- Small Town on the River
Bill Morrissey (Philo)
Mark Erelli- Handsome Molly
Milltowns (Hillbilly Pilgrim)
Lucy Kaplansky- Texas Blues
The Tide (Red House)
Bill Morrissey- Barstow
Bill Morrissey (Philo)

Art Thieme- The Shining Birch Tree (Land of the Muskeg)
On the Wilderness Road (Folk-Legacy)
Fairport Convention- Foolish You
Old, New, Borrowed, Blue (Green Linnet)
Wade Hemsworth- Song of the Old Rooster
The Songs of Wade Hemsworth (Blackfly Music)

John Gorka, Mike Regenstreif & Lucy Kaplansky (2012)

John Gorka- She’s That Kind of Mystery
Bright Side of Down (Red House)
Bill Morrissey- Ice Fishing
North (Philo)
Laurie MacAlliaster & David Glaser- Birches
The Lies the Poets Tell (Laurie MacAllister)

Kate & Anna McGarrigle & Mike Regenstreif (1976) photo: Felicity Fanjoy

Rick Fielding- Wild Goose
Lifeline (Folk-Legacy)
The Wakami Wailers- Whitewater (The Log Jam Song)
River Through the Pines (The Wakami Wailers)
Kate & Anna McGarrigle- My Mother is the Ocean Sea
CBC Variety 3 (CBC)
Wade Hemsworth with the Mountain City Four- The Story of the I’m Alone
Wade Hemsworth with the Mountain City Four (Peter Weldon)

Peter Keane- I Wonder If I’ll Ever Leave
Walkin’ Around (Flying Fish)
Cormac McCarthy- Marigold Hall
Picture Gallery Blues (Green Linnet)
Mark Erelli- Long Gone
Milltowns (Hillbilly Pilgrim)
Bill Morrissey- By the Grave of Baudelaire
Come Running (Turn and Spin Media)

Wade Hemsworth with the Mountain City Four- Our Last and Humble Home
Wade Hemsworth with the Mountain City Four (Peter Weldon)

Next week: Songs from “Porgy and Bess.”

Find me on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

The Short Sisters – Downsized

THE SHORT SISTERS

Downsized

Black Socks Press

ss.mapping.com

I really like what happens when three talented women singers come together in glorious harmony. Groups like the Wailin’ Jennys, the Good Lovelies, Herdman, Hills & Mangsen (Priscilla Herdman, Anne Hills, Cindy Mangsen) and the Marigolds – all of them very different in sound and repertoire – are quite wonderful with what they do with a song.

Along with the groups mentioned above, the Short Sisters are one of my all-time favorite trios of harmonizing women. They’ve been singing together since 1979, but Downsized is just their fifth album and their first since 2002 – and like its predecessors, the CD is a treat from the first song to the last. In fact, the opening paragraph I wrote 11 years ago for my Sing Out! magazine review of their previous album, Love and Transportation, is just as applicable to Downsized:

“The Short Sisters – Fay Baird, Kate Seeger and Kim Wallach – are not real sisters.  However, when their voices combine in sweet harmony on this set of traditional and contemporary songs drawn from a variety of sources, they sure do sound like siblings who have been harmonizing for a lifetime. It is also obvious that they have chosen and arranged these songs, to borrow a phrase from the late Townes Van Zandt, simply for the sake of the song and the joy of singing. When they’re not singing a cappella, the Short Sisters keep the arrangements tasteful and simple, acoustic guitars played by Kim and Kate, banjo by Fay and occasionally, some very nice harmonica work by Dean Spencer.”

The only thing I need to add is that Kate also plays autoharp on a couple of songs on the new album.

While all 16 songs in the hour-long set are delightful, a few of my favorites include “The Vikings,” a satirical tune by Jez Lowe (perhaps my very favorite British songwriter), a beautiful version “Ca’ the Yowes,” a Scottish song written or collected by Robert Burns, Kim’s “Home in Old New Jersey,” a delightfully arranged nostalgic piece about the state she grew up in, and “Tell Me Why You Like Roosevelt,” Otis Jackson’s tribute to the president who introduced the New Deal (this is the song my friend Jesse Winchester rewrote about 40 years ago to also pay tribute to the Canadian politicians whose policies allowed safe haven for Vietnam War resistors).

I was also delighted to hear the Short Sisters’ version of “Upon Finding Just One,” a terrific round written by my neighborhood pal Ann Downey, the traditional “Goin’ Down to Tampa,” and Lester Simpson’s “Twenty-Four Seven,” a labor song for these times we’re living in.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Ottawa Folk Festival – Thursday, Friday, Saturday

As I’ve noted before, the Ottawa Folk Festival, now its second year under Bluesfest administration, is almost like two distinct festivals happening at the same time on the same grounds and attracting two very different kinds of audiences.

