Another musical journey.

I said that I would do this over the Easter break but I didn't. I'm now thinking that I need at least six weeks between such projects and it's not about finding the music. I love doing that - I wouldn't be writing at all if that were not the case. It's more the richness and variety that is on offer; I could write twice as many posts if I only listened to a quarter of the new (at least to me) music that I do. Posts like this are the ones I like doing the most. They are the most rewarding but they take the longest time to figure out. That's the excuses done.
If it raises awareness and sells a few of the artists' works then that is good enough for me.
Let's go!

The last post of this kind Imaginary Appalachia started in Canada. This one starts in Michigan and I'm not sure that we will get any further south this time, although the music might at times suggest that we have.

Red Tail Ring - Fall Away Blues (CD Baby, 2 September 2016).

This is the most recent release from the Kalamazoo, Michigan based duo that comprises Laurel Primo and Michael Beauchamp. Entirely acoustic, it contrasts new takes on traditional songs and tunes with new ones that tackle themes such as gun crime (something in traditional music that is as old as guns), immigration and environmentalism (both of which are barely less so). It is their fourth album release.

Now this.
It is, as the artist says, "more southern and more country influenced" than her first release 'Sad-eyed Lomesome Lady' and I will return to that in another post. Raised in East Vancouver, BC and now based in Saskatoon, SK (and also in Toronto)  this is all about... quite simply  the things that she wanted to write about and it is not going to get a party started.

Steph Cameron - Daybreak Over Jackson Street (Pheromone Recordings, 21 April 2017).
The LP is to get a full UK release on At The Helm Records on 10 November 2017.

I only happened across this artist by a rare strike of fortune. Yesterday. It got me thinking and now writing again. It is as sparse and beautiful in its production as it is disenchanted, yet hopeful, in its content. The most important thing is that it is always questioning but never preachy.

This journey is not really about new music. I discovered the next record after it occurred to me that I couldn't recall having heard anything new from Canadian fiddle player and singer-songwriter Kendel Carson in a couple of years.  I found this... and if you like female vocal harmonies and multiple fiddle players this could be just the thing for you too.

Belle Starr - belle starr (Roaring Girl Records, 2 April 2013).

The two other artists are Stephanie Cadman and Miranda Mulholland. The trio had previously released an EP 'The Burning of Atlanta' in April 2012 but that is harder to find. In both cases there are quite a few covers.  I think that, to be found on the above-mentioned LP, the cover of Bruce Springsteen's 'Tougher Than The Rest' is particularly effective.

Not all the content relies on lyric and the fiddle tune 'Charity Kiss' is top-notch. It reminds me just how much I like this sort of music and, therefore, of Orcadian fiddle group Fara.
The penultimate track 'Art O'Leary' is an English translation of an Irish poem, Art Ó Laoghaire, set to music.  He fought for the Catholic cause with the Hungarian Hussars, in the army of Maria Theresa in the mid-late 18th century and survived that only to be murdered on his return to his family in Ireland.

This journey will end with a Canadian duo - Kacy & Clayton -  that has covered another poem set to music. This one is often regarded as trad. and anon. but in fact it is nothing of the kind. That song is not, however, on this that is their second LP.

Kacy & Clayton - Strange Country (New West Records, 6 May 2016).

For me the classic cover on this album is their take on 'Over The River Charlie' that is an American song of long standing.  It is not the song I was alluding to above, however.

That is 'The Dalesman's Litany' and it appears on the 2013 album 'The Day Is Past and Gone'. It is in fact a 20th century song in the sense it is now known.
The words, originally a poem in Yorkshire dialect, were written and/or collected by Frederic William Moorman (1872 - 1918), the first Professor of English Language at the University of Leeds (1912 - 1918). The setting of it to a tune, by Dave Keddie of Bradford, Yorkshire, came decades later.
The first commercially released recording of this song that I am aware of is that by Tim Hart and Maddy Prior on their first record as a duo, 'Folk Songs of Old England Volume 1' (1968). On this the lyrics have been "translated" into more prosaic English. The duo later became the core of electric folk band Steeleye Span and the song became a classic of the British folk revival.
The thing about the version by Kacy & Clayton is its beautiful naïvety; it is all the better for the fact that a few of the many Yorkshire locations mentioned in it are mispronounced but, like so many before it, the song has crossed the ocean.

A Day For The Hunter, A Day For The Prey.

This is that long-promised virtual road-trip.

