Kathy Mattea: Coal

Coal

“It’s got to come from the heart if you want it work” is a line Kathy Mattea sings in one her country hits. Mattea has always been good at that, whether she’s singing about the love of an elderly couple in Where’ve You Been, talking about the changes of moving on in Leaving West Virginia, or the changes of life, friends, and time in Roses. Drawing on folk and bluegrass as her way into the country music mainstream, she’s always remained a bit of a maverick in that world, holding out for and holding on to songs of substance, songs of the heart.

In her latest project, Coal, they are songs which come also from the landscape and the land where Mattea grew up. She’s from West Virginia; both her grandfathers were coal miners, and her mother worked for the miner’s union, the UMWA. Though she heard the music of such mountain musicians as Hazel Dickens, it wasn’t the sort of style she felt she could do, or was called to do. Nevertheless, the power of the songs struck her, and she began to take note of them. One of the songs on this album, Dark as a Dungeon, Mattea first heard when she was nineteen.

Then, in 2006, twelve miners lost their lives in at the Sago Mines in West Virginia. “When I was about nine, 78 miners were killed in The Farmington Disaster, near Fairmont in 1968. When Sago happened, I got catapulted back to that moment in my life and I thought, ‘I need to do something with this emotion, and maybe this album is the place to channel it’. And so I knew the time was right,” she says.

Coal mining is a tapestry of hard work, family, beloved yet harsh landscape, facing death every day, facing life everyday, hard choices, hard times, and good times and hope and love as well. All these find their places in the songs Mattea chose, and in the ways she chooses to sing them. Coal camp childhood turning into adult reality moves through the opener, The L&N Don’t Stop Here Anymore, which is framed in a fast driving bluegrass sound. Red Winged Blackbird is a piece of poetry and vivid visual imagery about death and the mines; Green Rolling Hills, though it’s about West Virginia, reminds too of the green hills of Ireland and Scotland to which many miners trace their family ties. Family ties and ties to the mine form the bedrock of You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive, a song that’s bound to haunt you long after it’s done. The other songs on the disc are equally varied, and equally strong.

Mattea is an artist in service to the song, one who uses her gifts to further the connecting and spiritual aspects of music. It’d be easy to go over top with some of these songs, or not to go deeply enough into them. No worries about that with Mattea and the musicians she’s invited along on this journey, who include producer Marty Stuart, fiddler Stuart Duncan, and guitarist Bill Cooley. Tim O’Brien, Molly O’Brien, and Patty Loveless add background vocals.

It’s Mattea’s vision, voice, and emotion which center this powerful music, however. An artist who’s always been open to dimensions of music beyond what’s on the surface, she knows she had help with that, that her work is part of a continuing story. “I think there’s a mystery there: that somewhere in me, in my DNA, there’s my great grandmother singing, and my grandmother, and my people, singing through me, with me,” she says. “Maybe that’s why it didn’t feel like work.”

Just another thought: quite probably, the electricity by which you are reading this was generated, in part, by coal.

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now playing: Christmas Celtic Sojourn Live

Christmas Celtic Sojourn Live

If you’re looking for a gentle and very musical way to get in the the spirit of the festive season, Christmas Celtic Sojourn Live! will help. There’s both an audio CD and a dvd, with slightly different programming on each. Karan Casey, Navan, Robbie O’Connell, Fionnuala O’Donovan, Shannon Heaton, and others are among those gathered for what’s become an a holiday tradition in the Boston area, as Celtic radio show host Brian O’Donovan brings together an ever changing cast of musicians to welcome the holiday. Not all the songs are Irish, but many are, and the sense of sharing and good fellowship extends to all. Fine harmonies and good music too.

It is an annual event; this music was recorded at Christmas 2006. 2007's live concerts start on 13 December and run for several nights in Boston and New York, featuring.among others Alasdair Fraser and Aoife O’Donovan..

Looking toward Christmas: Kidstuff

Is there a young child, or the parent of one, on your gift list? Here's music to consider for them.

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 (and Grammy winning) musicians 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.

Music on the album Mother 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. Though it was intended for mothers, it works for mother, grandmothesr, and their children: 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.

There are lively tunes and gracious ones, simple ones and complex, ones presented with sparse accompaniment and those with intricate acoustic support. Spielberg’s piano exploration without words of a walk with her mother, McKeown’s evocation of older times in Ancient Mother, the lively dance of joy of both child and grandparent in Ryan Grandma’s Song, each offer gifts of understanding and connection, as do the other songs on this collection.

