Guy Clark – My Favorite Picture of You

GUY CLARK
My Favorite Picture of You
Dualtone 
guyclark.com

I started writing about music for the Montreal Gazette back in 1975 and one of the LPs I reviewed that year was Old No. 1, the first-ever album by Guy Clark, who was already a favorite songwriter of mine thanks to having heard some of his songs sung by Jerry Jeff Walker and Bill Staines. Since then, I’ve written about almost every album Guy has done over the years. I’ve also hung out with him a few times at folk festivals and interviewed him twice – once for the Gazette and once on the Folk Roots/Folk Branches radio program when he came up to Montreal to play a concert with Jesse Winchester at the Outremont Theatre in 2001.

One of those albums I’ve written about was called Old Friends. And, indeed, almost all of Guy’s albums and songs feel like old friends. They feel like old friends when you pull out one of those albums that you haven’t played for a while and they feel like old friends when you hear them for the first time. There’s something familiar and inviting about his songs when you hear them for the first time – maybe it’s “that old time feeling” Guy sang about on Old No. 1 – that turns his new songs into old friends.

And so it is on Guy’s new album, My Favorite Picture of You: 10 new Guy Clark songs (and a version of Lyle Lovett’s “Waltzing Fool” that he makes his own) that fast turn into old friends.

The title track is among the most affecting of these new songs. You can see Guy holding the particular snapshot of his wife, the songwriter and painter Susanna Clark, who passed away last year, taken maybe 40 or so years ago. In the lyrics, Guy reflects on the photo, describing her and her mood when it was taken, and turning it into a touching but powerful declaration of love.

I remember Guy telling me in one of the interviews we did that Mexican folk songs were among the first things he learned to play as kid growing up in Texas. I was reminded of that listening to “El Coyote,” another of this album’s most affecting songs – this one about impoverished Mexicans trying to find a better life only to be preyed on, exploited and deserted by human smugglers.

Guy also writes compassionately about American soldiers who came back damaged from the war in Iraq in the poignant “Heroes.”

Another highlight is “Death of Sis Draper,” co-written by Guy and Shawn Camp, a sequel to their earlier song (“Sis Draper”) about a traveling woman fiddler from Arkansas. This time, in a song that borrows the traditional fiddle tune melody to “Shady Grove,” Sis meets her maker when she’s poisoned by a jealous waitress and is buried as her guitar playing partner, Kentucky Sue, plays “Shady Grove” one last time.

Accompanying Guy on the album are such fine acoustic musicians as Verlon Thompson, who has been playing with him on stage and recordings for many years, Shawn Camp, Bryn Davies and Chris Latham, and harmony singer Morgane Stapleton.

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--Mike Regenstreif

John McCutcheon – This Land: Woody Guthrie’s America

JOHN McCUTCHEON

This Land: Woody Guthrie’s America

Appalseed Productions

folkmusic.com

This coming July 14 will be the 100th anniversary of the birth of Woody Guthrie, one of the most important and influential folksingers and songwriters of the 20th century. A number of CD projects celebrating Woody’s centennial have already been released and there are more to come – including Woody at 100: The Woody Guthrie Centennial Collection, a 3-CD box set from Smithsonian Folkways which will include 21 previously unreleased performances, among them six previously unheard songs.

While both of the Woody centennial CD projects I’ve already reviewed – Note of Hope and New Multitudes – have concentrated on settings of unknown or unheard songs from the Woody Guthrie Archives, most of John McCutcheon’s collection, This Land: Woody Guthrie’s America, is devoted to songs from the canon of classic Woody Guthrie songs. John also includes two songs from the Archives that he set to music; another that was set to music by Slaid Cleaves; and a recitation taken from Woody’s writing.

This Land: Woody Guthrie’s America is an apt title for this collection. Woody’s writing is deeply patriotic. But Woody’s is not a blind – ‘My country right or wrong’ or ‘America: Love it or leave it’ – kind of patriotism. No, his kind of patriotism, as seen in many of the songs in this collection including “Pastures of Plenty,” “I Ain’t Got No Home,” “Deportees,” “Pretty Boy Floyd,” “Ludlow Massacre,” “1913 Massacre,” and, perhaps most significantly, in “This Land is Your Land,” is a patriotism centered on compassion and justice, on righting the wrongs that make America less than it could be, as well as love of country.

While these songs date from 60 and more years ago, it’s amazing how relevant most of them still are to contemporary society. Woody was writing back then about how migrant workers are anonymously imported and deported; about the way the economic system creates an underclass; about how the rich exploit the poor for profit with no regard for human dignity – issues that are still with us today. While the event documented in “Deportees” took place in 1948, it could just as easily have been 2012.

But, as John notes in his liner essay, Woody Guthrie’s America was/is also a place with “children to put to sleep, lovers to serenade, outrageous boasts to shout, heroes to celebrate,” so the collection includes songs for those things too.

I’ll call special attention to the two songs from the Woody Guthrie Archives set to music by John. “Harness Up the Day” is a beautiful, poetic love song – a precursor by 20-something years to Bob Dylan’s “Tomorrow is a Long Time; and “Old Cap Moore,” a delightful tribute to a neighborhood hero.

