Rory Block – Shake ‘Em On Down: A Tribute to Mississippi Fred McDowell

RORY BLOCK

Shake ‘Em On Down: A Tribute to Mississippi Fred McDowell

Stony Plain

roryblock.com

Rory Block has been one of the finest revivalists of traditional, acoustic-based blues for decades now – both on stage and in a now-formidable body of recorded work. Whether in interpreting the songs and stylings of earlier generations of blues masters, or in adding to the tradition with her well-crafted original material, almost everything she’s done over the years (save perhaps a brief foray into pop music in the mid-‘70s) has been first-rate.

I had the pleasure of producing her first Montreal concerts at the Golem in the 1980s and visiting with her on the Folk Roots/Folk Branches radio show when she returned to the city to perform at the jazz festival in 2000.

In recent years, Rory has been turning her attention to a series of compelling tribute albums honouring some of the earlier blues masters whose music and/or personalities have inspired her.

The first in the series, The Lady and Mr. Johnson, released in 2006, cemented her reputation as perhaps the foremost contemporary interpreter of the songs of Robert Johnson, the most influential of the Delta blues masters of the 1930s.

The second, Blues Walkin’ Like a Man: A Tribute to Son House, released in 2008, paid tribute to Son House, a Delta blues artist who had influenced Johnson and who, unlike Johnson, survived into old age, allowing for his rediscovery in the 1960s folk and blues revival, and allowing for young aficionados like Rory to meet and learn directly from him

She’s now released the third in the series, Shake ‘Em On Down: A Tribute to Mississippi Fred McDowell, which also pays tribute to a blues elder that she had the opportunity to meet and learn directly from in the 1960s.

Mississippi Fred McDowell was an interesting blues elder in the 1960s in that he never recorded in the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s like so many of his contemporaries. Despite decades of music making in Tennessee and Mississippi, he was first discovered and recorded by folklorist Alan Lomax in 1959. Those 1959 tracks are available as The First Recordings on Rounder as part of its Alan Lomax Collection.

But, as an active recording and performing artist throughout the 1960s (he died in 1971), McDowell was an important and influential presence in the folk and blues scene.

To my mind, Shake ‘Em On Down is the most personal of Rory’s tribute albums to date in that she includes four of her own songs alongside eight written by, or from the repertoire of, Mississippi Fred McDowell.

She opens the album with two of her original pieces. She wrote and sings the first, “Steady Freddy,” in McDowell’s style and from his (imagined) perspective recounting essential details from the history of his life in music leading up to his discovery by Lomax and his first forays into touring beyond his home region. Rory uses her poetic-blues license to take McDowell’s famous statement, “I do not play no rock ‘n’ roll,” and turn it into long-standing advice from his mother who tells him, “Don’t ‘cha play no rock ‘n’ roll.”

In the second song, “Mississippi Man,” Rory recounts her own first encounter, at age 15, with McDowell.

The other two original pieces, later on the CD, include “Ancestral Home,” which combines musical influences from McDowell’s guitar playing and African music, to imagine McDowell singing about his ancestors stolen from Africa by slave traders, and “The Breadline,” a song based on McDowell guitar riffs and lyrically inspired by both the Great Depression that McDowell lived through and the contemporary hard times of the past several years.

Among the highlights of Rory’s interpretations of McDowell’s material are great versions of the infectious “Kokomo Blues,” the title track, “Shake ‘Em On Down,” a role-reversal version of “The Girl That I’m Lovin’” that she sings as “The Man That I’m Lovin’” and an inspired take on the gospel song, “Woke Up This Morning.”

The only thing that I would question is the inclusion of “Good Morning Little School Girl,” which she sings as “school boy.” I’ve got a lot of versions of the song in my library – by such blues elders as McDowell, Lightnin’ Hopkins and Muddy Waters, and by other revivalists including Taj Mahal, Jim Kweskin and Johnny Winter – and as much as I respect all of those artists, and many others who have done versions over the years, the song has creeped me out for decades. Essentially, it is a pedophile’s come-on to an innocent kid.

To be fair, Rory addresses the issue in her liner notes saying “the song is a prime example of a message we would object to in today’s world due to heightened sensitivity regarding child predation.” She goes on to make the point that we shouldn’t apply today’s standards to people who lived in earlier times under different standards of morality.

I agree with Rory when it comes to appreciating artists and their recordings from earlier eras. But, I’d just as soon wish that my own contemporaries – like Rory – and younger artists not revive such songs. About 60 years ago, Louis Jordan, one of my favourite artists of that period, recorded a song called “Gal, You Need a Whippin’,” and while the contemporary morality of 1949 or ’50 may have allowed him to express such sentiments – tongue-in-cheek or not – then, I don’t want to hear anyone sing that song today. I would say the same about “Good Morning Little School Girl.”

