Saturday Morning with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – Saturday January 28, 2023

Saturday Morning is an eclectic roots-oriented program on CKCU in Ottawa heard 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 Saturday Morning and base my programming on the Folk Roots/Folk Branches format I developed at CKUT in Montreal.

CKCU can be heard live at 93.1 FM in Ottawa and https://www.ckcufm.com/ on the web.

This episode of Saturday Morning was recorded and can already be streamed on-demand at … https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/128/59164.html

Three songs in memory of David Crosby (1941-2023).

The Byrds- Mr. Tambourine Man

Mr. Tambourine Man (Columbia)

Crosby, Stills & Nash- Long Time Gone

Crosby, Stills & Nash (Atlantic)

David Crosby- Traction in the Rain

If I Could Only Remember My Name (Atlantic)

Ben Bedford- Leaping

Valley of Stars (Hopeful Sky)

Geoff Bartley- Talkin’ Jumping Frog Blues

The Ballad of Billy Bridger (Magic Crow)

Bob Jensen- Sit Down Young Stranger

For the Sake of the Song (Bob Jensen)

J.P. Cormier- Approaching Lavender

The Long River: A Personal Tribute to Gordon Lightfoot (Flash Publishing)

Nicki Parrott- If You Could Read My Mind

If You Could Read My Mind (Arbors)

Gordon Lightfoot- Saturday Clothes

If You Could Read My Mind (Reprise)

The Vanier Playboys- Born in the Country

Deux (The Vanier Playboys)

Ball & Chain & The Wreckers- Come on Up to the House

Satisfied (Ball & Chain)

VickiKristinaBarcelona- Gun Street Girl

Pawn Shop Radio (StorySound)

Mike Regenstreif & David Amram (2004) photo: Ron Petronko

David Amram- Waltz from After the Fall

No More Walls (Flying Fish)

Three songs in memory of Steve James (1950-2023).

Steve James- Stack Lee’s Blues

Boom Chang (Burnside)

Steve James- Buddy Bolden’s Blues

Art & Grit (Discovery)

Steve James & Del Rey- Tappin’ That Thing

Tonight (Hobemian)

Three songs in memory of Thad Beckman (1952-2023).

Thad Beckman- Lay My Burden Down

Blues Gone By (Thadzooks)

Thad Beckman- Street of Disaster

Streets of Disaster (Thadzooks)

Thad Beckman, Mike Regenstreif & Tom Russell (2012)

Thad Beckman & Tom Russell- Blue Wing

Streets of Disaster (Thadzooks)

Tom Russell & The Norwegian Wind Ensemble- St. Olav’s Gate

Aztec Jazz (Frontera)

Danny Britt- Bar Stool

All Over the Map (Red Dawg Music)

Creedence Clearwater Revival- Bad Moon Rising

Green River (Fantasy)

The Dumptrucks- Closing Time

Selections (Laughing Cactus)

Alex Cuba- Quiero Quedarme

Quiero Quedarme – single (Caracol)

Le Vent du Nord- L’auberge

20 Printemps (La Compagnie du Nord)

Christopher Mark Jones / Bernard Pozier- Rendez-vous sous la pluie

Montréal Encore (Small Batch Music)

Pat Guadango & Mary McCrink- Boots of Spanish Leather

1964 (Campbell Music)

Annie Capps- Learning

How Can I Say This? (Yellow Room)

Tim Ball- Sugar in the Gourd

Upstate Crossroads (Irelandville)

The next two songs punctuated my conversation with Christine Graves, recorded on January 17 via Zoom.

Christine Graves- Despite the News

Everyday Life (Christine Graves)

Christine Graves- Here’s My Song

Everyday Life (Christine Graves)

Four songs to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27).

Payadora Tango Ensemble featuring Olga Avigail Mieleszczuk- Sabina’s Letter: Some of Us Must Survive

Silent Tears: The Last Yiddish Tango (Six Degrees)

Brendan Nolan- Parallel Limbs

Beneath White Stars: Holocaust Profiles in Song (AlmondSeed Media)

Lenka Lichtenberg- Our feet are marching, two and two

Thieves of Dreams (Six Degrees)

Shelley Posen- Packed

Mazel (Well Done Music)

The Squirrel Hillbillies- Mama Just Wants to Barrelhouse All Night Long

Rhizomes (The Squirrel Hillbillies)

Bruce Cockburn- Whole Night Sky

Rarities (True North)

Lucie Blue Tremblay- The Paradise Club

So Many Wows (Maggie & Shanti Musique)

The Heart Collectors- Pieces II

Timeless Space (Spins the Gold)

Sue Horowitz- January

Strings, Wings and Curious Things (Sue Horowitz)

Bill Staines- January Snow

The First Million Miles, Volume II (Rounder)

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

Priscilla Herdman- January Thaw

Forgotten Dreams (Flying Fish)

Michael Kaeshammer- Bourbon Street Parade

The Warehouse Sessions (Linus)

I’ll be hosting Saturday Morning next on February 25. I also host Stranger Songs on CKCU every Tuesday from 3:30-5 pm. 