John uses a wide range of musical settings on this album from his solo vocal and banjo version of “Pretty Boy Floyd,” to the rootsy band setting of “Biggest Thing That Man has Ever Done,” to the chamber-folk arrangement of “I Ain’t Got No Home.”

The most elaborate arrangement is certainly the stirring rendition of “This Land is Your Land,” in which John trades verses with Maria Muldaur, Tom Paxton and Willie Nelson. The spoken recitation with concertina accompaniment to “This is Our Country Here” is a perfect lead-in to “This Land.”

Among the other musicians featured on various tracks are Tim O’Brien,  Tommy Emmanuel, Bryn Davies and Stuart Duncan.

From beginning to end – the album ends with Goebel Reeves’ “Hobo’s Lullaby,” often cited as Woody’s favorite song – This Land: Woody Guthrie’s America is a terrific collection.

My only quibble is that there’s no acknowledgement that some of the songs have been taken from previously released albums. The all-star version of “This Land is Your Land” is from a various artists collection for children called This Land is Your Land (Songs of Unity). “Pastures of Plenty” is from a duo album John did with Tom Chapin, and the versions of “Mail Myself to You,” “Harness Up the Day,” “Howjadoo” and “Old Cap Moore” are from John McCutcheon albums dating as far back as 1988. I certainly don’t have a problem with the inclusion of the older recordings – I just think it should be made clear that the album includes both new recordings and previously released material.

Quibble aside, I have no hesitation in offering this album my highest recommendation.

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--Mike Regenstreif

Ottawa Folk Festival -- Thursday night

The new version of the Ottawa Folk Festival – under Bluesfest management – had what appeared to be a very successful kick-off last night.

Arriving at the new site at Hog`s Back Park for the first time, I was very impressed with the new digs. It`s a lovely, lushly green location for the festival with the stage areas all within a two-minute walk of each other. The food and artisan vendors are on park grass, a big improvement over the concrete they occupied at the old Britannia Park site and there’s a much bigger variety of food than in past years.

Although the festival is under new management, it was very nice to see, early in the evening, well-deserved recognition paid to 18 people who either founded the Ottawa Folk Festival or were highly involved over many years in its organization. The 18 were the first inductees into the newly-created Festival Builders Hall of Fame. Congratulations to AL Chopper MacKinnon, Alan Marjerrison, Arthur McGregor, Barry Pilon, Carol Silcoff, Chris White, Dean Verger, Gene Swimmer, Joyce MacPhee, Karen Flanagan McCarthy, Max Wallace, Pam Marjerrison, Peter Zanette, Rachel Hauraney, Roberta Huebener, Rod McDowell, Sheila Ross, and Suzanne Lessard-Wynes on the well-deserved honour.

And, congratulations again, to Gene Swimmer, the Ottawa Folk Festival’s volunteer executive director for many years, who also received the Helen Verger Award, recognizing his many years of work on behalf of the folk festival.

With three stages going almost simultaneously, choices had to be made. Early in the evening, I didn’t really make a choice and wandered from stage to stage catching a couple songs each from local artists Megan Jerome, John Allaire and Gerry Wall.

I also caught a few songs by American singer-songwriter Peter Himmelman. I’d been looking forward to hearing him but he didn’t really capture my attention so I went to hear the last few songs by Dry River Caravan, a local Ottawa band that plays music blending klezmer, Balkan, bluegrass and other musics. It was my first time hearing them and I was quite impressed. I’m looking forward to hearing more of them.

The best set I saw last night – indeed, the only one that I watched from beginning through encore – was Justin Townes Earle. The son of Steve Earle (who plays the festival tonight), he is one of the finest young singer-songwriters around today (click here for my review of his latest album). Playing guitar, and accompanied by the superb bassist Bryn Davies and the equally superb fiddler Amanda Shires, Earle engaged the audience with his down-home demeanor and well-crafted songs steeped in folk, blues, country and western and swing traditions.

After Earle’s set, I dashed over to another stage to catch the last half-hour of the Punch Brothers set. The Punch Brothers are a kind of post-bluegrass band led by mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile – who’s a lot taller now than the first time I saw him play when he was a 13- or 14-year-old mandolin prodigy, circa 1994 or ’95. The instrumental skills of all five guys in the Punch Brothers are awesome and they’re good singers too. But, I wasn’t crazy about their material. Other than an astonishing instrumental (whose title I didn’t catch) and a great version of Robbie Robertson’s “Ophelia,” the other four songs didn't really draw me in.

My best bets for tonight are Vance Gilbert and Steve Earle – who, of course, are playing at the same time on different stages.

Workshop alert: For me, the real heart of a folk festival are the daytime workshops. The Ottawa Folk Festival workshops -- curated by the Ottawa Folk Festival -- are on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. I’ll be taking part in one each day. I'm doing an on-stage interview with Colin Hay on Saturday, 4:00-4:45 pm, on the Heron Stage; and hosting the "Southern Folk" workshop on Sunday, 3:00-3:45 pm, with Lynne Hanson, Hayes Carll and Kelly Willis, on the Slackwater Stage.

--Mike Regenstreif