Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – October 14, 2025: The Dutchman and Other Songs of Michael Smith

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/595/72377.html

Theme: The Dutchman and Other Songs of Michael Smith.

Michael Smith, among my all-time favorite singer-songwriters, passed away in 2020 at age 78 from colon cancer.

Mike Regenstreif & Michael Smith (2014)

Michael Smith- Coffeehouse Days

Michael Margaret Pat & Kate (Wind River)

Anne Hills- Ballad of Elizabeth Dark

Every Town: More Songs by Michael Smith (Hand & Heart Music)

Michael Smith & Jamie O'Reilly- Sister Clarissa

Songs of a Catholic Childhood (J. O’Reilly Productions)

Tom Rush- Hobo’s Mandolin (This Here Mandolin)

Ladies Love Outlaws (Columbia)

Steve Goodman- Roving Cowboy (Ballad of Dan Moody)

Words We Can Dance To (Red Pajamas)

Michael Smith- Such Things are Finely Done

Such Things are Finely Done (Tales from the Tavern)

Almost 25 years ago, I was talking to Tom Russell – another of my all-time favorite singer-songwriters. Michael Smith’s name came up in the conversation and I mentioned that Michael’s song, The Dutchman, was one of my favorite songs. Tom said it was one of his favorite songs, too. Tom recorded The Dutchman on Modern Art, his next album.

Tom Russell- The Dutchman

Modern Art (HighTone)

Bonnie Koloc- Crazy Mary

You’re Gonna Love Yourself in the Morning (Ovation)

Anne Hills & John Gorka- Spoon River

Every Town: More Songs by Michael Smith (Hand & Heart Music)

Michael Smith- Rondi’s Birthday

Love Letter on a Fish (Tales from the Tavern)

Skyline with Tony Trischka- Stranded in the Moonlight

Ticket Back: A Retrospective (Flying Fish)

Josh White, Jr..- (When I Lived in) My Grandmother’s House

Delicate Balance (Silverwolf)

Jamie O'Reilly- Waving to Picasso

Swimming Deeper (Bird Avenue Publishing)

Michael Smith- There

Such Things are Finely Done (Tales from the Tavern)

Anne Hills- Memory of August

Every Town: More Songs by Michael Smith (Hand & Heart Music)

Small Potatoes- I Brought My Father with Me

Time Flies (Folk Era)

Barbara Barrow- A Real Good One (Every Town)

Remembering Fred: A Tribute to Fred Holstein (The Remembering Fred Group)

Michael Smith- Love Letter On a Fish

Love Letter On a Fish (Tales from the Tavern)

Before I moved to Ottawa, I hosted a show called Folk Roots/Folk Branches on CKUT in Montreal and one of my favorite memories from that show was having Michael Smith and Anne Hills together in the studio in 2005. I was thrilled when they sang their duet version of The Dutchman.

Anne Hills & Michael Smith- The Dutchman 

Paradise Lost and Found (Redwing Music)

Next week: Songs I’ve Heard Missy Burgess Sing.

--Mike Regenstreif

Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – May 6, 2025: The Banjo Special

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/595/70088.html

Theme: The Banjo Special.

Pete Seeger holding his banjo.

All the songs and tunes on this show feature the banjo.

Doc Watson- Rambling Hobo

Memories (Sugar Hill)

Kate & Anna McGarrigle- Foolish You

Tell My Sister: Kate & Anna McGarrigle (Nonesuch)

Michael Jerome Browne- Reverend Strut

Gettin’ Together (Borealis/Stony Plain)

John Hartford- Gentle on My Mind

Live from Mountain Stage (Blue Plate Music)

The Be Good Tanyas- Reuben

Chinatown (Nettwerk)

Mary Gick- Hills of Home

Six Tunes and a Song (Mary Gick)

Finest Kind- Going to the West

Lost in a Song (Fallen Angle)

Marc Nerenberg- Little Birdie: A Reimagined Traditional Song

Little Birdie: Birds, Beasts & Banjo Blues (Marc Nerenberg)

The Dumptrucks- Qu’Appelle

Selections (Laughing Cactus)

Pete Seeger- Monsieur Banjo

American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 4 (Smithsonian Folkways)

Last Forever with John Cohen- Dillard Chandler

No Place Like Home/Last Forever (2nd Story Sound)

Arnie Naiman- My Lucy Stars

My Lucky Stars (Merriweather)