Find me on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Tom Russell – The Tom Russell Anthology 2: Gunpowder Sunsets

TOM RUSSELL

The Tom Russell Anthology 2: Gunpowder Sunsets

Frontera Records

tomrussell.com

fronterarecords.com

The first time I wrote about Tom Russell was in a review of his 1987 LP, The Road to Bayamon. I think I’ve written about every album he’s released since. At some point along the way I referred to Tom as the best singer-songwriter of my generation – the generation that came along 10 or 15 years after Dylan. It was a claim I repeated in 2008 when I wrote the long essay that accompanied Tom’s 2-CD career retrospective, The Tom Russell Anthology: Veteran’s Day and it is a claim that still resonates with me eight years later with the release of The Tom Russell Anthology 2: Gunpowder Sunsets.

This second volume of the Anthology is a generous 19-song, 79-minute set that includes several early songs, several previously-unreleased tracks, and many that were first released in the years since that first volume. The collection is a great introduction to Tom Russell neophytes and it has enough previously-unheard material – and a fresh-sounding sequencing – that makes it a great listen for longtime aficionados like me.

The set kicks off with an undated demo version of “Honkytonk Heart (Like Mine),” an infectious rockabilly tune that sounds like it could have been a hit for Elvis or Jerry Lee back in their Sun Records day. Then we hear a couple of great songs from the ‘80s: an alternate take of “Spanish Burgundy” from the Poor Man’s Dream sessions and a terrific live version from Lost Angels of Lyon of “The Road to Bayamon,” Tom’s vivid description of life in a traveling Puerto Rican carnival.

As I noted in my essay for the first volume of the Anthology, “I’m convinced that Tom’s folk-opera, The Man from God Knows Where, a song-cycle that documents the immigrant experience in America, is the most important folk recording by anyone in the past 25 or more years,” and the track from The Man from God included on the second volume is “Love Abides,” a duet with Iris DeMent, that was the finale to the folk-opera. Set along the borderlands of the United States and Mexico, it’s a beautiful song that contrasts tragedy with blessings, hope and love.

“When Sinatra Played Juarez,” from Borderland, featuring the masterful Tex-Mex accordion playing of Joel Guzman harkens back to decades ago when the Mexican city across the river from El Paso was a mecca for its nightlife and not a drug cartel warzone while in the rocking “Tijuana Bible” from Modern Art he tells the true life tale of a famous Hollywood murder case.

Three tracks follow with backing from Calexico from the 2009 album, Blood and Candle Smoke. On “East of Woodstock, West of Vietnam,” Tom recalls 1969 when – as the war in Vietnam raged, Neil Armstrong took his small step onto the moon, and 500,000 people sat in the Catskills mud for a three-day music festival – he went to Nigeria as a young academic to teach. The song “Nina Simone” references the great blues-jazz-folk singer but it’s not about Nina Simone per se. It’s about finding what you need in a voice that understands. Maybe for Tom in a bar in San Cristóbal, it was the voice of Nina Simone on the juke box. I know I’ve heard Nina Simone cut through to my soul when she sings about being “lost in the rain in Juarez” in a way I think Dylan would appreciate. Sometimes my “Nina Simones” have been Rosalie Sorrels or Billie Holiday or a dozen other singers who understand. In “Don’t Look Down,” Tom uses a tightrope walker’s advice as a starting point to reflect on past history, the meaning of life and love, and the future.

Then we hear a couple of tracks from the 2011 album, Mesabi. The title song, which begins with about 10 seconds of solo acoustic guitar picking out the melody line to “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” is named for the Mesabi Iron Range in Minnesota, the area where Bob Dylan grew up in the 1940s and ‘50s. The song begins with a description of the kid that was the young Robert Zimmerman in Hibbing and then shifts into the 1960s and the kid who was the young Tom Russell listening to and being inspired by the troubadour kid singing “Don’t Think Twice” on his uncle’s record player. “Sterling Hayden” is a tribute, of sorts, to the tough guy actor, author and raconteur who mostly lived life on his own terms, famously expressing one major regret: naming names before the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy era. “I don't think you have the foggiest notion of the contempt I have had for myself since the day I did that thing,” Sterling Hayden wrote years later. Tom brings a variation of that quote into the song, which he sings as both a third-person narrator and as Hayden himself. Tom’s song refers to seeing Hayden interviewed on the Johnny Carson show. I can also vividly remember a series of fascinating interviews he did in the ‘70s with Tom Snyder on the Tomorrow show.