In the light of recent developments, social, political and criminal and on both sides of the Atlantic it isn't a planned journey, made through choice. It is more a consideration of emigration, immigration or simply migration. The driving forces that control these movements are not always the same. War, poverty and such are drivers of emigration. Then there is the voluntary kind: The fabled pot of gold (sometimes literally, as in the various gold-rushes) can lead folk to leave modest, yet fairly safe, circumstances for much more dangerously insecure ones and sometimes within the same country. There is also the more subtle issues of identity, belief and belonging.
The really odd thing about the way certain countries are behaving just now is that they are precisely the same ones that, throughout their histories, have benefited the most from these processes.
I'm going to try and write "live-in-process" over the next 24 hours. The reason for that is that this way I hope that I won't overthink it and will actually get it finished. The down-side might be that it doesn't flow smoothly from start to end. Most real migration journeys don't either.

It is appropriate to start with the artist whose album gives this post its title.  It is taken from a proverb in her native Haiti - a country that has had, since time immemorial, the worst of luck on almost any humanitarian measure. She now lives in New Orleans.

Leyla McCalla - A Day For The Hunter, A Day For The Prey (Jazz Village, 27 May 2016).

This is the title track from that LP.
This next act comprises Clayton Linthicum and Kacy Anderson, cousins from southern Saskatchewan, that form the acoustic duo Kacy and Clayton. They play music that has influences derived from both southern Appalachian tradition as well as that of the UK.

Kacy & Clayton - Strange Country (New West Records, 6 May 2016).
The song that I have chosen is 'Seven Yellow Gypsies'. It is a demonstration of just how songs travel with people and both evolve and adapt to the new horizons. It is from, to use a biological term, a clade of songs in which a noble lady falls for (one or more) men of lesser standing and leaves her home with him or them when her husband (often referred to as 'Lord' or 'Master') is away on business. The lovers are unrepentant. The outcome for all those complicit in infidelity is fatal. It sometimes involves a duel between the male protagonists. Various versions of this are included in The Child Ballads. An example, when the lady inveigles her desire, is Matty Groves. Fairport Convention recorded the classic version on 'Liege and Lief' (1969) and Alela Diane covered it (with Alina Hardin) in 2009 (Alela and Alina). I'm thinking that this version is likely late 16th century in origin.
The version by Kacy & Clayton is akin to a (probably 18th century) incarnation in which the woman leaves with a group of (typically seven) travelling entertainers (often referred to as gypsies in the song). A fine modern UK interpretation is to be found on the 2015 LP 'From Here' by London act Stick In The Wheel.

Eskimeaux is the solo incarnation of Gabrielle Smith, a veteran member of Brooklyn-based collective Epoch, and she is not inclined to traditional strategies. Most artists do not produce the artwork for their LP by embroidering it. This is explained in a song.

O.K. - Eskimeaux (Double Double Whammy, 9 June 2015).

Taken from that LP is this.

The Thunder Answered Back - Violitionist Sessions, Denton, TX, June 2015.
And now this: Year of The Rabbit EP -Eskimeaux (Double Double Whammy, 15 April 2016).

This journey concludes with two recently released works. The first is actually a collection of songs that the very prolific Darrell Scott wrote as long as fifteen years ago but, until his recent move from Nashville to the relative quietude and countryside of the Cumberland Plateau, he could never complete to his own exacting standards. The result is this and it was surely worth the wait.

Couchville Sessions - Darrell Scott (Full Light Records, 13 May 2016).

The opening track is 'Down To The River' and it's easy to imagine how a move towards rural self-sufficiency helped him to complete the oeuvre.

While that was very much the work of a man, his songs and a guitar the journey ends with a young band that is, in my view at least, rather more interesting than the alt-folk tag that they seem to have been lumbered with.

Dear Misery - Colonial Blue (self released - 17 June 2016).

Colonial Blue is a three-piece from Texas, comprising Stephanie Rice (vocals, songwriting and sometimes an instrument), Jonathan Ward (guitars, etc.) and Corey Chierighino (drums, etc.), and this is their first LP. Do not fret about the title - this is a parting letter to the bad times. It is one good listen and one that, until very recently, was completely unknown to me.

'Break Your Bones' is the rather downbeat introduction to the album.

If you are going to Glastonbury 2016 then stay safe, have a great time, and go listen to as much as possible including acts that you have never even heard of. They will be all around you on the smaller stages. One of them might make your day, but you will definitely make theirs!

Treat everyone you meet exactly as you would wish them to treat you.