Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – May 13, 2025: A Tribute to The Klezmatics

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/595/70184.html

Theme: A Tribute to The Klezmatics as they mark their 40th year as a band.

The show features music by The Klezmatics, including some of their many collaborations with other artists, as well as some non-Klezmatics recordings by members and former members of the band.

The Klezmatics- Man in a Hat

Live at Town Hall (Klezmatics Disc)

The Klezmatics- Ale Brider

Shvaygn = Toyt: Heimatklänge of the Lower East Side (Rounder)

The Klezmatics with Alan Bern- NY Psycho Freylekhs

Rhythm + Jews (Rounder)

Alicia Svigals- Dem Trisker Rebns Khosid

Fidl (Traditional Crossroads)

The Klezmatics featuring Margot Leverett- Bobe Tanz

Live at Town Hall (Klezmatics Disc)

Margot Leverett & The Klezmer Mountain Boys- Lonesome Fiddle Blues & Sid’s Bulgars

Margot Leverett & The Klezmer Mountain Boys (Traditional Crossroads)

The Klezmatics- Dzhankoye

Shvaygn = Toyt: Heimatklänge of the Lower East Side (Rounder)

The Klezmatics- Bukoviner Freylekhs

Rhythm + Jews (Rounder)

Itzhak Perlman & The Klezmatics- Fisherlid

In the Fiddler’s House (Angel)

The Klezmatics- Come When I Call You

Wonder Wheel: Lyrics by Woody Guthrie (Jewish Music Group)

The Klezmatics- Mermaid’s Avenue

Wonder Wheel: Lyrics by Woody Guthrie (Jewish Music Group)

The Klezmatics- Holy Ground

Wonder Wheel: Lyrics by Woody Guthrie (Jewish Music Group)

Lisa Gutkin- Gonna Get Through This World

From Here On In (Lisa Gutkin)

Natalie Merchant with The Klezmatics- The Dancing Bear

Leave Your Sleep (Nonesuch)

Chava Alberstein & The Klezmatics- Di Krenitse (The Well)

The Well (Rounder)

Susan McKeown & Lorin Sklamberg- Heart’s Blood: Fort a yidele fort arroys (A Young Man Rode Out)/The Cruel Brother

Saints & Tzadiks (World Village)

Sasha Lurje & Lorin Sklamberg- A idisher kvartet

Jac Weinstein’s Helsinki Yiddish Cabaret (Global Music Centre)

The Klezmatics with Joshua Nelson & Kathryn Farmer- Oh Mary Don’t You Weep

Brother Moses Smote the Water (Piranha)

Frank London's Klezmer Brass Allstars featuring Michel “Mesach” Nestor- Unity (Carnival in Crown Heights) 

Chronika (Borscht Beat) 

Frank London with Karim Sulayman- Amore en

Ghetto Songs (Felmay)

The Klezmatics- Shushan Purim

Apikorsim/Heretics (World Village)

Next week: Variations on Hallelujah.

--Mike Regenstreif

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – Tuesday June 29, 2021

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/595/52513.html

 

Theme: Dance Music

Shelley Posen- Dance With Me
Roseberry Road (Well Done Music)

Wade Hemsworth with the Mountain City Four (lead vocal: Kate McGarrigle)- The Log Driver’s Waltz
Wade Hemsworth with the Mountain City Four (Peter Weldon)
Garnet Rogers- Under the Summer Moonlight
Sparrow’s Wing (Snow Goose Songs)
Bill Staines- Roseville Fair
The First Million Miles (Rounder)
Moore & McGregor- Dancing Shoes
Dream with Me (Ivernia)

Missy Burgess- Dance Me Slow
Play Me Sweet (Missy Burgess)
Bebop Cowboys with Chris Whiteley- Dancing on a Saturday Night
Canadian Dance Hall (Bebop Cowboys)
Nat King Cole- Let’s Face the Music and Dance
The Extraordinary Nat King Cole (Capitol)

Eric Bibb- Juke Dance
Blues, Ballads & Work Songs (Opus 3)

Sylvie Simmons- Keep Dancing
Blue on Blue (Compass)
Tower of Song- Take This Waltz
In City and in Forest (Tower of Song)
Perla Batalla featuring Bill Gable- Dance Me to the End of Love
Bird on the Wire: The Songs of Leonard Cohen (Mechuda Music)
Leonard Cohen- Thanks for the Dance
Thanks for the Dance (Columbia/Legacy)

Mike Regenstreif & Priscilla Herdman (1978) photo: Ron Petronko

Priscilla Herdman- Waltzing with Bears
Stardreamer (Alacazam)
Natalie Merchant with The Klezmatics- The Dancing Bear
Leave Your Sleep (Nonesuch)
Don Armstrong- Annabelle Teaching Her Daddy to Dance
Mother Don’t Give Up on Me Now (Ronstadt Record Co.)
Rick Fines- Scared to Dance
Solar Powered Too (Rick Fines)

