Road Trip Music in Virginia

Virginia is a state of contrasts, from the bustling suburbs of DC to the winding roads of the Shenandoah Valley, from the elegance of Colonial Williamsburg to the down home vibe of the Carter Fold. One song that gracefully and gently expresses all that is I Do Love Virginia. It’s sung by Sissy Spacek, and written by Paul Reisler, Terri Allard -- and class of elementary school kids in the Charlottesville, Virginia, area.

They were all participating in Kid Pan Alley, a project Reisler started on the national level some years back. The Charlottesville area collaborations resulted in an album called I Used to Know the Names of All the Stars, a collection of songs both whimsical and serious, funny and somber, sung by nationally and regionally well known professional musicians who live in the area.

Allard, who spearheaded the Virginia project, is one of those. With a smoky alto and a gift for writing songs which tell vivid stories in just a few words, her music walks the territory between folk and country. A fine introduction to Allard’s work is the album Live from Charlottesville. Songs of hope, resilience, and good fun filled the air one winter night for the recording of that album, and there's more about that when you follow the link.

If you've been thinking about the floods in Tennessee, Allard does a very fine version of the flood song Louisiana 1927 on the recording, too.

Virginia is, or has been, home to many musicians. A site which will take you on a journey through a number of the places important in the state’s musical history is The Crooked Road.

Other musicians with Virginia connections for your soundtrack include Robin and Linda Williams, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Pasty Cline, The Carter Family, and Jesse Winchester. If you’re looking for Irish and Scottish music in Virginia, one very good place to find out about it is from the web site of Sunspot Productions.


you may also wish to see

Music Road: Terri Allard
Robin & Linda Williams: The First Christmas Gift
Music Road: music for mothers and children



This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I originally partnered up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’d find there. The Library is closed now, but I think you will still find the journeys through music interesting.
For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

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Music for parents & children: Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem

All of the four band members in Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem are parents. As they traveled around the world and as they played their music on the home front, that got them thinking about music kids and adults could share.

Most of the roots and folk music band offers would fit that category, with four distinctive lead singers who often engage in collaborative harmony and backing vocals and who are also creative acoustic musicians on fiddle, bass, percussion, and guitar, mixing original music with songs from across the range of international folk. When they decided to focus on doing shows specifically for kids, the band’s sense of fun came front and center -- and so will yours, as you listen to their latest release, Ranky Tanky..


Rani Arbo, Scott Kessel, Andrew Kinsey, and Anand Nayak rearrange and reinvent classics including The Green Grass Grows All Around, and Purple People Eater. They’ll have you up and dancing -- whatever age you are -- with the title track. There's a very funny excursion to the zoo on They All Ask’d for You. There are quieter bits too, including Wildflowers and the gorgeous lullabye written by Malvina Reynolds, Morningtown Ride.

It’s music of substance, and music of fun, offering natural ways to connect, to celebrate, to laugh, and to think. Good for listeners of any age.


you may also wish to see
Music Road: Mother: music celebrating mothers and motherhood from Susan McKeown, Cathie Ryan, & Robin Spielberg
Music Road: Road Trip Music visits Connecticut which features another album from Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem
Music Road: music for mothers and children a roundup of albums you may not have heard...

Also, folk music legend Pete Seeger celebrates a birthday today -- he turns 91. His next album will feature work he's been doing with children. More on that to come. Happy birthday Pete! and thanks for all the music, and all the inspiration.

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here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

Mother: music celebrating mothers and motherhood: McKeown, Ryan, Spielberg

This music is traditional, from Ireland, and original, out of the lives of the three artists who created this record, Susan McKeown, Robin Spielberg, and Cathie Ryan. It is music you probably have not heard before. It’s a powerful and loving celebration of the connections and disconnections and understandings that motherhood and making all life’s transitions invites. It’s also music that allows much as much space for the listener as it does for the artists who created it.

