Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – Tuesday July 18, 2023: Seven Psalms and Other Songs of Paul Simon

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif finds connections and develops themes in various genres. The show is broadcast on CKCU in Ottawa on Tuesdays 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 recorded and can already be streamed on-demand by clicking on “Listen Now” at … https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/595/61226.html

Theme: Seven Psalms and Other Songs of Paul Simon.

Simon & Garfunkel- The Sound of Silence

Wednesday Morning 3 A.M. (Columbia)

Lucy Wainwright Roche & Suzzy Roche- Bleecker Street

Mud & Apples (Lucy Wainwright Roche & Suzzy Roche)

Dawn Tyler Watson & Paul Deslauriers-Homeward Bound

En Duo (Justin Time)

Caroline Doctorow- The Dangling Conversation

Dreaming in Vinyl (Narrow Lane)

Kate Campbell- America

The K.O.A. Tapes (Vol.1) (Large River Music)

Dave Van Ronk- Punky’s Dilemma

To All My Friends in Far-Flung Places (Gazell)

Emmylou Harris & The Nash Ramblers- The Boxer

Ramble in Music City: The Lost Concert 1990 (Nonesuch)

Morgane Imbeaud & Elias Dris- Bridge Over Troubled Water

Homeward Bound: The Songs of Simon & Garfunkel (Fredonia)

Mara Levine- Song for the Asking

Facets of Folk (Mara’s Creations)

The Wailin' Jennys- Loves Me Like a Rock

Fifteen (True North)

John Stewart & Darwin’s Army- Boy in the Bubble

John Stewart & Darwin’s Army (Appleseed)

Melody Walker & Jacob Groopman- Graceland

We Made It Home (Maker/Mender Records)

Ladysmith Black Mambazo- Homeless

Live at the Royal Albert Hall (Shanachie)

Carrie Elkin- American Tune

The Penny Collector (Carrie Elkin)

Paul Simon’s new album, Seven Psalms, consists of just one track. Simon’s vision is that it is something to be listened to in its entirety so he weaves the seven psalms together into one piece. The seven psalms are The Lord, Love is Like a Braid, My Professional Opinion, Your Forgiveness, Trail of Volcanos, The Sacred Harp, and Wait. The second vocalist heard occasionally in the piece is Edie Brickell.

Paul Simon- Seven Psalms

Seven Psalms (Owl Legacy)

Paul Simon & Phoebe Snow- Gone at Last

Still Crazy After All These Years (Warner Bros.)

Next week: Name That Tune.

--Mike Regenstreif

Caroline Doctorow – Dreaming in Vinyl

CAROLINE DOCTOROW

Dreaming in Vinyl

Narrow Lane Records

carolinedoctorow.com 

Music, for a lot of baby boomers like me, was big deal when we were young (and remains a big deal for some of us). Acquiring a new LP from a favorite band or solo artist was often a major event. The songs meant something to us and so many have stayed with us over the decades.

Caroline Doctorow’s new CD, Dreaming in Vinyl, is a reminder of those days. Eight of the 10 songs are seemingly timeless interpretations of songs that first came out between 1965 and 1970 while the other two – Caroline’s originals – evoke that period.

Almost all of the covered songs on Dreaming in Vinyl were instantly familiar to me as they were drawn from LPs I owned back in the day (and most of those I now have on CD reissues). And the only song I didn’t really know, “Hard, Hard Year,” was because it wasn’t on one of the Hollies’ LPs I did have back then.

Caroline’s versions of these songs remain quite faithful to the original versions. Her always-lovely voice is well served by her own guitar playing and overdubbed harmonies, by violinist Chris Tedesco, and by the layered accompaniment of producer Pete Kennedy on all other instruments. Among my favorites are Bob Dylan’s “Time Passes Slowly,” Paul Simon (Simon and Garfunkel)’s “Dangling Conversation,” which chronicles a couple’s growing alienation from each other, and Richard Holler’s poignant topical song “Abraham, Martin and John,” an iconic hit by Dion after the assassinations of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.

The versions of the Lou Reed and John Cale (Velvet Underground & Nico)’s “Sunday Morning,” Randy Newman’s “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today,” Donovan’s “Turquoise,” and John Lennon and Paul McCartney (Beatles)’s “Across the Universe” are all also noteworthy.

As mentioned, Caroline’s two original songs evoke that period when we were buying vinyl LPs. “To Be Here” is a beautiful love song and travelogue. “That’s How I’ll Remember You,” is a lovely farewell written for Caroline’s father, the acclaimed novelist E.L. Doctorow, who died last year.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Lucy Wainwright Roche -- Lucy

LUCY WAINWRIGHT ROCHE
Lucy
Lucy Wainwright Roche
lucywainwrightroche.com

Being the daughter, niece, and half-sister of a bunch of accomplished singer-songwriters, Lucy Wainwright Roche probably had a lot to prove when she decided to give up her teaching career and go into the family business. After all, her parents are Suzzy Roche of the Roches and Loudon Wainwright III. Her aunts are Maggie and Terre Roche, also of the Roches, and Sloan Wainwright, and her half-siblings are Rufus and Martha Wainwright. That’s an awful lot of familial talent to live up to. Well, first on a couple of eight-song EPs, and now on Lucy, her first full-length release, Lucy has more than proven herself worthy of a seat at a Wainwright and/or Roche family round-robin session.

Although her songs have their own distinctiveness, Lucy reminds me more of her mother’s music than her father’s. The melodies, the sometimes quirky lyrics, the way she harmonizes – sometimes with herself, or with back-up vocalists like her father, or the Roches, or the Indigo Girls, or Girlyman – have a similar kind of appeal to the Roches. Take “Once In,” the lead-off song, for example. The lines seem to be disjointed, but they come together as images of time on the road leading back to home. The travelling life, represented by the blurry, lonely, highway scene depicted on the CD cover, is a recurring theme in many of Lucy’s songs.

My favourite songs in the set include “Accident and Emergency,” an observational piece about a night spent in a British hospital’s emergency room, and “Statesville,” which uses images of a torn down high school in that North Carolina town, and the hanging of Tom Dula – immortalized in the folksong “Tom Dooley,” which happened in Statesville in 1868 – as metaphors for a broken relationship.

After 10 of her own songs, Lucy ends the album with a pair of interesting covers. With Paul Simon’s “America,” featuring the patented Roches harmonies, Lucy beautifully captures the same kind of innocence, alienation and anomie that Simon and Garfunkel brought to their recording more 40 years ago. Then, with Elliot Smith’s “Say Yes,” Lucy and duet partner Ira Glass, express the seemingly contradictory thoughts of someone who’s broken up, but apparently still linked in love, with his ex-girlfriend.

--Mike Regenstreif