Jerry Jeff Walker- Mr. Bojangles
Gypsy Songman (Rykodisc)
Kim Wallach- The Poor Boys Dance
Chatter of the Finches (Black Socks Press)
Ken Tizzard & Amelia Curran- St. John’s Waltz
A Good Dog is Lost: A Collection of Ron Hynes Songs (Ken Tizzard)

Papa John Kolstad with Wildman Mike Turk- Barnyard Dance
Beans Taste Fine (Wampus Cat)
Jackie Washington- I’m Happy Darling Dancing with You
The World of Jackie Washington (Borealis)
Carole Laure- Save the Last Dance for Me
Western Shadows (Trans-Canada)

Barry Mtterhoff- Polkas
Silk City (Flying Fish)

Next week – The Fourth Stranger Songs Fantasy Concert

Find me on Twitter. www.twitter.com/mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Top 10 for 2010

Here are my picks for the Top 10 folk-rooted or folk-branched albums of 2010. I started with the list of 408 albums that landed on my desk and over the past year and narrowed it down to a short list of about 35 worthy contenders. I’ve been over the list four times over the past week and have come up with four similar, but not identical, Top 10 lists. I decided today’s list will be the final one. The order might have been different, and there are half a dozen or so other albums that may have been included had one of the other days’ lists had been the final choice.

1. Natalie Merchant- Leave Your Sleep (Nonesuch). A stunning two-CD set of 26 songs that Merchant set to music using the words of various 19thth and 20th century poets. The settings, using a large cast of revolving back-up musicians, variously range from Celtic to Klezmer, from Appalachian folk to blues and rock. Click here for my full-length review.

2. Tom Russell- Cowboy’d All to Hell (Frontera). The first eight songs on this under-the-radar release are re-mastered versions of Tom’s original songs from Cowboy Real (including duets with Ian Tyson on “Navajo Rug” and “Gallo del Cielo”), the first of his great cowboy song collections. The other nine songs are newly-recorded duo versions – with guitarist Thad Beckman – of eight cowboy songs originally recorded on other albums and one new song. These are vivid, cinematic portraits of the old and new west by a master singer-songwriter.

3. Bob Dylan- The Witmark Demos 1962-1964: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 9 (Columbia/Legacy). These publishing demos, all solo performances recorded when Dylan was in his early-20s, and including Dylan’s versions of 15 songs he’s never officially released before, are well- worth listening to for clues to the development of the most essential of all 20th century songwriters.Click here for my full-length review.

4. Ron Hynes- Stealing Genius (Borealis). Ron calls the album Stealing Genius because most of the songs are inspired by specific works written by poets and novelists, mostly from Newfoundland along with one American. Stealing Genius represents the finest set of original songwriting to be released in Canada this year. Click here for my full-length review.

5. Mary Chapin Carpenter- The Age of Miracles (Zoë/Rounder). Most of these songs form an intimate conversation between Carpenter and the listener. It is, perhaps, her finest albums ever. Click here for my full-length review.

6. Eric Bibb- Booker’s Guitar (Telarc). Eric’s magnificent singing, his deft guitar work (along with Grant Dermody's equally great harmonica playing) and Eric's original songs can’t help but make anyone feel better about life. Click here for my full-length review.

7. The Once- The Once (Borealis). The Once, a trio from Newfoundland that plays a mixture of traditional material and first-rate contemporary songs is my choice for new discovery of the year. Their debut album includes some spine-tingling a cappella arrangements as well as some superb instrumental work. Click here for my full-length review.

8. Johnny Cash- American VI: Ain’t No Grave (American/Lost Highway). Recorded during the year before his 2003 passing, the final set in Cash’s series of essential “American” albums, these songs are an intimate, poignant farewell from a great artist. Click here for my full-length review.

9. Catherine Russell- Inside This Heart of Mine (World Village). On her third album, Catherine Russell’s relaxed and confident alto pulls listeners right into the mostly classic jazz and blues tunes anchored by inventive arrangements steeped in various shades and styles of blues, jazz, swing and folk music. Click here for my full-length review.

10. Various artists- Jug Band Extravaganza (Folk Era). An infectious live concert recording that features various combinations of Jim Kweskin, Geoff Muldaur, John Sebastian, David Grisman, Maria Muldaur and the Barbecue Orchestra on terrific solo, duo, trio and full group performances of jug band, blues, jazz and old-time country classics. See the new issue of Sing Out! magazine for my full-length review.

---Mike Regenstreif

Sing Out! Magazine – Summer 2010

Sing Out! Magazine – actually the Summer issue – has finally made its way north into Canada. The cover story is about Nanci Griffith, a regularl performer at the Golem, the folk club I ran in Montreal in the 1970s and '80s. My review of The Loving Kind, Nanci’s latest album can be read by clicking here.