That quibble aside, Shake ‘Em On Down: A Tribute to Mississippi Fred McDowell, is a great album.

--Mike Regenstreif

Hazel Dickens 1935-2011

Like virtually all in the folk music world, I was deeply saddened to learn that Hazel Dickens, the great Appalachian singer and songwriter, and pioneering woman of bluegrass, had passed away early today in a Washington, D.C. hospital where she was being treated for pneumonia.

Hazel’s importance cannot be underestimated. At a time when most of the artists coming into the folk music world were revivalists, she was a tradition-bearer, born and raised in “the green rolling hills of West Virginia,” who brought generations of authenticity to the songs she sang, and the songs she wrote, and the music she played.

In the mid-1960s, Hazel formed a duo with Alice Gerrard that fronted bluegrass bands as bandleaders and lead singers – which was very rare for the day. They recorded two LPs of bluegrass for Folkways in the ‘60s that were among the first bluegrass albums to feature women as leaders. When Smithsonian Folkways reissued the LPs on a single CD, they rightfully named it Pioneering Women of Bluegrass.

I first encountered Hazel and Alice in the early- or mid-‘70s at a folk festival – I think it was Mariposa – around the time that Rounder put out their masterpiece album, Hazel and Alice. That album of traditional and neo-traditional old-time Appalachian music, is one of the most important and influential folk music recordings of the past half-century.

Hazel went on to record another fine album with Alice, several solo albums, and several collaborations with other artists all of which I played enthusiastically over the years on the radio show.

I didn’t know Hazel very well, but enjoyed hearing her perform and chatting with her when our paths crossed at folk festivals over the years.

Art Menius, who knew Hazel much better than I did, said this in an e-mail this afternoon:

“The greatest takeaway for me with Hazel is her courage on all matters except flying and revealing her age. The courage to leave home in the hills for the industrial harshness of Baltimore a half century ago. The courage to play bass in the hostile male world of bluegrass. The courage to partner with Alice Gerrard and record bluegrass albums with male sidemen. The courage to write bluegrass songs that raised issues a lot of people would rather not discuss. The courage to be honest and confrontational. The courage to speak truth to power in her art and to keep alive the tradition of hillbilly radical singers like Sarah Ogun Gunning and Aunt Molly Jackson while working in a genre that had little model or precedent for that save for odds and ends like Vern & Ray's ‘To Hell With the People, To Hell With the Land.’ Hazel combined two of my passions -- hillbilly music and political art.”

“Well I paid the price for the leavin'
And this life I have is not one I thought I'd find.
Just let me live, love, let my cry, but when I go just let me die
Among the friends who'll remember when I'm gone.”
-Hazel Dickens, “West Virginia, My Home”

--Mike Regenstreif

BTW, the line in quotation marks, “the green rolling hills of West Virginia,” is the title of, and a lyric from, a song written by Bruce (Utah) Phillips. Some of what's in that song accurately parallels Hazel's real life. The song's definitive version, with an added final verse, was on the Hazel and Alice album. --MR

The Laws – Try Love

THE LAWS
Try Love
JML Music
www.thelaws.ca

I first encountered John and Michele Law – or The Laws as they later became known – back in 2000 when they sent me a copy of their first album, Estimated Time of Arrival. I enjoyed the CD, heard a lot of promise in them and their songs, and played it quite a bit on the radio show. Then, on May 31, 2001, they zipped into Montreal and we had a nice visit on the radio that included some fine live performances.

They’ve now released Try Love, their sixth album, a CD that goes a long way toward fulfilling the promise that I heard a decade ago. Their songwriting is strong (all but one of the songs is credited as co-written by John and Michele), their harmonies are exquisite, and their arrangements, which draw on folk, country and bluegrass influences, and are built on John’s guitar and Michele’s bass, are very tasteful. The only sideman is producer J.P. Cormier who variously adds keyboards, percussion, guitar, banjo and mandolin.

The album opens with the sweet duet, “I Believe in You.” With its references to love at first sight, music and the road, I would guess the song is a tribute to the Laws’ relationship and to the travelling musicians’ life they lead.

Among my other favourite tracks are “Rebel Cowboy Dream,” which Michele sings from the perspective of woman left behind by a man who left to pursue an impossible dream and now lives hand-to-mouth “picking up gigs a s a rodeo clown” and maybe spending the night with “what’s left when last call comes around,” and “Who’s Keeping Score,” a western swing tune that could almost be a response from the guy with the rebel cowboy dream.

