Saturday Morning with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – Saturday July 13, 2024

Saturday Morning is an eclectic roots-oriented program on CKCU, 93.1 FM, in Ottawa on Saturday mornings from 7 until 10 am (Eastern time) and available for on-demand streaming anytime. I am one of the four rotating hosts of the Saturday Morning show. 

This episode of Saturday Morning was recorded and can be streamed on-demand, now or anytime, by clicking on “Listen Now” at … https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/128/65969.html

Geoff Bartley- July

Interstates (Magic Crow)

Lui Collins- The Wildflower Song

The Seasons Project: Summer (Christine Lavin)

Robin Batteau- How Can You Love Me

The Seasons Project: Summer (Christine Lavin)

Tina Ross- Summers Like These

The Seasons Project: Summer (Christine Lavin)

Cosy Sheridan- Here Comes the Rain

The Seasons Project: Summer (Christine Lavin)

Kami Thompson- The Solitary Traveller

Linda Thompson: Proxy Music (StorySound)

Lynne Hanson- Just a Little Bit

Just a Poet (Lynne Hanson)

Terre Roche- The Man Who Can’t

Inner Adult (Terre Roche)

Michael Jerling- I Talk to Dead People

Halfway Home (Fool’s Hill Music)

Teresina Huxtable- First and Only Tango

Wallflowers (Philo)

Sonya Cohen & Penny Seeger Cohen- Oh, Blue

You’ve Been a Friend to Me (Smithsonian Folkways)

Sonya Cohen & Peggy Seeger- A Squirrel is a Pretty Thing

You’ve Been a Friend to Me (Smithsonian Folkways)

Sonya Cohen & Pete Seeger- When I was Most Beautiful

You’ve Been a Friend to Me (Smithsonian Folkways)

Last Forever- Hide and Seek

You’ve Been a Friend to Me (Smithsonian Folkways)

Sonya Cohen  Cramer & Elizabeth Mitchell- You’ve Been a Friend to Me

You’ve Been a Friend to Me (Smithsonian Folkways)

Tim Isberg- Better Times Ahead

Prairie Fire (Tim Isberg Music)

Lynn Miles- Night Owl

tumbleWeedyWorld (True North)

David Francey- Daughter

The Breath Between (Laker Music) 

Kathleen Edwards- Options Open

Dogs and Alcohol (Dualtone)

Ian Tamblyn- That Boxcar in Algoma

Scenes Through a Mirror (North Track)

Keith Glass Band- Can’t Blame Me

Different World (Stump)

Ruth Moody- Wanderer

Wanderer (Blue Muse/True North)

Adam Karch- My Birmingham

Some Awkward Country Ahead (Adam Karch)

Martha Wainwright- Or Nothing at All

Linda Thompson: Proxy Music (StorySound)

Ken Tizzard & Music for Goats- Barstools and Broken Hearts

The DAGG Sessions (Ken Tizzard)

Miranda Hardy- The Price of Happiness

The Price of Happiness (Great Divide)

Ian Robb & James Stephens- Charming Molly

Declining …with thanks (Fallen Angle Music)

Finest Kind- Blue Mountain

Lost in a Song (Fallen Angle Music)

Shelley Posen- The Old Songs Home

The Old Songs Home (Well Done Music)

Jubal Lee Young- Jig

Wild Birds Warble (7Bridges Entertainment)

The Roches- Hammond Song

Where Do I Come From: Selected Songs (StorySound)

Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Rufus & Martha Wainwright, Loudon Wainwright III & Chaim Tannenbaum- Schooldays

The McGarrigle Hour (Hannibal)

Waterson:Carthy- Rackabello

Common Tongue (Topic)

The Copper Family- Come Write Me Down, Ye Powers Above

The Ultimate Guide to English Folk (Arc)

Richard & Linda Thompson- For Shame of Doing Wrong

Dreams Fly Away: A History of Linda Thompson (Hannibal)

Teddy Thompson- Those Damn Roches

Linda Thompson: Proxy Music (StorySound)

