Stranger Songs with Mike Regenstreif – CKCU – September 17, 2024: Hank Williams 101

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/595/66859.html

Theme: Hank Williams 101.

The theme on this edition of Stranger Songs is Hank Williams 101 as the air date for this show –  September 17, 2024 – is the 101st anniversary of the birth of Hank Williams. Hank was just 29 years old when he died on January 1, 1953, but his contributions to the history of music are immense. Most of the songs on this show were written by Hank Williams or are from his repertoire – the rest were inspired by him.

Hank Williams- Move It On Over

40 Greatest Hits (Polydor)

Ball & Chain- I Just Don’t Like This Kind of Livin’

Trouble All the Time (Ball & Chain)

Robert Jones & Matt Watroba- Mind Your Own Business

Common Chords (Common Chords)

Hank Williams- Lost Highway

40 Greatest Hits (Polydor)

Kevin Head- Thanks Hank

Live (Kevin Head Music)

Norah Jones- Cold, Cold Heart

Come Away with Me (Blue Note)

Leon Redbone- Long Gone Lonesome Blues

No Regrets (Sugar Hill)

Martha Seyler & Robert Resnik- Your Cheatin’ Heart

Martha Sings & Robert Plays (Martha Seyler & Robert Resnik)

Hank Williams- Moanin’ the Blues

40 Greatest Hits (Polydor)

John Gorka- Hank Senior Moment

The Company You Keep (Red House)

The Lonesome Ace Stringband- The Log Train

The Log Train – single (The Lonesome Ace Stringband)

The Wailin' Jennys- Weary Blues from Waiting

Fifteen (True North)

Jim Byrnes- Honky Tonk Blues

I Hear the Wind in the Wires (Black Hen Music)

Mose Allison- Hey, Good Lookin’

V-8 Ford Blues (Epic/Legacy)

Hank Williams- Settin’ the Woods on Fire

40 Greatest Hits (Polydor)

Tom Russell- Hank and Audrey

Museum of Memories 1972-2002 (Dark Angel)

Sneezy Waters- Lovesick Blues

Sneezy Waters Sings Hank Williams (Borealis)

Steve Young- Ramblin’ Man

Stars in the Southern Sky (Omnivore)

Jim Rooney & Rooney's Irregulars- House of Gold

My Own Ignorant Way (JRP)

Hank Williams- I Saw the Light

40 Greatest Hits (Polydor)

Lou Dominguez- Hank Songs at the Luna Star

Hanging at the Luna Star (Lou Dominguez)

Hans Theessink- I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry

Songs from the Southland (Blue Groove)

Saul Broudy- Alone and Forsaken

Travels with Broudy (Saul Broudy)

Linda Ronstadt- I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love with You)

Heart Like a Wheel (Capitol)

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band & The Del McCoury Band- Jambalaya

American Legacies (McCoury)

Hank Williams- My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It

40 Greatest Hits (Polydor)

Robin & Linda Williams- Rolling and Rambling (The Death of Hank Williams)

Devil of a Dream (Sugar Hill)

Johnny Cash & Waylon Jennings- The Night Hank Williams Came to Town

Johnny Cash is Coming to Town (Mercury)

Next week: Leonard Cohen at 90.

--Mike Regenstreif 

Tom Russell – Old Songs Yet to Sing

TOM RUSSELL

Old Songs Yet to Sing

Frontera Records

tomrussell.com

fronterarecords.com

Old Songs Yet to Sing is a reunion album. A reunion of singer-songwriter Tom Russell, virtuoso guitarist Andrew Hardin – and 20 of the songs they used to play together.

Tom and Andy were an extraordinary team for about 25 or 26 years. They started playing together, circa 1980, and were at the heart of The Tom Russell Band for some years and an acoustic duo for many more. Their musical integration – on stage and on recordings – was remarkable.

Tom is one of the most prolific songwriters I know – I’ve referred to him more than once as “the best songwriter of my generation” – with an output of many great songs and brilliantly conceived albums. Last year he released two great albums, a tribute album, Play One More: The Songs of Ian & Sylvia, and Folk Hotel, two of my favorite records of 2017. He’s also never been shy about revisiting older material – those “old songs yet to sing” – in new ways that makes them seem fresh and new again.