Another favourite is their version of the Gordon Lightfoot classic “Wherefore and Why” that has Michele singing lead on top of straight-ahead bluegrass arrangement featuring some excellent banjo and mandolin playing by J.P. (One of J.P. Cormier’s best albums, by the way, is The Long River, his tribute album to Gordon Lightfoot.) The trio – John, Michele and J.P. – are back in full bluegrass mode on “Beer Mountain Rag,” the album’s lone instrumental.

--Mike Regenstreif

Diana Jones – High Atmosphere

DIANA JONES

High Atmosphere

Proper American

dianajonesmusic.com

High Atmosphere is the third in a series of superb albums that Diana Jones has released since 2006 in which she creates seemingly simple and plainspoken (plain sung, really) songs which draw on the traditions of southern folk music. While the songs and performances may be seemingly simple, they are, in fact, skilfully drawn pieces that weave together timeless melodies with lyrics that are poetic and oblique on some songs and which tell stories and present fully fleshed out characters on others.

The albums open with the title track, a lonely, moody piece in the style of an Appalachian folksong that would seem to be about finding refuge above the fray. Apparently, the song was inspired by some devastating flooding near Diana’s home in Tennessee that she was spared from because her home was up on a hill.

I particularly like Diana’s character- and story-based songs. In “Sister,” her narrator is the sibling of a woman caught up in a relationship with a man she views with well-deserved suspicion. She sings “I Told the Man,” as the wife of a coal miner unsure, as always, whether he’ll come up out of the mine alive at the end of his shift. In “My Love is Gone,” she mourns the departure, or perhaps the death, of a lover, with quiet desperation. In “Don’t Forget Me,” she sings as man who’s trying hard but still can’t quite measure up. 

These songs, and the rest, represent some of today's finest songwriting. Diana Jones is one of the most essential folk-rooted songwriters of the past decade.

Click here for my review of her previous album, Better Times Will Come.

--Mike Regenstreif

Allan Fraser and Brian Blain to play the Yellow Door

Allan Fraser

I got an e-mail recently from Allan Fraser mentioning that he and Brian Blain would be doing a double bill together at the Yellow Door in Montreal on Saturday, April 16.

That note from Allan brought back a memory from some time in the early-1970s when I was running the Yellow Door for the night – as I occasionally did back then – when Chuck Baker was away. There was a problem and the performer who was supposed to play that night wasn’t able to so I had to find someone to take the stage. Through the back alley behind the Yellow Door was a little coach house that was occupied in those days by some folkies and there’d usually be someone or other there with a guitar. I dashed over, found Allan Fraser and Brian Blain, and had them on stage at the Yellow Door a few minutes later.

Brian Blain

Allan, of course, was the Fraser of Fraser & DeBolt, a popular duo on the Canadian folk scene back then. Brian was the producer of the second Fraser & DeBolt LP.

Allan – whose song, “Dance Hall Girls” is one of the great classics of the Montreal folk scene – has continued to write songs over the nearly four decades since then but doesn’t come out to play them very often.

Brian, a fine singer-songwriter who lives at the corner of Blues Street and Folk Avenue, is an accomplished performer who’s been based in Toronto for many years now. He was my guest on the radio show back in 2005.

The Yellow Door, all these years later, is still at 3625 Aylmer Street in the McGill Ghetto.

--Mike Regenstreif

Mike Seeger & Peggy Seeger – Fly Down Little Bird

MIKE SEEGER & PEGGY SEEGER

Fly Down Little Bird

Appleseed

mikeseeger.info

peggyseeger.com

Siblings Mike Seeger (1933-2009) and Peggy Seeger (born 1935) came from one of the most important American musical families. Their parents were the pioneering musicologist Charles Seeger and the composer Ruth Crawford Seeger – both of whom became deeply involved with traditional folk music in the 1930s; their older half-brother is legendary folksinger Pete Seeger.

Both Mike and Peggy have had long, important careers in folk music. Mike was a traditionally-based solo singer and multi-instrumentalist, a member of the New Lost City Ramblers, a folklorist and collector, and a collaborator with countless artists ranging from Jean Ritchie to Bob Dylan. Peggy is a singer of both traditional and contemporary songs, an important songwriter, and was, for many years, the musical (and life) partner of the late Ewan MacColl, one of Great Britain’s most important and influential folksingers.

Growing up in the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s, surrounded by traditional music and musicians, Mike and Peggy were each other’s first musical collaborators. Although they collaborated on a few occasions over the years, their musical careers – and bases-of-operation – diverged over the decades. But they still always looked forward to making music together and less than a year before Mike passed away from a fast-moving cancer, they recorded this set of traditional folksongs they remembered from their youth.

