Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – Tuesday March 1, 2022: Part 1 – Solidarity with the people of Ukraine; Part 2 – I Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans (on Mardi Gras Day).

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif finds connections and develops themes in various genres. The show is broadcast on CKCU in Ottawa on Tuesday afternoons 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/595/55400.html

Themes: Part 1 – Solidarity with the people of Ukraine. Part 2 – I Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans (on Mardi Gras Day).

Part 1 – Solidarity with the people of Ukraine

Paul Konoplenko- Our Ukraine
A Folksong Portrait of Canada (Mercury/Smithsonian Folkways)
The Mando Boys- Ukrainian Medley: Liturgical Music and Dance Tunes
The Mando Boys Live: Holstein Lust (Borderland Productions)

Michael Alpert & Julian Kytasty- Chernobyl
Night Songs from a Neighboring Village: Ballads of the Ukrainian & Yiddish Heartland (Oriente Musik)
Michael Alpert & Julian Kytasty- Night Songs
Night Songs from a Neighboring Village: Ballads of the Ukrainian & Yiddish Heartland (Oriente Musik)
The Malvinas- The Ukrainian Song
God Bless the Grass (Soona Songs)

Finjan- Azoi Tantzt Men Odessa (This is How We Dance in Odessa)
Dancing on Water (Rounder)

Part 2 – I Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans (on Mardi Gras Day)

Brenda Lewis- Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans
Far & Near (Brenda Lewis)
Paul Simon- Take Me to the Mardi Gras
There Goes Rhymin’ Simon (Warner Bros.)
Dr. John- Iko Iko
Dr. John’s Gumbo (Atco)
Kermit Ruffins & Irvin Mayfield featuring Dr. Michael White- Drop Me Off in New Orleans
A Beautiful World (Basin Street)

Mike Regenstreif & Marc Nerenberg (2009)

Marc Nerenberg with Noah Zacharin- On the Street Again, Revisted
On the Street Again, Revisted – single (Marc Nerenberg)
Chris Rawlings & Anne Lederman- Cindy Cindy 2.0
A Whistle, a Tune, a Song and a Dance (Cooking Fat Music)
Susan Werner- NOLA
NOLA: Susan Werner Goes to New Orleans (Sleeve Dog)
Long John Baldry- Midnight in New Orleans
The Best of the Stony Plain Years (Stony Plain)

Jennifer Warnes- I Am the Big Easy
Another Time, Another Place (BMG)
Mark Brine- Wrong Side of Bourbon St. Blues
New Blue Yodel (re:signed)
Victor Mecyssne (Victor Anthony)- Going to New Orleans
Hush Money (Sweetfish)

Larry Johnson- The Beat from Rampart Street
Fast and Funky (Blue Goose)
Little Brother Montgomery’s State Street Swingers- South Rampart St. Parade
Goodbye Mister Blues (Delmark)
David Roe- I Wish I was in New Orleans
Angel of New Orleans (David Roe)

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band & The Del McCoury Band- Milenberg Joys
American Legacies (McCoury)

Next week: Voices of Women.

Find me on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

John Mellencamp -- No Better Than This

JOHN MELLENCAMP
No Better Than This
Rounder
mellencamp.com

When John Mellencamp released an album of old blues and folk songs in 2003 called Trouble No More, I wrote – in a Montreal Gazette review that also ran in the Calgary Herald and Edmonton Journal – that “Mellencamp has often shown a rootsy side to his music, but here he immerses himself in roots music, particularly traditional blues and folk, as well as gospel, country and early rock ‘n’ roll. He’s learned well from old recordings and finds more than credible, individual takes on these venerable songs.”

On No Better Than This, Mellencamp seems to go even deeper into the roots of traditional American music but instead of old songs learned from Robert Johnson and Woody Guthrie records, the songs are Mellencamp’s own, written in traditional styles and recorded, as they might have been 50, 60 or 70 years ago in front of a single microphone, in mono, into a vintage tape recorder.

OK, I know that a tape recorder wouldn’t have been used 60 or 70 years ago, but it would have been 50 years ago when guys like Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and so many others were recording in the same Sun Studio in Memphis where nine of these 13 songs were recorded. An historic recording location, to be sure.

Mellencamp and producer T-Bone Burnett took advantage of the studio floor markings that Sun producer Sam Phillips set down in the 1950s for optimal studio sound in recording Mellencamp on vocals and acoustic guitar with his live-off-the-floor band of Burnett, Andy York and Marc Ribot on guitars, bassist David Roe, drummer Jay Bellerose and violinist Miriam Sturm. There were no overdubs – what they played is what we hear.

Among the highlights of the Sun session songs are “The West End,” a gritty blues sung from the P.O.V. of someone who grew up in a lousy neighbourhood and is determined to get out; the title track, a rockabilly number whose swagger is a blend of young Elvis and young Johnny Cash; “Coming Down the Road,” a hopeful Guthrie-esque anthem; and “Easter Eve,” a vivid folk-like ballad of a violent encounter that seems modelled on the traditional “Arthur McBride.”

The rest of the tracks were recorded locations that were no less historic.

“Right Behind Me,” a duo track featuring Mellencamp with Sturm’s intense bowing on the violin, was recorded in Room 414 of the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, the same room in which Robert Johnson recorded his first sides in 1936. Legend has it that Johnson sang facing the corner of the room and Mellencamp adopted the same position for a song that rambles through Johnsonian references to women, Chicago, and the devil.

Three solo folk-oriented love songs were recorded in the First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia, a church that was a stop on the Underground Railroad in the years preceding the American Civil War. They include “Thinking About You,” a nostalgic reminiscence of a long-ago love that could be a companion to Tom Waits’ “Martha”; “Love At First Sight,” kind of a puppy-love tune for more mature folks; and “Clumsy Old World,” a song about love’s contradictions written under the probable influence of John Prine.

There may be one or two Mellencamp songs from over the years that are more memorable than these, but, to my mind, there is no better John Mellencamp album than this.

--Mike Regenstreif