Two songs are from Aztec Jazz – Tom’s sublime live album with a chamber orchestra, the Norwegian Wind Ensemble – both of them originally released on Blood and Candle Smoke. “Guadalupe,” done beautifully with some gorgeous guitar lines by Thad Beckman and an orchestral arrangement highlighting the oboes, is a song that reveals more every time I hear it. And I’m not necessarily referring to new layers of understanding of what Tom was thinking when he wrote it. I mean what I hear and understand about my own truths and my own quests filtered through Tom’s words and the gorgeous melody. “Finding You” is a beautiful love song written for Nadine Russell, Tom’s wife, and is lushly arranged for the orchestra.

Four songs follow from 2015’s The Rose of Roscrae: A Ballad of the West, the third in Tom’s series of extraordinary concept albums (following The Man from God Knows Where and Hotwalker). In the Irish-influenced “The Rose of Roscrae,” the protagonist, Johnny Dutton, recalls leaving Ireland for America in the 19th century after a conflict with his lover’s father make it impossible for them to stay while in the folk-rocking “Hair Trigger Heart,” he reflects on his life as an outlaw in the (brief) time and place that was the old west. “He Wasn’t a Bad Kid When He was Sober,” deconstructs the myth of Billy the Kid and “Resurrection Mountain,” with vocal harmonies by the McCrary Sisters, is a gospel song that reflects on matters of life and faith.

The CD ends with two more songs I’d never heard before. The undated “Iron Eyes Cody” reflects on the life of an actor who played Indian roles in hundreds of western movies and TV shows – and was, perhaps, most memorably, the crying Native American in the anti-littering public service TV spot in the 1970s. Iron Eyes Cody, who died in 1999 at age 94, always claimed to be Native American but turned out to have been the son of Italian immigrants to the United States. Then Tom ends the set with “Where Do All the Cowboys Go?” a beautiful and fitting finale, sung as a duet with Eliza Gilkyson. The song was written for The Rose of Roscrae but not ultimately used on that project.

Mike Regenstreif & Tom Russell in Montreal (2012)

These songs on The Tom Russell Anthology 2: Gunpowder Sunsets leaves me in anticipation of whatever might be coming next from the best songwriter of my generation.

Note: Comments on some of the songs in this review have been taken from reviews I’ve written about the albums from which they originated.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Thad Beckman – Streets of Disaster

THAD BECKMAN

Streets of Disaster

Thadzooks Records

thadbeckman.com

I first became aware of Thad Beckman several years ago when he began working as Tom Russell’s back-up guitarist. Knowing Tom as I do, particularly after 25 years with the great Andrew Hardin as his primary accompanist, there was no doubt in my mind that Thad would be a great guitarist. And he certainly proved that to me when I first saw them play together in 2012. Listening to Thad’s two previously released CDs, Me Talkin’ to Me and Blues Gone By, I also found out that Thad was a good singer-songwriter, and a particularly fine interpreter of traditional blues, in his own right.

As good as the songs were on Me Talkin’ to Me, released on 2008, Streets of Disaster is a giant step forward. Seamlessly working in blues, country and contemporary folk styles, Thad’s songwriting – and his fine performances – now seems classic and timeless.

 “Street of Disaster,” the quasi-title track, opens the album. Using a traditional blues mode, the song is a compelling commentary on the state of the contemporary world.

Other highlights include “Blues in My Blood” and “Stirring Up Some Ashes,” a couple of country songs that seems like Merle Haggard at his best; “If Only My Heart Had a Brain,” a look back at romantic history set to a lovely solo guitar arrangement; “200 Dollars,” a witty blues tune in a Mississippi John Hurt mode; and “A Soldier Returns Home,” an extended, impressionistic blues guitar instrumental.

Thad Beckman, Mike Regenstreif, Tom Russell (2012)

In addition to nine of his own compositions, Thad also includes a slinky version of Richard “Rabbit” Brown’s “James Alley Blues,” one of my all-time favorite blues songs (the original was included on Harry Smith’s legendary Anthology of American Folk Music), in which Thad’s vocals are very effectively complemented by Mike Emerson on organ, Kurtis Piltz on harmonica, and Thad on electric lead guitar; and a terrific live duet with Tom Russell on Tom’s enduring, “Blue Wing.”