Well after a decade of not touring or recording together, Tom and Andy reunited at Congress House Studio in Austin, Texas for two days in February to record new versions of 20 songs they used to play back in the day – songs Tom wrote or co-wrote between 1974 and 2004.

It’s just the two of them on the record – Tom on lead vocals and guitar and Andy on lead guitar and harmony vocals – and they make these songs, no matter how familiar they may be, sound fresh.

Tom Russell, Mike Regenstreif & Andrew Hardin (2005)

Highlights? How about every song? Of course there’s “Gallo Del Cielo,” Tom’s epic border ballad about a fighting rooster (the song is fictional – no real roosters were harmed in its creation); “Angel of Lyon,” co-written by Steve Young, the story of a businessman who finds salvation in Europe, a compelling song that was and remains a showcase for Andy’s virtuosity; the irresistible “Navajo Rug,” co-written with Ian Tyson; and the sad and beautiful story-song, “Blue Wing,” about an Indigenous ex-con who shared a prison cell with the real-life R&B singer and convicted killer Little Willie John (a line from “Blue Wing” gives the album its title); and, of course, 16 more.

Tom told me he thought he was singing these “old songs” better now than when they were new. With all due respect to all the great Tom Russell albums with the original versions, I’m not going to argue.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

Various Artists – Tulare Dust: a songwriters’ tribute to Merle Haggard (Expanded Edition)

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Tulare Dust: a songwriters’ tribute to Merle Haggard (Expanded Edition)
RockBeat 
fronterarecords.com

Tulare Dust: a songwriters’ tribute to Merle Haggard, co-produced by Tom Russell and Dave Alvin and originally released in 1994, was one of the very finest tribute albums of that era and featured a great collection of 15 roots artists singing their favorite songs from Merle Haggard’s impressive catalog.

Tulare Dust has recently been reissued as an expanded 2-CD set; the first CD is the original album while the second CD is live tracks taken from the CD release concert which featured about half the artists each doing their Haggard selection plus one of their own.

Dave Alvin nails the significance of Haggard in the liner notes to this new edition when he writes that Haggard “has always been one of the great American songwriters in the folk music tradition. Being in this folk tradition doesn’t necessarily just mean strumming an acoustic guitar in a coffee house, it can also mean learning your musical craft from your elders, then taking what you’ve learned and finding your own voice inside that musical and community tradition. It’s what Muddy Waters and Bill Monroe did. It’s what Hank Williams, Sam Cooke, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and Curtis Mayfield did. It’s exactly what Merle Haggard did.”

Haggard himself has paid tribute to some of those musical elders – notably Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills – who influenced him. But, as becomes obvious in listening to some of these songs, the influence of Woody Guthrie is also strongly felt in Haggard’s work. Listen to Tom Russell’s great medley of “Tulare Dust/They’re Tearing the Labor Camps Down” to understand that Haggard’s own family were among the waves of Okies who risked all of their do-re-mi trying to find a better life in California during the Dust Bowl era.

That Guthrie influence can also be heard in such songs as “Kern River,” sung from deep-in-the-traditional-well by Dave Alvin and “A Working Man Can’t Get Nowhere Today,” sung with conviction by Peter Case.

Some of my other favorite tracks include Iris DeMent’s world-weary version of “Big City”; Lucinda Williams’ heartbreaking version of the heartbroken “You Don’t Have Very Far to Go”; Marshall Crenshaw’s rendition of the separation song “Silver Wings”; and Steve Young’s sad version of “Shopping for Dresses,” Haggard’s portrait of loneliness.

Another highlight is R&B singer Barrence Whitfield’s very affecting take on “Irma Jackson,” Haggard’s poignant song about inter-racial love – a song that was taboo-breaking in the world of early-1970s country music.

Among the best of the songwriters’ original material on the second CD are Tom Russell’s always exciting “Gallo del Cielo,” Dave Alvin’s “King of California,” Billy Joe Shaver’s “Georgia on a Fast Train,” and Peter Case’s “A Little Wind (Could Blow Me Away),” about Elvis Presley's comeback concert, which was co-written by Tom Russell.

Tulare Dust: a songwriters’ tribute to Merle Haggard was a great album 20 years ago and is made even greater by the inclusion of the second live disc.

Find me on Twitter. twitter.com/@mikeregenstreif

And on Facebook. facebook.com/mikeregenstreif

--Mike Regenstreif

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