Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – Tuesday August 29, 2023: “Nebraska” and Other Songs of Bruce Springsteen

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/595/61669.html

Theme: “Nebraska” and Other Songs of Bruce Springsteen.

Bruce Springsteen (photo: Bell Ebbesen)

Bruce Springsteen- House of a Thousand Guitars

Letter to You (Columbia)

Erik Balkey- Born in the U.S.A.

Everything is Great (Hudson Harding)

Harry Manx & Kevin Breit- I’m On Fire

In Good We Trust (Stony Plain)

Dale Boyle- My Hometown

Small Town Van Gogh (Route 132 Productions)

Lucinda Williams- Factory

The Ghosts of Highway 20 (Highway 20)

Joy Zimmerman & Katie Dahl- If I Should Fall Behind

Where the Light Lives (Cultivate Joy)

Bruce Springsteen- Land of Hope and Dreams

Springsteen on Broadway (Columbia)

Bruce Springsteen- Nebraska

Nebraska (Columbia)

Finny McConnell- Atlantic City

The Dark Streets of Love (True North)

Aoife O’Donovan- Mansion on the Hill

Aoife O’Donovan Plays Nebraska (Yep Roc)

Tim Grimm- Johnny 99

Names (Wind River)

Johnny Cash- Highway Patrolman

Johnny 99 (Columbia)

Fafard & Schwartz- State Trooper

Borrowed Horses (Joël Fafard & Joel Schwartz)

Bruce Springsteen- Used Cars

Nebraska (Columbia)

Bruce Springsteen- Open All Night

Nebraska (Columbia)

Amy Speace- My Father’s House

Tuscon (Windbone)

The Blue Warblers- Reason to Believe

Birds (BorderBag Productions)

Bruce Springsteen- The Ghost of Tom Joad

The Ghost of Tom Joad (Columbia)

Tom Russell- Across the Border

Appleseed’s 21st Anniversary: Roots and Branches (Appleseed)

Lucy Kaplansky- Thunder Road

Everyday Street (Lucy Kaplansky)

Bruce Springsteen- Hitch Hikin’

Western Stars (Columbia)

Next week: Joni Mitchell and Others at the Newport Folk Festival.

--Mike Regenstreif

Ruth Moody – These Wilder Things

RUTH MOODY

These Wilder Things

True North Records (Canada)

Red House Records (U.S.)

ruthmoody.com

On These Wilder Things, Ruth Moody of the Wailin’ Jennys offers a hauntingly beautiful set of 10 songs – nine of them original – on themes of love, loss and friendship in arrangements that reflect both traditional and contemporary sensibilities.

Among my favorite songs is “Trouble and Woe,” which reminds me “One Voice,” one of Ruth’s earlier songs recorded by the Jennys. With Ruth singing quietly at the outset and picking out the melody on her banjo, the song begins in a mood of sadness – “The world is full of trouble and woe” – eventually becoming a song of hope, “The world is full of promise and love.”

Other highlights include “Pockets,” a poignant rumination on youthful friendship featuring lovely electric guitar fills and harmony vocals by Mark Knopfler; “Life is Long,” a lovely reminiscence of someone – could be a lover, a friend, a parent – who has died featuring a Celtic arrangement built on Mike McGoldrick’s whistle and John McCusker’s fiddle; and “Make a Change,” an autumnal song that thematically recalls Joni Mitchell’s “Urge for Going.”

In addition to her own songs, Ruth offers a delightful, folk-style version of Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark,” which brings something new and different to the song.

From song to song, Ruth moves from banjo to guitar to ukulele and piano and receives multi-instrumental support from producer David Travers-Smith and frequent Jennys sideman Adrian Dolan. Along with those already mentioned, there are cameo appearances from Dobro master Jerry Douglas, Crooked Still singer Aoife O’Donovan, and fellow Jennys Nicky Mehta and Heather Masse. 

These Wilder Things is Ruth’s second solo album. Click here for my review of The Garden, her first.