Mason Daring & Jeanie Stahl- Pack Up Your Sorrows

Recordings Celebrating 50 Years of a Musical Partnership (Mason Daring & Jeanie Stahl) 

Rory Block- Like a Rolling Stone

Positively 4th Street: A Tribute to Bob Dylan (Stony Plain)

Erin Ash Sullivan- Goat on a Stone Wall

Signposts and Marks (Erin Ash Sullivan)

Enzo Garcia- I Wanna Hold You

Calicoustic (Recaredo)

Deb Seymour- Sometimes You Gotta Wear Boots

Sometimes You Gotta Wear Boots (Herkimer Productions)

Ish Theilheimer & Friends- The Wilno Chicken

The Wilno Chicken and Other Songs for My Community (Ish Theilheimer)

Leonard Cohen- Story of Isaac

Songs from a Room (Columbia/Legacy)

Art of Time Ensemble featuring Sarah Harmer- Dance Me to the End of Love

Songs of Leonard Cohen Live (Art of Time Recordings)

Two of a Kind- We Give Thanks in Hard Times

Let the Light In (Magillicutty Music)

I’ll be hosting Saturday Morning next on August 10. I also host Stranger Songs on CKCU every Tuesday from 3:30-5 pm.

--Mike Regenstreif

Sing Me the Songs: Celebrating the Works of Kate McGarrigle

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Sing Me the Songs: Celebrating the Works of Kate McGarrigle
Nonesuch Records 
katemcgarriglefoundation.org

Since my friend Kate McGarrigle passed away in 2010 following a battle with sarcoma, a rare form of cancer, a series of concerts have been held to celebrate her life and works and to raise money for the Kate McGarrigle Fund in support of sarcoma care and research. The concerts have featured Kate’s kids, Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright, Kate’s sister, Anna McGarrigle, other family members, longtime musical friends, peers and younger artists.

Sing Me the Songs: Celebrating the Works of Kate McGarrigle is a 2-CD collection drawing on concerts in 2010 at the Royal Festival Hall in London, 2011 at Town Hall in New York City, and 2012 at Massey Hall in Toronto during the Luminato Festival. Hometown concerts will be held in Montreal at the Outremont Theatre on August 8.

With a few exceptions, these songs were written or co-written by Kate, and many of the performances feature Rufus and/or Martha. Among their highlights is their duet on the soaring “First Born,” a song Kate wrote about Rufus when he was a small child. Rufus particularly shines in versions of “Southern Boys” and Walking Song,” two of my favourite songs from Dancer with Bruised Knees, and in a duet with Antony on the heartbreaking “I Cried for Us.”

Among Martha’s best performances is “Matapedia,” a song inspired by memories of an old boyfriend of Kate’s from when she was a teenager and Martha’s meeting him, many decades later when she was about the same age as Kate was then. She also does a lovely version of “Tell My Sister,” one of several poignant songs of separation Kate wrote during her rocky marriage to Loudon Wainwright III – Rufus and Martha’s father. The song dates from before Martha was born.

Anna, who so rarely sang in public without Kate at her side, is heard on a number of songs including a touching duet with her daughter, Lily Lanken, on “Jacques et Gilles,” Kate’s beautiful song about the French Canadian migration from Quebec to New England to work in the mills and lumber camps. The song was inspired by research Kate was did on the life of Jack Kerouac (Kerouac’s parents were part of that migration) and I’ve long felt it was one of Kate’s most important songs. Other of Anna’s highlights include a collaboration with her children, Sylvan Lanken and Lily, on “On My Way to Town,” one of Kate’s most folk-like songs, and a collaboration on “Heart Like a Wheel,” the first of Anna’s songs to bring her renown, with Emmylou Harris, Krystle Warren, Martha and Lily.

Almost all of the contributions from other artists are extraordinary. Norah Jones sings a beautiful version of “(Talk to Me of) Mendocino,” another of Kate’s very best songs. Justin Vivian Bond, who I’d never heard before, soars on “The Work Song,” Kate’s reminiscence of the songs she and her sisters were taught by their father as little girls,and Emmylou offers her own song, “Darlin’ Kate,” a touching elegy written for Kate after she died. Robert Charlebois, perhaps the most legendary of Quebec singers, teams with Anna for a tender duet on “Dans le silence,” with harmonies from Rufus and Martha.

