Kathy Mattea – Calling Me Home

KATHY MATTEA

Calling Me Home

Sugar Hill

mattea.com

In a career dating back to the 1980s, Kathy Mattea had a bunch of country hits. In 2008, though, she shucked all commercial pretence and released Coal, a thematic folk and bluegrass album of songs about the lives of Appalachian coal miners. It was her finest work ever. Whether singing about lost ways of life or of lost lives, she found the emotional essence of each song and brought it, sometimes powerfully, sometimes beautifully, to the fore.

Although only a few of the songs on Calling Me Home explicitly deal with coal miners, the album, both thematically and musically, does continue in the vein of Coal and at least equals, if not surpasses, the predecessor’s achievement.

The deep Appalachian roots of the album are signaled from the beginning of the first song, Michael and Janet Dowling’s “A Far Cry,” when the first sound heard is the fiddle and the second is the mandolin. The song itself, memorably recorded years ago by Del McCoury, is a powerful song of regret from the perspective of someone who forsook their life in the Appalachians, and the love they had there.

As noted, several songs deal directly with coal mining issues. Jean Ritchie’s quietly powerful “West Virginia Mine Disaster,” sung from the perspective of a woman whose husband was one of many men lost in the latest mining disaster and who fears a similar fate could await her sons. “Black Waters,” also written by Jean, and equally quietly powerful, is a lament for the environmental devastation the coal industry has wreaked in states like Kentucky, where Jean comes from, and West Virginia, where Kathy comes from. In Larry Cordle’s “Hello, My Name is Coal,” the narrator is coal itself contrasting its virtues and its sins.

Most of the other songs are drawn from writers who are either from the Appalachians like the late Hazel Dickens, or who have immersed themselves in the traditional culture and/or music. Among the most compelling are Si Kahn’s “Gone, Gonna Rise Again,” in which a beloved and wise grandfather is recalled; and Alice Gerrard’s “Calling Me Home,” sung a cappella with chilling harmonies by Tim Eriksen, in which a dying man says his farewells.

The mostly-acoustic arrangements featuring such musicians and harmony singers as Bryan Sutton, Stuart Duncan, Tim O’Brien, Emmylou Harris, Aoife O’Donovan, Mollie O’Brien and Alison Krauss serve the songs perfectly.

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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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Tim O'Brien -- Chicken & Egg

TIM O’BRIEN
Chicken & Egg
Howdy Skies Records
timobrien.net

With the addition of Chicken & Egg, there are now a dozen Tim O’Brien albums sitting on my shelves – and that’s not including recordings he made as part of the stellar bluegrass band Hot Rize. Tim sings like a bird, plays just about any stringed instrument and any roots-oriented style with authority, is an excellent songwriter (who often writes with a fine sense of humour) and shows consistently good taste in the traditional songs he performs and in the songs from other songwriters that he chooses (his Red on Blonde is one of the best-ever albums of Bob Dylan covers).

Chicken & Egg, I think, is one of Tim’s finest. Working with some great sidemen – Stuart Duncan on fiddle and mandolin, Bryan Sutton on guitar, bassists Mike Bub and Dennis Crouch, drummer John Gardner, Ray Bonneville on harmonica, harmony singers Darrell Scott and Abigail Washburn, to name just some – Tim recorded the album off-the-floor, giving it an organic and spontaneous live feeling.

Some of my favourite tracks include “You Ate the Apple,” sung from the perspective of God giving a dressing-down to Adam and Eve which includes an order to dress-up; “The Sun Jumped Up,” a set of previously-unheard Woody Guthrie lyrics from the archives that are given a bouncy melody and arrangement by Tim that’s highly reminiscent of the traditional “Crawdad Hole”; “All I Want,” a bluesy bluegrass number about getting back home to the one he loves; “Suzanna,” written by Hall Cannon, a fiddle and banjo tune that seems to be from the perspective of a street person who may or may not know what he’s going on about; and “Workin,” a rockabilly tune that weds Guthrie-esque lyrics with a Sun-era Johnny Cash arrangement.

This is one of those albums that I know I’ll be playing a lot over a long period of time.

--Mike Regenstreif