Robert Thomas & the sessionmen- Springhill

The Way We Roll (Gas)

Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer- Redwinged Blackbird

Get Up and Do Right (Community Music)

Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five- Put ‘Em Down Blues

The Hot Fives & Hot Sevens, Vol. III (Columbia)

Paul Barbarin with Danny Barker- Eh La Bas

Paul Barbarin and His New Orleans Jazz (Collectables)

Mark Rubin – Jew of Oklahoma- Berish Katz Breakdown

Dispatches: Songs from a World Gone Mad (Rubinchik)

Rhiannon Giddens & Justin Robinson- Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss

What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow (Nonesuch)

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings- Howdy Howdy

Woodland (Acony)

Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn- Railroad

Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn (Rounder)

Pharis & Jason Romero- Train on the Island

Tell ‘Em You Were Gold (Smithsonian Folkways)

Jayme Stone’s Lomax Project- Lazy John

Jayme Stone’s Lomax Project (Borealis)

Derroll Adams- The Mountain

Songs of the Banjoman (Wundertutte) 

Suzy Thompson- Lose My Blues

Suzy Sings Siebel Volume One (Suzy Thompson)

Jenny Whiteley- Banjo Girl

The Original Jenny Whiteley (Black Hen Music)

Tony Trischka & Steve Martin- Plunkin’ Rag

Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular (Rounder)

Next week: A Tribute to The Klezmatics.

--Mike Regenstreif

Nefesh Mountain – Beneath the Open Sky

Nefesh Mountain

Beneath the Open Sky

www.nefeshmountain.com

(A version of this review was published in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin.)

Although there are a significant number of Jewish virtuoso bluegrass musicians, the genre itself has rarely been a vehicle for specifically Jewish-themed music. Margot Leverett and the Klezmer Mountain Boys was a great band that combined klezmer and bluegrass traditions but Nefesh Mountain – the husband and wife duo of multi-instrumentalist Eric Lindberg and singer Doni Zasloff – are making Jewish music within a traditional bluegrass framework.

Songs like “Halleluyah,” which I suspect will eventually become a staple in non-Orthodox musical prayer services, and “On and On (L’Dor Vador),” about the continuity of generations, easily flow back and forth from English to Hebrew lyrics, while the traditional bluegrass gospel standard, “Bound for the Promised Land,” is stripped of its Christian references and rewritten by Nefesh Mountain as wishful expression for peace in the Holy Land. One of the most joyous songs is their bluegrass setting of “Oseh Shalom,” and after an intense collection of full band bluegrass tunes, they end the CD quietly with a lovely version of Irving Berlin’s “Russian Lullaby.”

Joining Lindberg and Zasloff on these songs are several A-list bluegrass musicians including banjo maestro Tony Trischka, Jerry Douglas on Dobro, mandolinist Sam Bush and guitarist David Grier.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Playlist: Folk Roots/Folk Branches -- Blood on the Tracks - Revisited

Folk Roots/Folk Branches with Mike Regenstreif is a thematic program streamed on demand at Roots Music Canada.

This program is available as of May 20, 2014 at… www.rootsmusic.ca.

Theme: Blood on the Tracks – Revisted. 

Ben Sidran- Tangled Up in Blue

Dylan Different (Bonsai)

Judy Collins- Simple Twist of Fate

Judy Collins Sings Dylan…Just Like a Woman (Geffen)

Dave's True Story- You’re a Big Girl Now

Simple Twist of Fate: DTS Does Dylan (Bepop)

Bob Dylan- Idiot Wind

The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Columbia)

Tony Trischka & Skyline- You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go

Ticket Back: A Retrospective (Flying Fish)

Sloan Wainwright- Meet Me in the Morning

Rediscovery (Derby Disc)

Tom Russell, Eliza Gilkyson & Joe Ely- Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts

Indians Cowboys Horses Dogs (HighTone)

Mary Lee's Corvette- If You See Her, Say Hello

Blood on the Tracks, Arlene Grocery, NYC (Bar/None)

Ed Roland & the Sweet Tea Project- Shelter from the Storm

Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan (Amnesty International)

Dave Van Ronk- Buckets of Rain

Down in Washington Square: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection (Smithsonian Folkways)

Bonus Song:

Bob Dylan- Up to Me

Side Tracks/The Complete Album Collection Vol. One (Columbia/Legacy)

This show can be streamed at… www.rootsmusic.ca.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Various Artists – Note of Hope: Woody Guthrie & Rob Wasserman, a collaboration in Words and Music

VARIOUS ARTISTS

Note of Hope: Woody Guthrie and Rob Wasserman – a collaboration in words and music

429 Records

woodyguthrie.org/noteofhope.htm

“The note of hope is the only note

That can keep us from falling to the bottom of the heap of evolution

Because, largely, about all a human being is anyway

Is just, a hoping machine.”