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Tom Russell – The Rose of Roscrae: A Ballad of the West

TOM RUSSELL

The Rose of Roscrae: A Ballad of the West

Frontera Records

www.tomrussell.com

www.fronterarecords.com

The Rose of Roscrae: A Ballad of the West is the third in a series of extraordinary concept albums Tom Russell has delivered in addition to the many other superb albums he’s recorded over the past three decades.

The first release in what should now be regarded as a trilogy was The Man from God Knows Where, a brilliant folk opera, released in 1999, about immigration and the American dream partially based on Tom’s own Irish and Norwegian ancestors and the generations that followed. Then came the equally-brilliant Hotwalker, released in 2005, an audio collage of original songs, poetry, stories, rants and outside voices that paid tribute to forgotten aspects of real American culture.

Expanding on the forms he developed in the two earlier works, The Rose of Roscrae, running two-and-a-half hours on two CDs, is perhaps Tom’s most ambitious work yet, a folk opera whose plot, although fictional, incorporates ideas and experiences drawn from a number of historical figures and from Tom’s real life sister-in-law who spent decades running a ranch on her own.

Much of the story is told through the eyes of the main protagonist, Johnny Dutton, an old man looking back on a life of adventure and misadventure that began in Ireland in the 1880s when the teenaged Johnny is beaten up by his girlfriend’s father and he escapes to America to become a cowboy and outlaw in what was by then the rapidly dying old west.

As the plot unfolds, Johnny works as a cowboy for the legendary real life trail boss Charles Goodnight, escapes the gallows with the help of a crooked judge, reunites with his Irish girlfriend, Rose Malloy – the Rose of Roscrae – and then marries and loses her due his philandering ways, outruns the lawman/preacher on his trail, and becomes enraptured with the story of Father Damien and his leper colony on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. Johnny’s travels also take him south into Mexico and north up to Canada. As a prisoner in Louisiana and Texas he encounters the likes of Lead Belly and other prison singers recorded by folklorists like John and Alan Lomax.

Other parts of the story are told through the eyes of Rose. How she follows Johnny to the American west, marries him, throws him out, and spends decades as a woman alone running her ranch. Some of the specific things that happen to her are based on the experiences of Tom’s sister-in-law, Claudia Russell.

Eventually, the elderly Rose returns to Ireland and Johnny follows – no longer as her husband, but as her old friend.

Tom’s performances are riveting throughout the long piece. So, too, are the other singers who take on various roles in the folk opera. These include Jimmie Dale Gilmore, David Olney, Joe Ely, Augie Meyers, Jimmy LaFave, Thad Beckman, Sourdough Slim, Maura O’Connell, Eliza Gilkyson, and Gretchen Peters. The orchestral overture, incorporating melodies from traditional folksongs, is played beautifully by the Norwegian Wind Ensemble, the orchestra that Tom collaborated with a couple of years ago on the Aztec Jazz album.

There is an embarrassment of riches among the songs Tom composed for The Rose of Roscrae but I’ll mention that some of the standout moments include Tom’s performances of “The Rose of Roscrae,” “Johnny Behind the Deuce,” the several soliloquys, “Poor Mother Mexico” “Damien (A Crust of Bread, A Slice of Fish, A Cup of Water),” and “The Bear,” sung as a duet with Eliza Gilkyson.

Two of the most stunning performances are by Maura O’Connell singing “I Talk to God” and Gretchen Peters singing “When the Wolves No Longer Sing.”

As well as vehicle to tell the story through about 25 new songs written or co-written by Tom for The Rose of Roscrae, the piece also serves as a homage to traditional folksongs and to the singers who sang them on field and commercial recordings – as well as to some contemporary singers and songwriters who have added to the tradition. Among the borrowed voices we hear singing songs or fragments of songs are Johnny Cash, Moses “Clear Rock” Platt, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Jack Hardy & David Massengill, Tex Ritter, A.L. Lloyd, Finbar Furey, Blackie Farrell, Ross Knox, Glenn Ohrlin, Henry Real Bird, John Trudell, Ana Gabriel, Ian Tyson, Bonnie Dobson, Lead Belly, Guy Clark and Dan Penn.

Mike Regenstreif & Tom Russell in Montreal (2012).

In addition to the 2-CD set, Tom has released an almost essential companion book which includes the folk opera’s libretto, as well as extensive background information on the piece, all of the songs and the many contributors.

The Rose of Roscrae: A Ballad of the West is yet another masterwork by Tom Russell. It is a work of rare ambition and rare brilliance that is beautifully and artfully executed. Bravo to Tom and to his many collaborators on this project.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif