Tag Archives: folk

The Menu was Eclectic at the 16th Annual Brooklyn Folk Festival

The 16th Annual Brooklyn Folk Festival was one of this wonderful event’s widest ranging, retaining the core of its old-time roots but with very healthy dollops of international music as well. Groups from Mexico and India by way of Trinidad were new to me and thrilling.

And what a way to start on Friday afternoon. A young man named Royce Martin sat down at the piano and not only played some of the best ragtime I’ve ever heard but also his original compositions, which featured a form of word jazz seemingly of his own invention. “Make Believe” was “a song about confidence.”

Martin is from St. Louis, and worked as a pianist and lecturer at the Scott Joplin State Historic Site there. When he played master works like Joplin’s “Pineapple Rag” and Willie “The Lion” Smith’s “Echoes of Spring,” he channeled forms from his great-grandfather’s day. But he has the history, and also the will to take ragtime in new directions.

Samoa Wilson is a regular at Brooklyn; she’s a fine singer of vintage material, steeped in it through regular work with her uncle, Jim Kweskin of 1960s jugband fame. Wilson was at Brooklyn in a group with Sean Walsh, and delivered a fine version of Dylan’s “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight.” Later she went on with the provocatively named duo Fatboy Wilson and Old Viejo Bones, with Ernesto Gomez.

Shiva Lakhan (above), out of Trinidad, was unexpected. The trio played West Indian and “Chutney” vocal music that, in their version at least, is heavily percussive. The percussionist played a big double-sided hand drum, much larger—and louder—than tablas. I heard echoes of African music. The singer accompanied himself on a Paul and Co. harmonium, and it was intoxicating. A third musician banged a metal ring against a tall, thin pole, producing a chiming drone. Chutney is evidently a fusion of Indian folk and Bollywood with Caribbean calypso and soca. It’s heard not only in Trinidad and Tobago, but in Guyana, Suriname, Jamaica and as far away as Fiji.

The New York-based Guachinangos (above) were also deep into a world fusion, playing Mexican son jarocho with Colombian cumbia and other Latin American rhythms. They were highly theatrical, in a good way, and featured a very dramatic up-front dancer, whose moves reminded me of flamenco. The requinto jarocho (small Mexican guitar) player was a genius. And that dancer was mesmerizing. Juan Carlos Marin (that guitar player) appeared to be in charge.

The Cactus Blossoms from Minneapolis played winsome original folk that recalled the Everly Brothers. Jack Torrey and Page Burkum are also brothers, and that explains the close harmonies—it’s genetic! Their next booking was, the following day, CBS Saturday Morning.

A regular in Brooklyn is Ken Schatz, a singer of lusty sea shanties. But it’s not just him. He leads groups of novice singers in Staten Island and at South Street Seaport, and at the folk festival several of his regulars got up to lead us in songs like “Lowlands” and “The Rolling Sea.” Schatz’ version of “The Golden Vanity” was the one with the sadder ending, but then there are many versions of this song. “The songs often have floating verses, which can be inserted as needed,” Schatz said. I requested the seemingly obscure “Cape Cod Girls” (Patrick Sky did a version) and a young teenager got up to sing it, knowing most of the words.

Isto, a/k/a Christopher White, certainly goes his own way as a performer. He performed quite credible versions of Great American Songbook classics (as seen in his book containing guitar fingerpicking versions of same), but also his own idiosyncratic and amusing songs, including “Hot Dog Daddy,” which was not sexual innuendo at all. “He eats burgers on the sly.” He has Halloween and Christmas albums, a family band and a Hawaiian band. “When I Die and My Body is Reanimated” was “for all the zombies in the audience.” Isto, a Wesleyan graduate who studied with Anthony Braxton there, has a smooth voice, but he bends it like a pretzel.

Nora Guthrie led a slide show about her dad, Woody, and the part I heard was about Mermaid Avenue, Woody’s illness, the icon’s pilgrimages to Washington Square Park, and Bob Dylan’s visit. Dylan knew all of Woody’s songs, and that’s what this great American songster wanted to hear in his later years. “He was like a jukebox for Woody,” Nora said. Woody Guthrie’s grandson, Cole Quest, is also a folk festival regular, and his City Pickers were a spirited asset this year, and “Way Down Yonder in a Minor Key” (lyrics, Woody Guthrie, music, Billy Bragg) was wonderful to hear.

Seeing the Guthries complemented my recent visit to the Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie museums and archives, which are next to each other in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And definitely worth a visit.

There are lectures, film showings–and book signings at the Brooklyn Folk Festival. I encountered Terri Thal, who was autographing copies of her book Dave, Bob and Me. She was married to Dave Van Ronk and was Dylan’s first manager, recording the famous Gaslight Tape when he first came to town. I asked her about the much-underrated Patrick Sky, who was close to Van Ronk in the early days. “Patrick was one of my best friends,” she said. “He was hilarious all the time.”

Jan Bell (at right above) is a singer from Yorkshire originally who sings of her family’s coal-mining roots. Her deep Americana album is Dream of the Miner’s Child, with Alice Gerrard (at Brooklyn last year) featured. Bell also has performed and recorded with The Maybelles.

Suzy Thompson is a gifted fiddle player, favoring old time and cajun, and also the founder and brains behind the Berkley Old-Time Music Convention. The next one is in September 2025. Accompanied by husband Eric on guitar, Suzy also did a couple tunes (“Bride 1945” and “Ballad of Honest Sam”) by the much-missed folk troubadour Paul Siebel. She recorded a whole album of his songs. Siebel up and quit the music business in the early 1970s after only two Elektra albums, and only recently passed away in 2022. It’s unfortunate that only his “Louise” gets heard at all—Siebel had many great songs.

Los Texmaniacs, a conjunto Tex-Mex band created by Max Baca, a great guitar player (or was it a “bajo sexto”), in 1997. The group had an accordionist of equal crowd-pleasing skill. Proving that folk music is a big tent, the Pine Leaf Boys from Louisiana performed a rocking set of mostly zydeco music. Thompson’s cajun was quieter, but it’s all roots from the same tree.

David Amram (above) was amazing. At 93, he’s still playing (pocket flutes, electric piano, a Chinese instrument) and singing in top form. This omnivorous musician has deep roots in folk, jazz and classical music, and a bunch of stories to tell about working with the Beats in the 1950s. In Brooklyn he was with a fine ensemble that included Sonny Rollins veteran Jerome Harris on guitar. Maybe that’s why the group did Rollins’ “St. Thomas,” during which Amram played two flutes simultaneously. The beat collaboration gave us Pull My Daisy, a groundbreaking 1959 short film, and Amram wrote the music for the song, and did it in Brooklyn:

Nora Brown, now a beginning Yale student, never misses the Brooklyn Folk Festival and she offered her usual menu of curated banjo tunes with her lived-in, expressive voice. But there was also a Dylan tune, “I Was Young When I Left Home,” somehow left off his early albums and only recently surfaced as part of the world’s most comprehensive reissue program. Fiddle player Stephanie Coleman joined Brown late in the set, taking the tempo up.

Sunday was an exceptional day, starting off with a rubber-limbed and genial cowboy kids’ performer named Hopalong Andrew. Everyone was in full western regalia, and the kids each got their own Hopalong hats. “Strollin’” appeared to have been adopted from the Rawhide theme.

And then came Roochie Toochie and the Ragtime Shepherd Kings (above), an indescribable mélange of ancient music and vaudeville-level comedy. Their album was recorded on wax cylinders. Unfortunately, the group gets together rarely these days, only once or twice a year, but you’d never know it. There were puppets, props, and a whole lot more. “Tiger Rag,” a song about salami, a protest against the insipid “Yes, We Have no Bananas” (a ubiquitous hit in 1923). What happens when you open The Compleat Unabridged Book of Jazz and broccoli falls out?

Vainos Paisanos played early 20th century dance music, mostly from Europe, east and west. The group truly inhabited these old songs, recapturing them from scratchy 78s. Fiddle player Rachel Meirs, who lives in Louisville now, started out by answering a waitressing ad for the Jalopy Tavern in 2011, and said she’d never know the eclectic bunch of musicians playing with her if that hadn’t happened.

Peter Stampfel (above) has more than 60 years of history with the Holy Modal Rounders, and he’s still at it, leading a cacophonous ensemble in Brooklyn. He was in a fine mood.

The Downhill Strugglers (above), which includes the festival’s guiding light and emcee Eli Smith, was down to two members (Smith and Jackson Lynch) because the third fellow, Walker Shepherd, was off having his first child. No matter, they were rousing anyway, performing songs from their latest on Jalopy Records, Old Juniper. Intriguing to hear “Casey Jones” the way it was originally sung, before the likes of Burl Ives got a hold of it.

Michael Hurley (above, right) is of similar vintage to Peter Stampfel in and around New York, and their collaborations go back many years. Hurley, in his 80s, is enjoying a renaissance with many young admirers, including performers such as Cat Power, Lucinda Williams, Elizabeth Mitchell, Rose and the Bros, Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker, and many more.

Hurley, playing an electric guitar (that initially buzzed, the same way it did the last time he played Brooklyn) built momentum as he went and was soon flying along. A tap dancer joined him. Several unfamiliar songs were played, including this one, “Tennessee Easy Chair”:

I’ve been following Martha Spencer (middle above) since her start in Virginia with her family’s Whitetop Mountain Band. The Whitetop Mountaineers is a duo she leads with Jackson Cunningham that has recorded four albums. In Brooklyn, wearing a spectacular hat and a green-and-white checked country dress, she had a band. Her new solo album, quite eclectic, is Out in La La Land. Spencer is a really great Appalachian singer and is also accomplished on fiddle, banjo, guitar and (she played it with Gilly’s Kitchen) bass. Oh, she dances, too. I don’t know the name of this, but it was a lot of fun:

I don’t know much about Kyle Morgan, who appeared with veteran New York chanteuse Tamar Korn, but he’s a find. I got only half of this song, but I loved it. He played some really tasty guitar, too:

Oldtone was Back for 2024, and Better Than Ever

It looked like we’d lose the wonderful Oldtone Festival, one of the few annual events centered on old-time music. There was no festival in 2020, limited events during COVID in 2021 and 2022, and 2023 went dark with some very regretful goodbyes. But the festival was back in full force this year, the eight annual from September 5-8, as a nonprofit Oldtone Arts Inc. event with sponsorship by the New York Foundation for the Arts. The festival in Hillsdale, New York is actually near the border with Connecticut and Massachusetts, so maybe those states could be supportive, too.  

Talking Hearts on the Medicine Wagon stage. (Jim Motavalli photo)

Other than kids walking around with buckets to solicit donations, the festival was otherwise unchanged from its very effective formula. It’s a compact event, with a small main stage, a dance tent, a workshop area and even what was referred to as a “medicine show wagon”—an old Chevy truck with a platform and a microphone, used for short between-act sets.

We arrived as Moonshine Holler was playing. This is a Massachusetts-based old-time trio. Vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Paula Bradley co-led the group with her late husband, Bill Dillof, for 20 years, but now it’s Paula with young musicians Rafe Wolman and/or Marco DePaolis. “I’m privileged to play with these guys,” Bradley said.

Moonshine Holler digs up the really old ones. (Jim Motavalli photo)

Paula’s a real historian of old-time music, as was Bill, and the group offered a program of both familiar old-timey tunes like “Devilish Mary” and obscurities from the likes of the Hackberry Ramblers and fiddler Clayton McMichen’s Wildcats (an offshoot of the Skillet Lickers). There was an incredible country interpretation of Adam and Eve in their garden. Apparently, they must have “shaken that thing.”

The Zach Bryson Band offered mainstream country, matching originals with Merle Haggard and Jimmie Rodgers. Later, he played solo.

The Downhill Strugglers continue the tradition of urban old-time pioneered by the New Lost City Ramblers. (Jim Motavalli photo)

The Downhill Strugglers continue in the tradition of the New Lost City Ramblers, Mike Seeger’s assemblage of New York-based old-time advocates in the 1950s and 1960s. The Strugglers, mainstays of the Jalopy Theater in Red Hook and the Brooklyn Folk Festival (coming up November 8-10), just released their new album on Jalopy’s record label. Old Juniper is a collection of songs that sound ancient but were in fact written by members of the band. Walker Shepherd’s “Valley by the Stream” sounds absolutely authentic, as does Eli Smith’s “Picking Dandelions.” I’ll bet fiddler Jackson Lynch wrote “I’m Getting Ready to Go,” but all the songs are just credited to the band.

The Strugglers switch off on instruments, but have fiddle, guitar, banjo and harmonica pretty well covered. Here they are on video. This version of “The Girl I Left Behind Me” contains verses I hadn’t heard before:

And here’s the Strugglers from their second set, playing “Valley by the Stream”:

Krissie and the Kranks were a great find at this year’s Oldtone. Krissie Nagy is a fine singer of jazz standards and the Great American Songbook, echoes of Billie Holiday and her disciple Madeleine Peyroux. Here they are with Hoagy Carmichael’s fine song, “Up a Lazy River”:

One of the best things about Oldtone is that its view of old-time music includes 1920s and 1930s jazz. Krissie’s band (see below) was also great, and featured a fiddle player named Charlie Burnham. This guy has worked with James “Blood” Ulmer, Living Color, Cassandra Wilson, Steven Bernstein, Henry Threadgill, Medeski, Martin and Wood, Norah Jones, Sasha Dobson, Rufus Wainwright, and on and on. What a fine player. Joel Savoy, who also played cajun music at Oldtone this year, produced the group’s one album in Louisiana.

In the same vein and with some of the same standards, playing in the dance tent, was New York-based Sweet Megg, who is steeped in country swing and counts Patsy Cline and Billie Holiday as influences. She had great stage presence, and another great band.

Sweet Megg also explored the old jazz tunes. (Jim Motavalli photo)

The Foghorn Stringband is Caleb Klauder (vocals, mandolin, fiddle), Reeb Willms (vocals, guitar), Nadine Landry (vocals, upright bass) and Stephen “Sammy” Lind (vocals, fiddle, banjo). They’ve been Oldtone regulars since the beginning, and I’ve also seen them at Red Wing in Virginia. They brought out that old story song “Willie Moore,” as well as “The Roving Gambler” and “Jack of Diamonds.” There were some fine originals, too, including one Wilms sang about a winding river. Wish I’d caught it on video!

The fully engaged Foghorn String Band. (Jim Motavalli photo)

At this point the heavens opened up and a hard rain started a-fallin’. Everyone headed either for their RVs, the dance tent or the shelter of their cars. The rain interrupted the program for a couple of hours and soaked the site, producing a lot of mud. But soon the action continued in the covered dance tent.

Most of the acts did get to play, including a really strong set by The Louisiana-based Deslondes. They’re a rock group in the best sense, with great songs and a revolving cast of singers. In fact, everyone but the pedal steel player had a vocal lead. They’ve been together 15 years, informally at first, and made four albums that are well worth investigating.

How could you not like the Chattanooga Dogs (above), a fine young bluegrass band? They were substituting for the Alum Ridge Boys and Ashlee, who were apparently ailing. They dug up a bunch of old Charlie Moore songs. The young group features Conner Vlietstra on guitar, vocals and fiddle, and Trevor Holder on banjo and voice. The latter has an uncanny ability to vocally echo the best 1940s bluegrass talent. “Hillbilly F-fever’s going ‘round,” they sang, and it indeed is.

Also in this vein was Danny Paisley and Southern Grass, mainstays of this music.

Probably the most valuable player for the weekend was locally based fiddle player Sophie Wellington, who appeared with numerous aggregations, including the Talking Hearts trio that sang from the medicine wagon. She’s a fine old-time musician who knows a lot of obscure tunes. She also appeared in her five-year-old Dumpster Debbie guise (that’s them below), leading a seven-piece band. That one was more like a rehearsal, with a lot of “what shall we play next?” comments. The audience would have benefited from a little context for the tunes.

Wellington was also heard during the Nadine Gospel Set segment. I wish I’d heard more of it, because I love old-time gospel music. Songs like Jesus is “Building a Mansion for Me.” And there she was again with the extravagantly bearded JP Harris, as fine an exponent of old-time and pre-1970 country music as exists in America today.

Harris had played with a full band late the previous night (too late for me, alas) but a little hoarse he was back on Sunday with an old-time trio. “I Wish I Were a Mole in the Ground,” “The Dying Cowboy,” “Been All ‘Round This World” were the songs he sang, but there were also fiddle tunes led by Wellington, such as “Belle of Lexington.” Harris said, “I owe all of my musical upbringing to the old-time scene.” He meant that he’s branched into more mainstream country—his most recent single is “Dark Thoughts”—but will never stop turning the clock back.

Here’s Harris on video doing a fine old song called “Mole in the Ground”:

 The last act I saw was the Cajun Surprise. It was such a surprise I never did learn who they were, but the group—with accordion, guitar and two fiddles—sure sounded good.

Rain and Sunshiny Music at Green River 2024

The 2024 Green River Festival in Greenfield, Massachusetts is in its 37th year and appears to have been canceled only once, in 2020, because of COVID. It survived this year, but torrential rains and thunderstorms made it a near thing—proceedings were suspended several times, as fairgoers huddled in the buildings that dot the Franklin County Fairgrounds (known as “the new location”).

But the rain let up, the thunder stopped, schedules were rearranged, and most acts actually played (some in the standing-room-only Roundhouse). Tommy Prine, son of John, played exactly one song, “Precious,” before he got his cord pulled. He appeared later, though. The earlier Greenfield Community College site was charming, and perfect for the hot air balloons that dominated the festivals that began in 1986, but it was somewhat lacking in available shelter.

The Wonder Women of Country, from left, Leigh, Willis, Carper. (Jim Motavalli photo)

I was afraid that one of the main events I’d come to see, The Wonder Women of Country—Brennen Leigh, Melissa Carper and Kelly Willis—were going to get cancelled on me. But the festival restarted just in time for their set. All three are amazing singer-songwriters, and Leigh (lead guitar) and Carper (who plays bass) have been teaming up to pen songs lately. “No effects, please,” Leigh (resplendent in a flowered hat a la Minnie Pearl) told the sound crew, and indeed there weren’t any—just the women and their unadorned songs. The first of the collaborations by Leigh/Carper was the whimsical “I Wanna Fly Ya to Hawaii-ay,” on video here:

Another of their songs, which seemed to be called “Won’t be Worried Long,” was based on an old Carter Family/Kingston Trio number, “(It Takes a) Worried Man.” That’s called the Folk Process, and it’s perfectly legal. The audience definitely sat up and paid attention to their other new song, “Pray, Pray, Pray the Gay Away.” The kicker, of course, is that it doesn’t work, and the next morning you still wake up gay (and very happily so at the end of the song). (Leigh has an incredible LGBTQ-themed song in “Billy and Beau” on her stellar roots album Prairie Love Letter.)