Mother comprises fourteen songs. It works well to let the whole process of the album unfold, from McKeown’s opening remembrance of her mother, who died when the singer was fifteen, to a close with Ryan singing a song for Spielberg, one the pianist wrote wrote to welcome her own daughter into the world. In between there are lively tunes and gracious ones, simple ones and complex, ones presented with sparse accompaniment and those with intricate acoustic support. Spielberg’s exploration without words of a walk with her mother is especially fine, McKeown’s evocation of older times comes through strongly in Ancient Mother, Ryan’s Grandma's Song is a lively dance evoking the joy of both child and grandparent as the younger Cathie Ryan recalls and pays tribute to the fiddle playing grandmother for whom she was named and who gave her her love of music.

In the liner notes, each artist offers a short insight into why she chose or composed each song. These are all well worth reading, and thinking about. Each woman was a at different point in her own experience of motherhood as they worked on this project. Together and separately they’ve each added gifts of understanding to it.

you may also want to see

behind the scenes at the making of the Mother album

Music Road: Cathie Ryan: Irish and American

If you're coming over from the link at Poetry Ireland, you might be especially interested in this Music Road: intersections: words, music, and Robert Burns. It's part of series about the connections between writing songs and writing poetry, as is this. Thank you for stopping by -- stay while and explore.

Music for parents and children to share

Here's a look back a several albums that children, and their parents and other adults in their lives, will be able to enjoy together.

Both parent an child will likely enjoy Down at the Sea Hotel. By turns as whimsical as the title cut, by Iowa singer songwriter Greg Brown, and as thoughtful as Steve Earle’s Nothing but a Child, which is sung together by many of the artists who contribute to this album, it’s a varied collection with top singers and songwriters offering familiar and less familiar songs by other top contemporary writers. Guy Davis singss a bluesy Midnight Lullaby, while Eliza Gilkyson delivers two of the really standout cuts on the disc, Midnight in Missoula and the Carole King classic Child of Mine. Other singers include Lucy Kaplansky, John Gorka, and Lynn Miles, on songs written by Mary Chapin Carpenter, Tom Waits, and others.

Do kids themselves create songs that will hold up to repeated listening? Well, at the very least you know you’ll get a few topics adult writers might not at first choose. The Football Toad and Papaya People are two of those Rory Block helped the kids in her sons’ school classes bring to life on the album Color Me Wild. Block is known as an intense and powerful blues singer and guitarist, but she says “I also have a really off the wall sense of humor.” That probably came in really helpful when her children were small, which is when she put together this project.

A whole list of well known musicians ( and Grammy winning) from Darrell Scott to Amy Grant joined up with the Nashville Chamber Orchestra and Paul Reisler’s Kid Pan Alley project to let kids see and experience what it’s like to create a song. The result: some lovely lullabyes, some funny stuff, and, well, a song about socks...

Tish Hinojosa offers a batch of songs both parents and children will enjoy on Cada Nino. Hinojosa is first generation Mexican American, and she draws on this background to remember in song trips to visit her grandmother back in Mexico and talk about some women of border history. Soon you and your kids will liklely be singing along with Hinojosa in both English and Spanish, especially on her hilarious imagining of what the vegetables get up to when we’re not looking, El Baile Vegetal/Vegetable Dance.

Jane Siberry offers a recording that’ll likely have you singing along too, although in a quieter way, as you might suspect from its title, Hush. This is Siberry in a relaxed folk mode, offering familiar songs including We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder, All Through the Night, and The Water Is Wide. If you are in a lullaby frame of mind, you might want to look up Padraigin ni Uallachain's music, especially her recording Irish Lullaby. If you're looking more for humor, laughter, and challenge, then check out Celebrate the Difference, from Terri Hendrix.

In an upcoming post, a look at another fine and unusual album celebrating mothers, grandmothers, and motherhood, Mother, from Susan McKeown, Robin Spielberg, and Cathie Ryan.

-->Your support for Music Road is welcome and needed. If you are able to chip in, here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this. Thank you.