Martha’s version of “Tell My Sister” mentioned earlier was from one of the New York concerts. A second, equally lovely version sung by Peggy Seeger at the Toronto concert is also included. I was especially happy to see Peggy taking part in the concert because I remember Kate citing Peggy when we talked about who her influences were back in the 1960s.

There are also two very special versions of “Go Leave,” perhaps the most heartbreaking of the songs Kate wrote about her relationship with Loudon: Antony’s, recorded in New York City, and Linda Thompson and Richard Thompson’s recorded in London. Richard and Linda, who were once a brilliant musical duo, had their own storied breakup 30-odd years ago and this may well be the only performance they have given together since.

I always loved hearing Kate and Anna sing traditional folk songs and there’s a beautiful version of “Dink’s Song,” with Anna, Chaim Tannenbaum, Lily, Rufus and Martha each taking a verse. Chaim also leads a rocking version of “Travelling on for Jesus,” the traditional Bahamian gospel song Kate arranged for the finale of the first Kate and Anna LP, and which was often the concert finale back in the 1970s when I worked with them (click here for background on the years I worked with Kate and Anna).

Each of the CDs ends with tracks featuring Kate’s own voice. The first disc finishes with “Proserpina,” the last song Kate wrote. A recording of Kate singing the opening lines of the song fades into a beautiful duet by Sloan Wainwright and her niece, Martha. At the end of the second disc, Kate is heard by herself singing “I Just Want to Make It Last,” in which she asks the powers that be to “make the earth slow down a bit/We’re going way too fast/And I just want to make it last.” As the song ends, the last thing we hear is Kate saying “thank you.”

No, Kate, thank you.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Richard Thompson -- Dream Attic

RICHARD THOMPSON
Dream Attic
Shout! Factory
richardthompson-music.com

In a long career that began with Fairport Convention, the seminal British folk-rock band he founded in the 1960s, which continued in a duo format with then-wife Linda Thompson in the ‘70s, and as a solo artist/band leader since, Richard Thompson has earned a well-deserved reputation for both his commanding guitar work and his sometimes-astounding songwriting.

In live concert settings, I’ve seen him play several times as an acoustic solo artist and several times with a band playing electric guitar. By and large, I’ve preferred the solo acoustic shows and the live recordings of his that I’ve gone back to have been the solo ones. I’d rather hear him shine the attention on the songs than impress me with his guitar technique – although even in the solo context his playing can still amaze.

Dream Attic, Thompson’s brand new album, is a live album of all-new material, recorded with a great band, in which he does astound with the guitar playing, but in which the songwriting shines through as if it were an acoustic set.

There’s obvious anger and heavy doses of sarcasm in the lines to some of these songs. The CD opens with “The Money Shuffle,” which rocks hard and skewers the bankers and stock brokers whose greedy practices brought financial ruin to so many people. In “Here Comes Geordie,” which has a lilting English folk-rock arrangement, he drips sarcasm all over a self-righteous target who sure seems to resemble, if not be, the artist who grew up as Gordon Sumner.

“Crimescene,” is a harrowing song which seems to portray the aftermath of an explosion, perhaps a terrorist attack, while “Sidney Wells” is a long ballad about a serial killer with instrumental fills that seem driven by the character’s violence.

The album’s saddest song is “A Brother Slips Away,” a memorial that recalls a couple of friends from much younger days who have passed on.

Most of the songs on Dream Attic are relatively long – most are in the five-plus minute range and a couple approach eight minutes. This gives Thompson on guitar, multi-instrumentalist Pete Zorn and Montreal violinist Joel Zifkin – a high school friend of mine – lots of room to solo and add musical colour. Drummer Michael Jerome and bassist Taras Prodaniuk are a solid rhythm section and give the others all the support they need.

--Mike Regenstreif