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

Caroline Herring – Camilla

CAROLINE HERRING

Camilla

Signature Sounds

carolineherring.com

Camilla, the latest album by Caroline Herring, one of the very finest singer-songwriters to emerge from the American south in the new millennium, is a beautiful, often profound, meditation on such themes as the civil rights movement, grief, and hope.

Several songs are directly inspired by events, and heroes, of the civil rights movement. “Camilla,” is inspired by the story of Marion King, an African American woman who was beaten in 1962 by police in Camilla, Georgia, in front of her children and while she was six months pregnant, when she went to the jail to visit the daughter of a friend who was a jailed civil rights demonstrator. (The Civil Rights Digital Library has a news clip of King being interviewed from her hospital bed as she recovered from her injuries at this link.)

In “White Dress,” Caroline sings from the perspective of Mae Francis Moultrie, one of the original Freedom Riders whose bus was fire bombed in Alabama on May 14, 1961. “I’m 24 years old/I won’t live this way anymore,” she sings as Moultrie, who was wearing a white dress on the bus, in reference to the Jim Crow south the Freedom Riders were determined to change. (Moultrie is seen outside the burning bus in the FBI photo at right.)

My favorite song on the album is “Traveling Shoes,” which was inspired by Eudora Welty’s 1941 short story, “A Worn Path,” about an old African American woman encountering various impediments on a Christmastime journey into town to get medicine for her sick grandson. The imagery in Welty’s story metaphorically represents the inequality of the races in the American south of that time and Caroline’s song is based on a scene in the song when the old woman asks a passerby for help in tying her shoe. The a cappella arrangement of “Traveling Shoes” features sublime harmonies from Mary Chapin Carpenter and Aoife O’Donovan. (Read "A Worn Path" at this link.)

Another favourite is “Maiden Voyage,” about a trip Herring took with her four-year-old daughter to Washington, D.C. to witness history on the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration as president of the United States; a day that saw the fulfillment for many of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” which Caroline tells her daughter to sing with her hand on her heart. (See a video of Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen and Tao Rodriguez-Seeger leading hundreds of thousands in singing “This Land is Your Land” at the pre-inauguration concert at this link.)

Several other songs including “Until You Go,” the tragic “Black Mountain Lullaby,” and the ultimately hopeful “Summer Song” deal with various stages of grief.

While most of these songs deal with difficult subjects, Caroline’s beautiful voice, her insightful, carefully crafted lyrics – which are often open to evolving interpretation – her superb melodies and excellent mostly-acoustic arrangements make we want to hear them again and again.

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

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

--Mike Regenstreif

Ruth Moody -- The Garden

RUTH MOODY
The Garden
Red House Records
ruthmoody.com

Ruth Moody grew up in a Winnipeg-based family that studied and played classical music. Drawn to folk music, she first made her mark on the folk scene as the lead singer of a Celtic-oriented band called Scruj MacDuhk.

Shortly after Scruj MacDuhk broke up, Ruth got together with Cara Luft and Nicky Mehta and formed the sublimely harmonious Wailin’ Jennys which, despite Cara’s early departure – she was replaced by Annabelle Chvostek who was later replaced by Heather Masse -- has become and remained one of the most popular folk groups of the past decade.

The Garden, a kind of chamber-folk album that reflect Ruth’s interests in folk and roots-oriented pop music as well as her classically-influenced background, is her first full-length solo release and it’s a set of fine compositions made riveting by her intimate arrangements – she variously plays guitar, banjo, piano, ukulele and accordion, and surrounds herself with some excellent musicians and harmony singers – and lovely soprano voice.

While I quite enjoy the entire CD, my favourite songs include “The Garden,” which opens like a solo Appalachian folksong with Ruth singing to her banjo but builds into a gorgeous full stringband arrangement featuring the members of Crooked Still, including Aoife O’Donovan on harmony vocals; “Never Said Goodbye,” a lovely, lonely, piano-and-strings ballad that seems so reminiscent of my late friend Kate McGarrigle; and “Closer Now,” which reminds me of Ruth’s best work with the Wailin’ Jennys (and which features gorgeous harmonies from Jenny-mates Nicky Mehta and Heather Masse).

--Mike Regenstreif