Getting virtually all of the media attention and drawing the kind of big crowds I hope pay the festival’s bills (and the deficit Bluesfest assumed when it took over) is an indie-rock – or, in the case of Lindsay Buckingham, mainstream pop-rock – headliner-oriented, Bluesfesty kind of festival that mostly plays out on the main stage and the bigger side stages. Clearly, this aspect of the festival is after a much younger demographic than traditional folk festival-goers. The festival’s move into September, when university students are back in town, was designed to attract that demographic – and, clearly, it worked on Thursday and Friday nights when there seemed to be bigger and much, much younger crowds than I ever remember seeing at the Ottawa Folk Festival.

Then, there’s the traditional folk festival centred on a smaller side stage away from the big boys, and on the Saturday and Sunday daytime workshop stages, with some occasional spillover onto the bigger stages. This is the aspect of the festival meant to attract people – like me – who have been going to folk festivals for years and years and decades, who go to folk clubs and concerts during the year, who don’t care much about what may be hip or popular at a particular moment in time.

Time and work constraints meant not spending much time at the festival on Thursday night. But I did get over to see the concert by Missy Burgess, who is among my favorite Ottawa-based performers.

Missy, accompanied by Todd Snelgrove, a fine and versatile lead guitarist, was playing on that smaller side stage I referred to and, sure enough, the audience gathered there were the folk festival veterans like me. There were lots of people I knew or recognized from past festivals and concerts. Despite the overpowering sound bleed from indie-rocker Matt Mays on the main stage, Missy did a fine show highlighted by original songs like “Don’t Go to Cincinnati” and some great covers including Keith Glass’ “Let There Be Peace,” Tom Waits’ “Time” and Charlie Chaplin’s classic standard, “Smile,” on which she picked out a bit of lead guitar.

I’m sorry I missed Ben Harper’s headlining set later Thursday night on the main stage. He was great from all reports I’ve heard.

I started Friday night at the same small stage – again with an audience of fellow real folkies – listening to the Pat Moore Trio featuring Pat on guitar and most lead vocals, and her most-excellent side-folks Ann Downey on bass, harmonies and an occasional lead vocal, and Pat McLaughlin on guitar and harmonies.

Most of Pat’s concert was devoted to country music – most of it original, she’s a very good writer of the kind of real deal songs that mainstream Nashville seems to have largely forgotten about – but she did lay down her guitar at one point and sang a great jazzy interpretation of Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen” which seemed bolder and angrier than Ian’s more confessional original. Ann and Pat’s playing really shined on the song. The arrangement on Pat’s own “Cold-Hearted Man” was also had jazz (and blues) inflections.

After Pat’s set, I headed over to the main stage to listen to home town heroine Kathleen Edwards and her band play to a massive crowd. I enjoyed the set, particularly the second half when she seemed opened up to the crowd between songs, and most particularly on “Soft Place to Land,” when she picked up a violin and added a very impressively-bowed solo.

After Kathleen’s set, there were three shows, all at the same time, which I would have liked to catch. Brock Zeman, an interesting local singer-songwriter was at the small stage I’d seen Pat Moore on earlier. Timber Timbre, a rock band I was curious about because one of its members is the daughter of friends, was on one of the bigger side stages, but I opted to listen to Old Man Luedecke do the best show of the night at the Ottawa Folk Festival on the biggest of the side stages. It was also the concert that was most-rooted in authentic folk music.

You should know that banjo-playing Chris Luedecke, an excellent songwriter in his 30s, is not an old man. His song lyrics are those of a witty, keen-eyed observer of his own time but his musical style is inspired great Appalachian banjo masters like Clarence Ashley, Dock Boggs and Bascom Lamar Lunsford who were old men when they were rediscovered by folk revivalists in the 1960s.

Well accompanied by Joel Hunt on mandolin and fiddle, Chris’ hour-long set included favorite songs like the crowd pleasing “I Quit My Job,” and the particularly witty “Machu Picchu,” as well as several great sounding songs from the new Old Man Luedecke CD coming out next month.

As the evening drew to a close, I listened to the first three songs from Lindsay Buckingham’s 90-minute headlining set. While the guitar playing that helped make Fleetwood Mac the biggest rock band of the mid-1970s was unmistakable, it wasn’t enough to keep me in the park after a full working day and almost four hours at the festival.

I was looking forward to the daytime programming – which I consider the heart and soul of a folk festival – to kick in today. But the weather – oy, the weather. Steady rain mixed with thunder storms on easily the worst weather day Ottawa has seen all summer kept me home missing a number of workshop and concert artists – including John Gorka, The Once and Corb Lund – that I’d been looking forward to hearing.

See you tomorrow at the Ottawa Folk Festival.

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--Mike Regenstreif