Daisycutter: Sara Milonovich

Sara Milonovich
Daisycutter

It’s an interesting journey Sara Milonovich takes listeners on through the course of Daisycutter, beginning with a look at the sometimes harsh realties of Country Life all the way to a finishing set of lively tunes from the Adirondacks, Louisiana, and Italy. Milonovich is a top notch fiddle player. You may have heard her on Pete Seeger’s Grammy winning At 89 album, and on the road backing Richard Shindell and Cathie Ryan, or perhaps in her duo appearances with guitarist Greg Anderson.

She is also a very fine singer -- think power matched with conversational tone, a bit like country singer Suzy Bogguss -- and both fiddle and voice come to the fore on this varied set of tunes and songs. There are timely as well as timeless touches of political commentary in Insanity Street and Under the Weather, and a timeless take on Eliza Gilkyson’s bittersweet love song Last Dance. Northern Cross is a darker ballad, while Pleasant Valley Sunday lets the sun shine in with its bouncy Carole King by way of The Monkees look at suburban life. The tunes are equally well done, drawing for the most part on Milonovich’s time in Celtic music and her background growing up in New York state. There’s a tune for her road weary car, called Fiona’s Breakdown, and a set called No Sweat Helene, which pairs two Quebecois tunes with a original written for guitarist John Doyle, who joins in for that tune and several other cuts as well. Anderson plays all sorts of stringed instruments across many of the cuts, too, and John Kirk, Natalie Haas, Lloyd Maines and Eliza Gilkyson are among those who also sit in now and again. That’s a powerful support group, and Milonovich shows she’s well up to it

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Music Road: Liz Carroll & John Doyle: Double Play

Music Road: Cathie Ryan: Songwriter

Music Road: Athena Tergis: A Letter Home

Steve Johnson: Lowlands

Lowlands


Steve Johnson is a storyteller. That’s apparent from the first lines of the first song on his new CD, Lowlands. That first song is The Labouring Man’s Daughter, a ballad that’s traveled in varied forms across England, Ireland, and the Appalachian Mountains of the United States. It opens the door to a gathering of songs, both familiar and less so, that have at their heart the power of story, and the power of connection.

Johnson usually likes to share these songs through informal sessions around his home base in the Bronx, New York. These are stories meant to be told, reflected upon, perhaps embellished and retold as they have been over time, stories drawn from Irish, Scottish, English and American folk music. There are a dozen of those, along with two songs whose composers are known, one a poem from the 1860s and another from the 1930s. What they all share is Johnson’s ability to express narrative through rich tone, thoughtful phrasing, and clear understanding of the lyrical and melodic ideas of the song he chooses. Though his back up cast is a stellar one, including Greg Anderson (who also produced the project), Lisa Gutkin, Sara Milonovich, Eamon O’Leary, and Natalie Haas, it’s Johnson’s voice and interpretations which center the album. Whatever your taste in music, if you enjoy good singing you’ll find much to like here.

Outstanding tracks include Wake Up Little Maggie, Molly Bawn, Blackwater Side, and The Rocks of Bawn.

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Ian Tyson: Yellowhead to Yellowstone

Jeff Talmadge : At Least That Much Was True

John Doyle: Wayward Son

cathie ryan: the farthest wave

covering Dylan: Richard Shindell

A tale of religious conversion, or one of political intrigue? A comment on policy decisions or a shifting stream of images connected only in the writer’s mind? Like many of Bob Dylan’s songs, Senor (Tales of Yankee Power) has enough room in it for any dozen ideas you want to bring to it. Though he leans a bit to the political side, it might seem, Richard Shindell also leaves that door of interpretation wide open open in his recording of the song on his latest release, South of Delia.

Shindell is a writer’s writer, a man of well thought out words. Reunion Hill is one of his better known songs. He’s opened for Joan Baez and toured and recorded with Dar Williams and Lucy Kaplansky as the trio
Cry Cry Cry.

Shindell counts time in a Buddhist monastery and at Union Theological Seminary in his background, and for several years he’s been looking at American life from the perspective of living in Argentina. For South of Delia he chose to cover, and reinvent, some of his favorite songs from traditional music and by other writers. In addition to Senor, the songs include Born in the USA, Texas Rangers, and Acadian Driftwood.

The project was produced by respected acoustic guitarist Greg Anderson, who leaves plenty of space for Shindell’s visions. “These are twelve narrators,” Shindell says. “I imagine meeting them along the road now that whatever happened has happened. We stop to exchange news, to share their disbelief that the world could ever have come to this, to warn, to point the way, to provide a light, and then be off again.”

Richard Thompson, Sara Milonovich, Ben Wittman, and Eliza Gilkyson are among those who sit in.

apologies for the lack of the tilde~ it's just not, ah, translating.