The album opens with Mike and Peggy’s a cappella sibling harmonies on “Old Bangum,” an old ballad about a hunter and a wild boar, the kind of animal whose accomplishments are purely the province of tales and ballads. Their singing sure sounds like it comes from a lifetime of familial harmonizing.

Save for “Red River Jig,” a Canadian fiddle tune and the album’s lone instrumental, the songs are all rooted in Southern Appalachian song traditions. They include versions – great performances all – of such familiar songs as “Cindy,” “The Dodger Song,” “My Home’s Across the Blue Ridge Mountains” and “Little Birdie.” Mike and Peggy know just how to communicate the essence of these songs so that they seems as relevant now as they did 60 or more years ago when they first sang them, or in the lost times and places in which they were first sung in the kitchens and on the front porches of the rural South. 

In addition to their singing, both Mike and Peggy play instruments that vary from song to song. Mike is heard on banjo, harmonica, banjo-guitar, fiddle, Hawaiian guitar, cello-banjo, guitar and mandolin. Peggy variously plays guitar, piano, banjo and dulcimer. A bassist, Leo Lorenzoni, who plays on just one song, is the album’s only other musician.

I’ve always enjoyed both Mike and Peggy in their individual musical pursuits – this collaboration, though, is something very special. I know Peggy. I’ve written about her often and she was my guest on the Folk Roots/Folk Branches radio program a couple of times during her visits to Montreal. I also knew Mike a little bit and got to work with him several times over the years at folk festivals. I wish I’d had opportunities to hear them sing together in person.

--Mike Regenstreif

Enoch Kent – Take a Trip with Me

ENOCH KENT

Take a Trip with Me

Borealis

enochkent.ca

As I noted in Sing Out! in 2008, “Enoch Kent was an established folk singer – a colleague of Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger in the Singers Club – when he moved to Canada in the 1960s. However, he didn’t record for more than three decades while working in the advertising business and singing occasionally at folk festivals and at Toronto folk clubs like Fiddler’s Green. In retirement, though, Enoch has become a prolific recording artist;” Take a Trip with Me is his sixth album since 2002.

The album title is taken from the first line of the opening track, Woody Guthrie’s “1913 Massacre,” a vivid description of a Christmas party being held for the families of Michigan copper miners at which company thugs screamed “Fire” and then locked the doors so people couldn’t get out leading to the smothering deaths of 73 panicked children on the stairs in front of the locked doors. Enoch’s version of Guthrie’s memorable song is as riveting as any I’ve ever heard.

In fact, Enoch – as on his previous releases – is never less than riveting as he explores a repertoire of traditional folk songs and contemporary compositions – his own and by others – steeped in the timelessness of traditional songs and working class life. As a singer, I’ve always thought of Enoch as being quietly powerful as he draws listeners into the compelling stories that he’s singing.

Among Enoch’s best original pieces are “The Pawnshop Window,” in which he describes many of the items for sale in a Toronto pawnshop and speculates on what the items may mean to the people who brought them to the shop or who may be buying them, and “The Murder of Ginger Goodwin,” the story of a legendary B.C. labour organizer who was murdered in 1918.

Among the other highlights are great versions of two powerful Australian songs. “Travelling Down the Castlereagh,” written by Banjo Patterson (best known for “Waltzing Matilda”) is about a farm worker who wouldn’t work with scabs, while Judy Small’s “Mothers, Daughters, Wives” is about a generation of women who saw their fathers, then husbands, and then sons, go off to successive wars – and then saw their daughters redefine their roles as women during the first wave of the modern feminist movement.

Of the traditional songs, I particularly like Enoch’s version of “Off to Sea Once More,” a ballad about a sailor forced to go to sea again after losing everything to a swindling prostitute, and “A’e Fond Kiss,” a beautiful parting song from the Robert Burns canon.

Although I’ve only highlighted half of the album’s 14 songs, I could, just as easily, have chosen any of the others to call attention to.

Enoch is also a compelling concert performer and will be in Montreal on Saturday, April 9, 8:00 pm, at Petit Campus, 57 Prince Arthur East, as part of the Wintergreen Concert Series. Call 514-524-9225 for tickets or information.

--Mike Regenstreif

Jack Hardy 1947-2011

I got into Montreal from Ottawa late Friday afternoon, logged onto my e-mail to find several messages letting me know that my old friend Jack Hardy had passed away after a short battle with lung cancer. I didn’t know that he was sick. Apparently, he’d been diagnosed just a few weeks ago and only his family and just a few of his closest friends knew.

