Tom Russell – Midway to Bayamon; Tonight We Ride; The Western Years

Tom Russell – who I’ve often referred to as the finest singer-songwriter of my generation, the songwriters who emerged 10 to 15 years after Bob Dylan – will release his latest folk opera, The Rose of Roscrae, next year. It’s an album I fully expect to be one of the major folk-rooted or folk-branched releases of 2015. This year’s three releases from Tom are trips into the archives – one of them an essential addition to the Tom Russell discography; the other two fine introductions or reminders of his contributions to contemporary cowboy culture.

TOM RUSSELL
Midway to Bayamon
Frontera Records
fronterarecords.com 

The essential release is Midway to Bayamon, a 25-song, 80-minute, collection of rarities recorded between 1982 and 1992. Most of the tracks on Midway are taken from two cassette-only releases that were sold at gigs back in the day, As the Crow Flies from 1985 and Joshua Tree from 1987, both featuring the Tom Russell Band, a crackerjack unit that included such great musicians as guitarist Andrew Hardin and multi-instrumentalist Fats Kaplin. There are also a couple of tracks released as 45s back in the day, a Kerrville Folk Festival campfire recording, and some previously unreleased recordings.

While I know many of these songs from other Tom Russell albums, it’s a treat to hear first versions of such great songs like “The Road to Bayamon,” “Navajo Rug” and “Mezcal,” and several songs I’d never heard before including “Common Strangers,” “A Cajun Lullaby,” “The Lady Loves the Gambler,” which could have been a sequel to Mary McCaslin and Jim Ringer’s “Ballad of Weaverville,” “Lights of Oslo,” which I hear as a different chapter in the story that gave us “St. Olav’s Gate,” and “Juarez, A Polka Town,” a cool Tex-Mex instrumental that foreshadows one of the musical directions Tom would go down years later.

Among the other highlights from Midway to Bayamon are a version of “Denver Wind,” a song from Tom’s duo years in the ‘70s with Patricia Hardin that he sings in duet with Nanci Griffith, and “Amelia’s Railroad Flat,” a song of Tom’s that’s best known through the singing of Katy Moffatt.

TOM RUSSELL
Tonight We Ride: The Tom Russell Cowboy Anthology
Frontera Records 
fronterarecords.com

 Cowboy songs have long been an important facet of Tom’s repertoire and Tonight We Ride: The Tom Russell Cowboy Anthology is a compelling 19-song, 78-minute collection including classics like “Navajo Rug” and “Gallo del Cielo,” both done here as duets with Ian Tyson, “The Sky Above, the Mud Below,” heard here as a duet with Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, the hilarious “Tonight We Ride,” “The Banks of the Musselshell,” “Zane Grey” and “Alkali.”

Also included are great versions of several great songs Tom didn’t write including Lillian Bos Ross and Sam Eskin’s “South Coast,” a song that likely inspired Mary McCaslin and Jim Ringer to write the aforementioned “Ballad of Weaverville,” Joe Ely’s “Indian Cowboy,” and the traditional “El Llano Estacado.”

The version of “El Llano Estacado” is a duet with Brian Burns I’d never heard before. There are also previously unreleased versions of several songs including “The Rose of the San Joaquin,” “Rayburn Crane” and “Alberta Blue,” a song inspired by the province of my birth that I don’t recall ever hearing before.

TOM RUSSELL
The Western Years
RockBeat Records
rockbeatrecords.com

The Western Years is a 2-CD, 34-song collection – including several overlaps from Tonight We Ride – that includes both cowboy songs and other songs set in the west.

Most of the recordings come from Tom Russell albums of the past 15 or so years including several from The Man from God Knows Where, Tom’s 1999 folk opera that I still consider to be the best folk album of the past 25 or more years. There are also live versions of several songs including the always exciting “Gallo del Cielo.”

While most of the songs are Tom’s originals, there are a number of definitive covers including Marty Robbins’ “El Paso,” Woody Guthrie’s “East Texas Red,” Allan Fraser’s “Dance Hall Girls,” a classic from the Montreal folk scene of the early-1970s, Jim Ringer’s rewrite of the traditional “Tramps & Hawkers,” Steve Young’s setting of Steven Vincent Benet’s poem “Ballad of William Sycamore,” Mary McCaslin’s “Prairie in the Sky,” and a pair of great Bob Dylan songs: the relatively obscure “Seven Curses,” which feels like a traditional folk song, and the epic “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts,” on which Tom trades verses with Eliza Gilkyson and Joe Ely.