As usual, this issue of Sing Out! has a bunch of my CD reviews including:

The Chieftains- San Patricio
Tim Eriksen- Soul of the January Hills
Steve Gillette- The Man
Marianne Girard- Pirate Days
Robin Greenstein- Images of Women Vol. 2
Jim Guttmann- Bessarabian Breakdown
Steve Howell- Since I Saw You Last
The Huppah Project- Under the Canopy
Bonnie Koloc- Beginnings
Pokey LaFarge- Riverboat Soul
Tom Lehrer- The Tom Lehrer Collection (CD/DVD combo)
Natalie Merchant- Leave Your Sleep
Red Hot Chachkas- Beats Without Borders
Carrie Rodriguez- Love and Circumstance
Chip Taylor- Yonkers, NY
Shari Ulrich- Find Our Way
Various- Rounder Records 40th Anniversary Concert
Tom Waits- Glitter and Doom Live

I’ll have another 20 or so reviews in the Fall issue of Sing Out!

--Mike Regenstreif

Lainie Marsh -- The Hills Will Cradle Thee

LAINIE MARSH
The Hills Will Cradle Thee
Bait & Tackle
lainiemarsh.com

Just last week, I wrote that Natalie Merchant’s Leave Your Sleep was an early candidate for my album of the year. My early candidate for discovery of the year is Lainie Marsh, a singer and songwriter whose work on her debut album, The Hills Will Cradle Thee, is steeped in Appalachian authenticity – she grew up in West Virginia – and blended with the sophistication and imagination of a Berklee College of Music education and, quite obviously, a craftsperson’s dedication to her art.

All of those elements are revealed in “Jalopy,” the opening track, a timeless song that bears Marsh’s 2008 copyright, but that sounds like it could have been a stringband tune or country blues song from the 1920s or ‘30s or any time since. In addition to Marsh’s voice, the old-time banjo playing of Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show is a particular delight on “Jalopy.

A lot of Marsh’s songs reflect her West Virginia upbringing. “Motherlode,” a kind of down-home jazz tune, is filled with references to country life from farm animals to coon dogs to the centrality of religion. “Way Down” is written from the perspective of a coal miner’s wife who is ready to break out of her traditional role, while “Banjo Moon,” is a sweet reminiscence of simpler times and younger days back home.

A couple of songs combine Marsh’s country-folk roots with wider musical references. “Hey Ludwig” is a clever ditty that lyrically nods to some of Beethoven’s most familiar compositions while “Little Samba Queen” blends Appalachian and Brazilian motifs with nods to Antonio Carlos Jobim, João Gilbreto and Astrud Gilbreto and their classic “Girl from Ipanema.”

Although Marsh was new to me with this album, I did recognize one of her songs, “A Ways to Go,” as the lead track from Cowgirl’s Prayer, an album by Emmylou Harris from 1993. That she’s been writing such quality material for a long time suggests to me that there's probably many more great Lainie Marsh songs waiting to be heard. And I’m looking forward to hearing them.

--Mike Regenstreif

Natalie Merchant -- Leave Your Sleep

NATALIE MERCHANT
Leave Your Sleep
Nonesuch
nataliemerchant.com

Leave Your Sleep, the new album by Natalie Merchant – 26 exquisite songs on two CDs with an 80-page, hardcover book – is a stunning achievement.

Merchant is a successful pop singer – both as a soloist and with 10,000 Maniacs – whose last album of new recordings was The House Carpenter’s Daughter, a fine collection of traditional and contemporary folksongs released seven years ago. Since then, Merchant took time off to have and raise a daughter.

Over the years that Merchant has been raising her child she has been finding poems by various British and American poets from the 19th and 20th centuries, setting the poems to music and researching the lives of the poets (she writes about each of them in the album’s book – which also includes the lyrics).

In composing the music for these poems, Merchant used a broad palette of musical styles, from Appalachian folk to blues, reggae, klezmer, New Orleans jazz, classical, Chinese and Native American music and employed a cast of 130 musicians and singers to help her realize the arrangements. Although the musical styles, arrangements and number of collaborators vary greatly from song to song, the album flows with a seamlessness seemingly borne from Merchant alone.

There is much to admire, if not love, on almost every one of the 26 songs but among my very favourites is “The Dancing Bear,” a poem by Albert Bigelow Paine, a close friend of Mark Twain’s that features the Klezmatics in a klezmer arrangement that’s both plaintive and playful. Another is “The Janitor’s Boy,” a sassy New Orleans jazz setting – featuring a band fronted by Wynton Marsalis – of a poem by Nathalia Crane published in 1924 when the child prodigy poet was all of 11 years old. Another is “Adventures of Isabel,” an Ogden Nash poem, which has a back porch folk feel courtesy of such musicians as Judy Hyman and Richie Stearns of the Horse Flies. And yet another is the blues arrangement of “The Peppery Man,” Arthur Macy’s portrait of a sour, antisocial contrarian that features some amazing vocals by the Fairfield Four.

Truth be told, I could rave on about every poem that Merchant has crafted into a song for this album. Kudos to Natalie Merchant for the conception of this ambitious, grand project – and for realizing it so brilliantly.

We’re just a third of the way through 2010 and I’m sure there will be more worthy releases, but Leave Your Sleep is an early candidate for my album of the year.

--Mike Regenstreif