I first met Jack sometime around 1977 or ’78 when I used to spend two or three days at a time, two or three times a year, in New York City. Dave Van Ronk introduced us late one night and I learned quickly that Jack was a brilliant guy, a dedicated songwriter, and, perhaps, the world’s greatest champion of the art of songwriting. He was already on his lifelong mission to help anyone dedicated to the art of song-craft find and develop their voice. He was the guiding light, the guru, of the new song movement in New York City.

For almost as long as I knew him, Jack hosted a Monday night songwriters’ exchange in his flat on Houston Street. He’d gather songwriters there, feed them a pasta dinner and then they’d exchange brand new songs. He had a rule that the songs had to be less than a week old. Hundreds of songwriters – including some of the most respected songwriters of our time – passed through Jack’s apartment on Monday nights over the past 30-plus years.

Early on, though, those Monday night songwriters’ exchanges were held at the Cornelia Street Café in Greenwich Village and I remember sitting in one night and listening. One of the songwriters there was a very young Suzanne Vega. Jack pointed her out to me as someone to watch out for. I think it was about five years before her first album would come out. He knew.

Those were the years that I was working as a booking agent on the folk scene. Although he wasn’t one of my clients, I did a little work on Jack’s behalf getting him a couple of key gigs and trying to get a couple of the important folk labels that I worked with interested in him. I really thought then – as I have continued to think over the years – that he was a great songwriter.

One of my fondest memories of Jack was when I booked him to perform at the Golem, the folk club that I was running in Montreal. It must have been sometime in 1982 or ’83. Jack came up to Montreal with two sidemen – his brother, Jeff Hardy, on bass, and guitarist Frank Christian. They did a wonderful concert for a modest audience and we all had a great time crashing at the small apartment I had then and seeing the sights of Montreal.

I saw less of Jack in the 1990s and 2000s; probably no more than two or three times each decade. I wasn't going to New York City anymore and Jack never made it back to Montreal. But we’d cross paths occasionally at a festival somewhere and it was always great to see him. Those were the years that I was hosting Folk Roots/Folk Branches on CKUT and I played his songs a lot over the years – including an extended feature in 1995.

After Jack’s brother Jeff died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, I wrote to him to say how sorry I was. I think several months had passed when Jack called to thank me for writing. We spoke at length that night; a conversation I treasure having had.

Jack died much too young and with many more songs to write. He will be missed. But he does live on in the songs he left for us and in the influence that he had on so many of his contemporaries and on the countless songwriters who have followed in his wake.

My condolences to Jack's family and to all of his friends.

“But I might shorten the road

With a story or two

What the frost might show

If you dig right through

Something buried inside

It’s your own sweet song

In the blink of an eye

So long, so long.”   -Jack Hardy, “Singer’s Lament”

--Mike Regenstreif

Bruce Cockburn – Small Source of Comfort

BRUCE COCKBURN
Small Source of Comfort
True North
brucecockburn.com

Listening to Small Source of Comfort, Bruce Cockburn’s compelling new album, it occurred to me that his music has been part of my life for a very long time. I think his first LP, just called Bruce Cockburn, had just been released when I saw him at the Back Door, a short-lived Montreal coffeehouse, circa 1970 or ’71. Since then, every one of his 30 other albums has been added to my collection, I’ve seen him perform many times in venues large and small, and I’ve interviewed him several times for newspapers, magazines and radio including a memorable guest spot on Folk Roots/Folk Branches and a cover feature in Sing Out! magazine.

As would be natural with an artist whose body of work is as large and as varied as Bruce’s, there are some of his albums that I’ve liked more than others. Small Source of Comfort, I’m pleased to report, quickly assumed its place among my favourites of Bruce’s albums. I’ve always preferred his more acoustic and intimate sounding records (and concerts) and that’s the mode he’s in here.

There’s a highway or travel motif to many of the songs and instrumentals – there are five instrumentals among the 14 tracks – on Small Source of Comfort borne, as Bruce notes, from frequent long distance drives between Kingston, Ontario, where he’s lived in recent years, and Brooklyn, where his girlfriend was living. Bruce “crossed the border laughing,” in the first line of the first song, “The Iris of the World,” describing an encounter with the U.S. border officials. Other highway and travel references include a woman who “strides across the blacktop” in “Radiance”; the urban traffic congestion in “Five Fifty-One”; the images reflected in the titles of “Driving Away,” one of two fine collaborations with Annabelle Chvostek, and “Lois On the Autobahn,” a nifty instrumental conversation between Bruce’s baritone guitar and Jenny Scheinman’s violin; and the scenes and signs from the road in “Boundless,” the other collaboration with Annabelle.

