Bonnie Dobson – Take Me for a Walk in the Morning Dew

BONNIE DOBSON

Take Me for a Walk in the Morning Dew

Hornbeam Recordings

hornbeamrecordings.com

Canadian folksinger Bonnie Dobson began her career, circa 1960, singing traditional songs. She recorded quite prolifically in the ‘60s and is best known for her 1961 song, “Morning Dew,” the classic anti-nuclear war anthem recorded by countless artists from the Grateful Dead to Long John Baldry and Vince Martin & Fred Neil.

By sometime in the 1970s, Bonnie was living in England and stepped away from performing and recording for many years. She has returned with a vengeance, though, with Take Me for a Walk in the Morning Dew, a collection of new recordings on which she revisits some of the most memorable songs – both original and traditional – that she recorded back in the day, as well as several songs I’d not heard from her before.

While Bonnie’s voice is just as beautiful as what I remember from her early Prestige LPs, her singing, more than 50 years later, is much more powerful – and more than a match for the folk rock arrangements and the fine band that accompanies her – which brings a very different feeling to the familiar songs. For example, while her 1964 live recording of “Morning Dew” captured the vulnerability and fear of the Cold War period, this new version brings out the anger that such vulnerability and fear should have ever existed.

A few of my other favorite tracks include “Born in the Country,” a rocking version of Judy Roderick’s adaptation of Richard “Rabbit” Brown’s “James Alley Blues,” one of my favorite songs from Harry Smith’s remarkable Anthology of American Folk Music; “Living on Plastic,” a witty, post-divorce piece about living on credit with the bills going to the ex; and “JB’s Song,” a beautiful lament for someone who died at much too young an age.

As much as I enjoyed the band arrangements on most of the album, my very favorite piece here is Bonnie’s stunning a cappella version of the traditional “Dink’s Song.” I’ve got dozens of versions of “Dink’s Song” in my collection and this is one of the best.

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--Mike Regenstreif

Robin Greenstein -- Images of Women Vol. 2

ROBIN GREENSTEIN
Images of Women Vol. 2
Windy
robingreenstein.com

Back in 2003, Robin Greenstein, who is best known as a contemporary singer-songwriter, released an impressive album of traditional folksongs whose protagonists or narrators were all women. I assumed from the album title – Images of Women Vol. 1 – that it would not be Robin’s only Images of Women album which, I recall, she verified to me in an e-mail. I then mentioned in my Sing Out! Magazine review of Vol. 1 that I was eagerly awaiting the second volume.

Finally, seven years later, Images of Women Vol. 2 has been released and it’s another collection of mostly-traditional songs centred on women. But while the songs are mostly from the traditional canon, Robin arranges them in a contemporary vein with a respect for the tradition. Rather than trying to sound authentic to the time and place of the songs’ origins, Robin makes them her own. She plays guitar, banjo and synths and gets able support from the likes of bassist Barry Wiesenfeld on bass, fiddler Dan Collins, Adam Carper on harmonica, Lisa McDivitt on recorder and harp, and percussionist Cheryl Prashker (who is one of the rare drummers who really understands how to play with folk-rooted acoustic musicians).

Some of my favourite tracks on Vol. 2 are “The Whore’s Lament,” a gritty variant of “The Unfortunate Rake” family of songs that I used to hear Hedy West sing, and that’s very close to a variant called “The Bad Girl’s Lament,” that Rosalie Sorrels sings; “Born in the Country,” Judy Roderick’s adaptation of Rabbit Brown’s “James Alley Blues; “Frankie and Johnny,” a traditional blues-ballad about a scorned woman who kills her philandering lover; and the classic warning song, “Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies,” which features some nice harmonies from Janice Hubbard.

Along with the traditional material, Robin includes several composed songs including Woody Guthrie’s “Union Maid,” which includes an added verse I didn’t recognize about Sarah Ogan Gunning, the singer of traditional ballads and labour songs (who I met and worked with as a folk festival volunteer in the mid-1970s); “I’m Gonna Be an Engineer,” Peggy Seeger’s feminist anthem; and “Good Thing He Can’t Read My Mind,” Christine Lavin’s hilarious song sung by a woman who lets us know what she really thinks about some of the stuff she’s doing or eating for the sake of love.

Something that I really like about albums like this is that they’re a reminder that folk music has a rich history and that today’s contemporary artists are, as the Weavers sang, “travelling in the footsteps of those who came before,” and that it’s always a good time to go back and listen to the sources.

--Mike Regenstreif