The Wonder Women backstage: Brennen, Willis, Carper. (Jim Motavalli photo)

Willis was celebrating the 25th anniversary of her fourth album, What I Deserve—which went to #30 on the Billboard country charts. She offered a spirited version of the title song, co-written with the Jayhawks’ Gary Louris. Carper’s dry vocals highlight droll songs (“I Ain’t Getting’ Lucky Tonight”) that always have some swing to them—they’re not jazz, but jazz is in there. All the songs were enlivened by the other women’s harmonies and Leigh’s pitch-perfect guitar solos. Hear them on a new eponymous six-song EP.

Here’s one more video from the Wonder Women, Leigh’s truck-drivin’ song, “Carole with an E.”

Bonny Light Horseman was the only group I saw on the main stage. If you’re not familiar, this is the group that includes Anais Mitchell, author of the Broadway miracle Hadestown. But BLH is a group, not a star turn, and it has its own unique approach—celebrating and building on traditional American and UK songs. (The group’s namesake song was included on their first album and performed at Green River; it dates to the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century. Said horseman is lost in battle, with the loss lamented by his beloved.)

Bonny Light Horseman has recently issued a stellar double album called Keep Me on Your Mind/Set You Free. They did several songs from the album of mostly originals, including “When I Was Younger,” which manages to combine the feel of a trad folk song with raucous rock and roll guitar from industry vet Josh Kaufman. Taking the lead probably more than half the time was multi-instrumentalist Eric D. Johnson, late of the Fruit Bats and Shins. This is why they call it a supergroup. Both Mitchell and Johnson are fine lead singers.

Bonny Light Horseman loves the traditional. (Jim Motavalli photo)

I wondered if the audience realized that when the group performs standards like “Down by the Sally Garden” or “Bonny Light Horseman” they’re actually hearing an ancient tune that has survived many vicissitudes. It might be useful to tell them.

Willi Carlisle (above) is in the Woody Guthrie/Pete Seeger folk tradition. He sings about injustice and wants you to sing along. If his reach exceeded his grasp here and there (as in “Two-Headed Lamb”), it didn’t take away from his being a heartfelt, giving-it-all performer.

And then there was S.G. Goodman (below). Her album Teethmarks is delightfully varied, from big sweeping ballads to rockers. She has an incredibly good band, with a lead guitarist, pedal steel player, bass and drums. They can turn on a dime.

Goodman led off with three hard rockers that somewhat strained the singer’s voice and made it hard to distinguish the songs. But she slowed down in the second half, showcasing that strong voice on the K.D. Lang-like “I Never Want to Leave This World.” And she closed with the tough rocker, “Work Until I Die,” seen in part on a warts-and-all video:

Goodman is a farmer’s daughter from western Kentucky. Her American Gothic family gives her material, which can be heard on early recordings under the Savage Radley moniker that have just been re-released. She tells funny stories with a strong Kentucky accent. I bet her Substack is fun.

Mdou Moctar is a Touareg electric guitarist from Niger (below). If you’ve heard Tinariwen, the group of Malian nomads that brought the music to global attention, you know (and hopefully love) the desert blues genre.

The music reflects several international journeys. African music came to America with the slave trade. Slaves and their descendants adapted that music into American blues, which electrified when it followed the jobs to cities like Chicago and Detroit. From those antecedents rock shredders like Jimi Hendrix grew, and their music soon traveled to Africa, where it was filtered through the local lens.

It didn’t matter that the audience couldn’t understand the songs. They were there for the quartet’s hypnotic grooves and Moctar’s supercharged guitar. A man who, forbidden a guitar, had to build his own, is now entertaining people at festivals around the world. Much the same thing happened to Mississippi John Hurt, Son House and Bukka White when they were re-discovered in the 1960s (after recording in the 1920s).

The festival took place over three days, and each one contended with rain. But, even wet, the patrons seemed pretty happy.