Among the other songs are “Call Me Rose,” in which Richard Nixon is reincarnated and rehabilitated as a poor single mother; “Called Me Back,” an hilarious blues tune about assumptions and missed communication; and “Gifts,” a lovely old song of Bruce’s that he’s never recorded until now. It’s a song that wouldn’t have been out of place on early albums like High Winds White Sky or Salt, Sun and Time.

The album’s most compelling and poignant moments are in “Each One Lost,” inspired by a ramp ceremony for two Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan that Bruce observed on a trip there. It’s hard not be moved by the sincerity of the grief that Bruce expresses, as well as the critical understanding of the motivations of the soldiers who are over there. A companion instrumental, “The Comets of Kandahar,” also has much to say despite having no lyrics.

In all, Small Source of Comfort is Bruce Cockburn at his most intimate, his most musical, and his most incisive. Kudos, too, to producer Colin Linden who also contributes some fine playing on several songs.

--Mike Regenstreif

Ottawa Folk Festival update #3

The Ottawa Folk Festival has just announced the festival will add an extra day this year and will run from Thursday August 25 through Sunday August 28. They’ve also announced the new festival site will be at Hog’s Back Park. Click here for a Google-eyed view of the park.

The artists’ line-up will be announced on May 25.

Pictured: Mike Regenstreif and Sonny Ochs at the 2009 Ottawa Folk Festival.

--Mike Regenstreif

Lucinda Williams – Blessed

LUCINDA WILLIAMS
Blessed
Lost Highway
lucindawilliams.com

I read a review of Blessed, Lucinda Williams’ new CD, before I had a chance to actually sit down and listen to the album. The critic gave the album a lukewarm review, damning it with some faint praise while seeming to lament that Williams is currently happy in her life; suggesting that she writes much better songs when she’s unhappy.

Reading the review, I worried I wouldn’t like the album. I needn’t have. Blessed – like virtually every other album Williams has released – is a superbly crafted set of songs. Being of a similar age to Williams, it’s more than OK with me that she’s writing mature songs that reflect the life experiences of our generation.

And, in any case, many of the songs on Blessed do reflect the kinds of themes of anger and sadness that Williams has always dealt with so brilliantly.

The CD opens with “Buttercup,” an angry kiss-off to a former lover or friend set to an intense, rocking arrangement. It’s followed by the quieter “I Don’t How You’re Livin’,” in which Williams expresses sadness at the fact that the person she’s singing about – perhaps the same former lover or friend of the previous song – has isolated him or herself from her.

Several songs deal with questions of mortality and death. In “Copenhagen,” she’s far from home trying to make sense of a death of someone who was obviously close. In “Seeing Black,” apparently inspired by the death of songwriter Vic Chesnutt, she addresses a series of rhetorical ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions to someone who has committed suicide; while in “Soldier’s Song,” Williams movingly contrasts the life of a soldier about to die in battle with that of his wife and child waiting at home.

I also really like the more positive songs on the album. “Born To Be Loved,” is kind of a love song, but, more than that, it’s a song of affirmation about what it means to be human. “Blessed” and “Awakening” continue that affirmation finding life’s blessings in all of the ordinary and extraordinary encounters that we experience in life.

And in a pair of beautiful love songs, “Sweet Love,” and “Kiss Like Your Kiss,” Williams reflects the happiness that comes with true and lasting love.

Williams only rocks hard on a couple of the dozen tracks. Most of the arrangements are the kind of trademarked acoustic settings that allow a listener to be transported by Williams’ luxuriant voice, and by her perceptive words and sweet melodies.

--Mike Regenstreif

Mae Moore – Folklore

MAE MOORE
Folklore
Poetical License
maemoore.com

Mae Moore started out as a young singer-songwriter on the folk scene and went on to achieve some significant commercial success – both as a recording and performing artist in her own right and as a songwriter for others – in the 1990s. She retreated from the pop circuit years ago and now makes music on her own terms from her home base on the Gulf Islands in B.C. where she also paints and does organic farming. Several of Mae’s paintings are featured in the CD Digipak and booklet and she has recently released a companion art book also called Folklore.

When Mae mentioned to me a few months ago that she had a new album called Folklore in the works, I imagined that it would be a collection of traditional folksongs that she would put her personal stamp on. But, as it turns out, when she refers to folklore, it is to her own, personal folklore – or that of the other people who inhabit her songs. “You’re the author of your own folklore,” she sings to the protagonist in the title song.