-Woody Guthrie, Notes About Music, 3/29/1946

During the almost-14-year run of the Folk Roots/Folk Branches radio show on CKUT in Montreal, I did a bunch of special programs devoted to the songs of Woody Guthrie.

Almost 11 years ago, on January 4, 2001, Nora Guthrie, Woody’s daughter and director of the Woody Guthrie Archives, joined me on one of those shows to talk about Woody, the archives and the various projects she had done, or had in the works, to bring the thousands of unheard songs in the archives to life.

One of the projects she mentioned was a multi-artist collection being spearheaded by the great bassist Rob Wasserman. I was already a big fan of Rob’s playing and of his Duets album for which he collaborated with a different artist on every track, so the Woody Guthrie project was something I quickly began looking forward to.

Years passed since that radio show. When I’d see Nora over the years, she’d tell me the project was still ongoing. Finally, Note of Hope is out, released in conjunction with celebration leading to the centennial of Woody’s birth on July 14, 2012.

Rob Wasserman’s bass playing is the heartbeat of this collection, and the soul is Woody Guthrie’s writings, dating from his New York – particularly Brooklyn – years of 1942 to 1954.

It’s an eclectic collection of artists and an eclectic range of material that Rob and Nora have assembled for Note of Hope. There are artists rooted in folk, rock, jazz and hip hop – or various combinations thereof – and the songs, mostly set to music by the individual artists themselves, or in collaboration with Rob, stretch far and away, both lyrically and musically, from the standard Woody Guthrie canon. In addition to having been a prolific songwriter, Woody was also a prolific prose writer and I'm sure some these pieces were not written as songs. Several of the most compelling tracks are performed as spoken word pieces with musical backing.

The spoken word tracks, and a couple of others that are kind of sung-spoken, remind me of Jack Kerouac’s recorded readings with musical backing.

Among the spoken word pieces is “Voice,” performed by Ani DiFranco, a Coney Island meditation on how it is not real, authentic, everyday people reflected in popular culture – something that’s not much different 60 or 70 years later.

Another is “I Heard a Man Talking,” a reading by the late Studs Terkel, the legendary Chicago radio interviewer and oral historian. The piece, written in 1943, is a story that could have come out of Kerouac’s On the Road, written almost a decade later. It makes me wonder if Kerouac’s stream-of-consciousness writing style was at least partially inspired by Woody’s writing.

And then there’s “There’s a Feeling in Music,” read by Pete Seeger on top of a banjo and bass arrangement composed and played Tony Trischka and Rob. Written in 1942 just two years after Woody and Pete met for the first time in New York City, it is a beautifully written rumination on why music and songs are so important and so much a part of our lives.

“The Debt I Owe,” set to music with some of his additional words by Lou Reed is almost a talking song too. The narrator walks around Coney Island – where Woody lived with wife Marjorie Mazia Guthrie and kids Arlo, Joady and Nora – ruminating on money troubles in a way that seems to so reflect the burdens of so many in our own 21st century economic crisis. But, there’s another layer to the song. The real debt is not about money, it’s about the times we’re living in – “the bell is ringing out danger,” Lou sings (and a line Lee Hays and Pete Seeger would use a few years later) – and the people we love and sometimes hurt, and owe so much to.

Other highlights include “Wild Card in the Hole,” set to music and sung by Madeleine Peyroux, another song that seems as reflective of our own times as of 1949 when Woody wrote the words; and “Old Folks,” set to music and sung by Nelly McKay, in which the narrator muses on the weariness and accomplishment of old age and the optimism of youth.

The finale, “You Know the Night,” set to music by Rob and Jackson Browne, and sung by Jackson, is an amazing 15-minute tour-de-force in which Woody vividly recalls the night he met Marjorie. Written in 1943, it almost presages songs like “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” that Bob Dylan would start writing two decades later.

The performing artists in this collection are of our time, but I never cease to be astounded how so much of Woody’s writings, from six or seven decades ago, seems to be as much, or more so, of our time as his.

--Mike Regenstreif