For the uninitiated, either or both of Tonight We Ride and The Western Years will make a great introduction to the cowboy and western sides of Tom’s writing and repertoire. Although not essential to Russell fans who have the original albums these songs are drawn from, they still make for great listening. And the alternate versions of some of the songs make them feel fresh even for folks like me who know these songs backward and forward.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Robert Resnik – Playing Favorites

ROBERT RESNIK

Playing Favorites

Thunder Ridge

www.cdbaby.com/cd/robertresnik

My pal Robert Resnik is – quite rightly – regarded as a cultural treasure in the state of Vermont. For the past 15-plus years he’s been best known as host of All the Traditions, Vermont Public Radio’s deservedly popular folk music program. But he’s also a wonderfully musical guy himself adept at many instruments that you strum and pluck, blow into, or squeeze and pull, and many styles of North American and European folk music.

While Robert has partnered on any number of delightful CDs as a member of such bands as the Highland Weavers, Swing & Tears and Twist of the Wrist, and in a duo with Marty Morrissey, Playing Favorites is the first solely under his own name. And, true to the name of the album, it’s a world tour of songs and tunes that are among his favorites to play. From one track to the next – and often on the same track thanks to overdubbing – we hear Robert move from guitar to clarinet to pennywhistle to hurdy gurdy, to melodeon to kortholt (a woodwind instrument popular in the Renaissance period) to concertina and, of course, voice.

Traditional songs and dance tunes dominate the set. Most of the traditional ballads originate in the British Isles. A highlight of these is “Mary Neal,” a story of star-crossed lovers whose escape across the sea to Quebec ends in tragedy. Robert’s performance, sung over the drone of the hurdy gurdy with evocative lines from his clarinet and whistle, is haunting. Another is “Bedlam Boys,” a strange song dating back 400 years, about the entertainment provided by residents of a London insane asylum (Robert mentions in the liner notes that the asylum would charge admission to the public “for the pleasure of observing the lunatics”).

Among my favorite instrumentals is “O’Carolan Medley,” three tunes composed about 300 years ago for the Irish harp by Turlough O’Carolan. Robert translates the music to the guitar exquisitely and gently picking out the tunes. The overdubbed whistle on the final tune is also quite lovely. Another is “Esperanza,” a medley of three accordion tunes – the kind of music you’d like to hear in a sidewalk café in Paris.

And lest you think that Robert is stuck in tradition, he also includes several contemporary songs, including a couple of my personal favorites from the Montreal folk scene of the 1970s. Robert’s version of Allan Fraser’s “Dance Hall Girls” puts a slightly different spin on the song by stating, “That’s the way it always is here in Baltimore,” emphatically in the chorus rather than asking, “Is that the way it always is here in Baltimore?” I particularly like the way Robert’s clarinet weaves in and around the vocal on “Dance Hall Girls.” And Robert’s version of the late Kate McGarrigle’s “Come a Long Way,” featuring lovely harmonies by Mary McGinniss and Kristina Stykos reminds me of hearing Kate sing the song at the Golem, the intimate Montreal folk club I was running back in the mid-1970s.

While Robert performs most of the vocals and instruments on Playing Favorites, several other songs benefit from the fine harmonies and instrumental work of Mary and Kristina. Kristina also recorded and mixed the sessions.

I'm now on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

I'm also on Facebook. www.facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--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

Ormstown Branches & Roots Festival, September 24-26

I’ve got a busy music weekend in Montreal planned that includes seeing Little Miss Higgins on Friday night at Upstairs and David Francey on Saturday night at the Wintergreen Concert’s Series’ 2010-2011 kickoff at Petit Campus.

Meanwhile, about an hour southwest of Montreal, the Ormstown Branches & Roots Festival is taking place Friday night through Sunday afternoon indoors on the Ormstown Fairgrounds. It’s been three years since I’ve been to the Branches & Roots Festival – which I used to enjoy as an outdoor summer festival.

The festival begins with an open stage night on Friday, continues with concerts and a couple of workshops on Saturday, and finishes with a gospel afternoon on Sunday.

Among the Saturday performers are Allan Fraser, once of Fraser & DeBolt, whose song, “Dance Hall Girls,” remains an enduring classic; Clarksdale Moan, an acoustic blues duo who impressed me greatly at the Ottawa Folk festival in August; Ana Miura, one of Ottawa’s finest singer-songwriters; and Yonder Hill, who I described in the Montreal Gazette as “a first-rate Montreal bluegrass unit centred on the stunning lead and harmony vocals of Angela Desveaux, Katie Moore and Dara Weiss.”

The complete Branches & Roots Festival schedule is available on their website.

(BTW, I’ve always wondered where they got the name of their festival.)

--Mike Regenstreif