While Folkore is certainly rooted in a contemporary folk approach, it’s also equally rooted in jazz. The acoustic guitar or dulcimer she plays signals the folk base while the musical exploration and some of the instrumental colouring suggest jazz. Several tracks feature Daniel Lapp playing Flumpet, a recent hybrid horn that blends elements of a flugelhorn and trumpet. His playing on “Tom Thomson’s Mandolin” is kind of bluesy in a Davisonian kind of way. Other jazz musicians featured on several tracks each include Scott Sheerin on soprano sax and Marc Atkinson on guitar. Producer Joby Baker is heard on various instruments on most songs.

While I generally avoid comparisons with other artists, there are several obvious parallels here with Joni Mitchell. Mae and Mitchell both use open tunings on the guitar and dulcimer, both blend folk and jazz influences, and both integrate music and painting in their personal art. Which is not to say that Mae’s music is derivative of Mitchell’s; it’s just that the parallels are interesting.

Among my favourite songs is “Tom Thomson’s Mandolin,” which describes the Group of Seven artist’s devotion to his art and to the natural wilderness beauty of Algonquin Park, where he died in unknown circumstances in 1917 at the age of 39. I’m not sure if the references to his mandolin playing are true or based on if they’re Mae’s poetic license, but, if true, I guess that makes him a musical and artistic ancestor to Mae and Mitchell.

Another favourite is the dulcimer-based “Oh, Canada,” a heartfelt tribute to the landscape of this vast country of ours (although, to avoid confusion, I wish it didn’t have the same title as our national anthem).

--Mike Regenstreif

Lucy Kaplansky coming to Montreal, March 4

One of the concerts I’ve most been looking forward to this season is the return to Montreal of the superb New York-based singer-songwriter Lucy Kaplansky.

I remember being quite impressed hearing her do a song or two in New York City – more than 30 years ago – when she was half of Simon & Kaplansky, a duo with Elliot Simon. She later had a duo with Shawn Colvin before leaving the music business to get her PhD and establish a practice as a clinical psychologist.

Lucy returned to music making in the early-1990s and her first album was released in 1994 – I first played it on Folk Roots/Folk Branches on December 1, 1994. That album and all of her subsequent releases – including the Cry Cry Cry collaboration with Dar Williams and Richard Shindell – were staples of Folk Roots/Folk Branches programming until the show ended in 2007. Lucy was a guest on the show in 1999 in a conversation we recorded that summer at the Ottawa Folk Festival.

I’ve loved the three concerts that I’ve seen Lucy do over the years and anticipate a great evening on Friday, March 4, 8:00 pm, at La Sala Rossa (4848 St. Laurent). Contact Hello Darlin’ Productions at 514-524-9224 for information or ticket reservations.

Lucy’s most recent album is Red Horse, a collaboration with Eliza Gilkyson and John Gorka. My review is here.

Below are my reviews of her albums Over the Hills (Montreal Gazette, April 12, 2007) and Every Single Day (Sing Out! magazine, Spring 2002).

--Mike Regenstreif

LUCY KAPLANSKY
Over the Hills
Red House

Themes of familial joys and grief, and continuity of the generations, runs through the finely-crafted and movingly delivered original songs that Lucy Kaplansky offers on her sixth album. She sings about the joys of raising an inquisitive young daughter in "Manhattan Moon" and says goodbye to her dying father in "Today’s the Day." "The Gift" is a poignant tribute to both her grandfather and father as she acknowledges the gift of music they passed down to her. In addition to her own songs, Kaplansky also puts her distinctive stamp on such numbers as "Someday Soon," Ian Tyson’s classic about a young girl in love with a rodeo cowboy, and "Ring of Fire," a hit June Carter wrote for future husband Johnny Cash. ****

--Mike Regenstreif

LUCY KAPLANSKY
Every Single Day
Red House

On her fourth solo album, Lucy Kaplansky brings her considerable skills to bear on a set of songs that examine human relationships and frailties with the combined skills of a singer and songwriter (her songs are collaborations with her husband, Richard Litvin) who is informed with the insights of a highly trained psychologist (Kaplansky has a PhD in psychology and had a clinical practice in New York City for some years before returning to music on a full time basis). So when she sings about an egocentric singer in “Every Single Day” or the lonely person in the midst of the big city in “Nowhere” or the illicit lovers in “Guilty As Sin,” there is much deeper analysis than one often encounters in contemporary songs.

The most moving song on the album is “Song For Molly,” a beautiful, quiet piece in which Kaplansky recalls the relationship that she had at 13 with her institutionalized grandmother in the grips of Alzheimer’s or some other memory-robbing disease.

In addition to her original material, Kaplansky also turns in strong versions of songs drawn from other writers.
My favorite of her covers is Julie Miller’s “Broken Things,” in which the broken-hearted protagonist finds that its never too late to find love again. Her version of the Louvin Brothers’ “The Angels Rejoiced Last Night,” shows Kaplansky’s great affinity for traditional country.

Most of these songs have a layered, produced sound that’s closer to pop music than contemporary folk usually gets, but Kaplansky never lets the arrangements overtake either the songs or her voice.

--Mike Regenstreif

The Wailin’ Jennys – Bright Morning Stars; Good Lovelies – Let the Rain Fall

The obvious similarity between the Wailin’ Jennys and the Good Lovelies are that they’re both Canadian – although the Jennys now include an American member – trios of sublime harmony singers. But, the similarities pretty much end there as shown on the fine new CDs the groups have released this month. The Jennys' songs are – mostly – quieter and more subtle and reveal more each time they’re heard. The Good Lovelies are more upbeat and just plain fun from the get-go.

THE WAILIN’ JENNYS

Bright Morning Stars

True North Records (Canada)

Red House Records (U.S.)

thewailinjennys.com

Bright Morning Stars is the Winnipeg-based Wailin’ Jennys third full-length studio album and each of those albums has featured a slightly different line-up.

Their debut EP, The Wailin’ Jennys, and first full-length studio album, 40 Days, featured original members Nicky Mehta, Ruth Moody and Cara Luft.

Firecracker, the second full-length studio album, featured Nicky, Ruth and Annabelle Chvostek; while on the 2009 live album, Live at the Mauch Chunk Opera House, and, now, Bright Morning Stars, Nicky and Ruth are joined by American singer-songwriter Heather Masse.

As I noted in my review of Live at the Mauch Chunk Opera House, the Wailin’ Jennys have, with each personnel change, seemingly seamlessly adapted and evolved. There was something different, but consistently Jennyish, with each change. With the live album and several years of touring with Nicky and Ruth, Heather seems like a veteran member of the trio, hardly the new Jenny on the block.

The Wailin’ Jennys take an egalitarian approach to the album. Each contributes four original songs on which she sings lead with the other two supplying their sublime harmonies and they also offer a stunning version of the traditional hymn-like “Bright Morning Stars,” sung in glorious three-part harmony.

Highlights among Nicky’s songs include the opening track, “Swing Low Sail High,” at once both a confession to love’s shortcoming and a reaffirmation of love’s endurance, and “What Has Been Done,” a mysterious ballad, seemingly about a murder, or, perhaps, a suicide, that shows the influence of traditional Appalachian folksongs.

Ruth’s highlights include “Storm Comin’,” a metaphorical piece about being prepared for what life and love have to offer, and “Asleep At Last,” a quiet, beautiful love song.

Heather’s highlights include “Mona Louise,” partly a lullaby and partly a celebration of a new life, and “Cherry Blossom Love,” a haunting song that seems almost equally derived from both the folksong and jazz ballad traditions.

As I noted in the introduction, these songs are – mostly – quiet and subtle and reveal more each time they’re heard.

GOOD LOVELIES

Let the Rain Fall

Good Lovelies/Six Shooter

goodlovelies.com

I looked up the brief reviews I wrote for the Montreal Gazette and Sing Out! magazine of the Toronto-based Good Lovelies self-titled debut album. In both reviews I mentioned the “three promising young singer-songwriters – Caroline Brooks, Kerri Ough and Sue Passmore – delightfully dress up each others’ often-delightful neo-folk, country and swing songs with irresistible three-part harmonies.” The album was on my list of favourites for 2009. The Lovelies also turned out a quick Christmas album in 2009 and are now back with Let the Rain Fall, their third full length CD.

As I mentioned in the intro, Let the Rain Fall, is upbeat and fun from the get-go. While there are a couple of songs that offer moments of sadness, most of the 13 numbers are irresistible, toe-tappers that offer sunny good cheer amid superb three-part harmonies.

While the debut album was built around songs written by each of the Good Lovelies, Let the Rain Fall’s songs – except for a fun cover of hip hop artist K-os’ “Crabbuckit” that they more than pull off – are credited jointly to the Good Lovelies. The result is that the album’s songs are one of a whole rather the sum of its parts. Is it Caroline, Kerri or Sue riding her bike through Toronto in “Backyard”? Which one is getting on the plane for a period of separation – borne of music touring, I presume – in “Every Little Thing”? Maybe it’s all of them and it really doesn’t matter much that they’ve somehow merged the individual identities.

Themes of home, or, more particularly, being away from home, and love, and missing love, run through many of these songs. But, they are an accurate reflection of the lives of young musicians plying their trade from one end of this vast country to the other and beyond.

The Good Lovelies’ arrangements blend folk, country, jazz and swing influences into something that’s always quite appealing, always very musical, and, almost always, lots of fun to listen to.

--Mike Regenstreif