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now playing: Peter Mulvey

Notes from Elsewhere



Take the heartland poetry and energy of Bruce Springsteen, the guitar skills and slightly zen outlook of Chris Smither, and the unexpected turns of Chuck Prophet’s work, mix all these together and you’ll have sort of an idea of what Peter Mulvey’s music is like. But not really. Mulvey is his own man, and his own artist, of course, and for a decade and half he’s been doing just fine as that, thanks, crossing the country and the world with his guitar and his songs. In that time, he’s figured out how to get from the beginning to the end of a song -- and not always the same way -- and he’s figured out how to support his words with his guitar, and let the guitar stand alone when that’s called for. For this recording he pulls favorites from songs he’s written over the time from 1991 through 2007, and records them afresh, just the man and his guitar. The songs are fan favorites, and favorites of Mulvey’s fellow musical road warriors as well. Looks like more people are meeting the Wisconsin song poet’s work too, as at the moment Notes from Elsewhere is rising up the Americana airplay charts. Standout cuts include Grace, Black Rabbit, and Every Word Except Goodbye.

now playing: Athena Tergis

A Letter Home

Fiddler Athena Tergis has lived in San Francisco, New York, and points between, in Belfast, Galway, London, and points between, and she’s now based in the Tuscan region of northwest Italy. When she decided to call her first solo recording A Letter Home, she was considering all that. Her background also includes playing in Riverdance on Broadway, touring with Sharon Shannon, and backing up many world renown musicians while at TG4, the national Irish language television channel in Ireland. A Letter Home is a collection of Celtic based tunes which are true to the traditions from which they arise but which also allow the listener to hear Tergis’ own instrumental flair and line of thought quite clearly. The music includes a lively set of barn dances and a Scottish tinged strathspey, after opening at a fiery pace with a set of Irish reels. In all there are fourteen tracks : jigs, reels, highlands, set dance tunes, flings, and slow airs, tunes with origins in Galway, Cork, Antrim, and Donegal as well as in the Scottish Highlands, the Irish community of Chicago, and the heart of Cape Breton in Nova Scotia.


John Doyle, whose music you’ve encountered before on this site, produced the collection, and there’s really collaborative ensemble work from Sharon Shannon and Billy McComiskey on accordions, cellist Natalie Haas, Ben Wittman on percussion, and fiddler Liz Carroll.

John Doyle: Wayward Son

Wayward Son


John Doyle is a man of many talents: gifted producer, very fine guitarist, good singer, and above all that, or maybe bringing it all together, a man of vision whose vision is framed and formed in Irish tradition. Framed so well, in fact, that he’s makes songs from the seventeenth or eighteenth century sound as real as though they were written today. The emotions are as real, and as true always, certainly, but such songs are sometimes performed with a bit of distance or looking over one’s shoulder on the part of the artist -- no worries on that here. Whether he’s singing Jack Dolan’s tale, sharing a lament for lost love in a duet with Kate Rusby on Bitter the Parting, or playing the reels Old Bush and Expect The Unexpected, he’s a man who knows and loves and feels his music, and is well able to share that. If you've ever thought songs of the Irish tradition were getting a bit too well worn, then this is a disc for you.

and if you're looking at the photo above and wondering, yes, he really does play the guitar left handed.

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Music Road: exiles return: karan casey & john doyle

now playing: Tim O'Brien: The Crossing

Tim O’Brien is a fine singer, songwriter, and player of all sorts of stringed instruments in the country and bluegrass style. He’s from West Virginia, based now in Nashville, after some years some years in Colorado. His family came to America from Cavan and from Donegal, in Ireland, The Crossing is the first of several albums in which O’Brien considers that ancestral experience in real time, as events which happened to real people and stories of their lives, the risks they took and joys they celebrated. It’s a very fine album on its own and a real necessity for anyone interested in Irish and Irish American history to explore.
The Crossing

now playing: Terri Hendrix

Terri Hendrix has a direct and unique voice in folk music -- a combination of beat poet, political commentator, and insighful musician. She's been spreading the musical gospel for a good few years now, running her own record company and building a dedicated fan base that spans generations and countries. Along the way she's written a Grammy winning instrumental for the Dixie Chicks and created an award winning children's album, among other accomplishments . Her latest release, The Spiritual Kind, talks of friendship, change, love, acceptance, and connection in songs such as Acre of Land, If I Had a Daughter, and What Is the Color of the Soul, along with a right on cover of Pasures of Plenty.

The photograph over here to the right shows her with frequent band mates Paul Pearcy and Lloyd Maines one Austin summer night.


The Spiritual Kind

late summer: two for the road

At the end of summer, these two recordings keep claiming my attention. I find the songs good traveling companions at varied points along the journey, and I always learn something when I listen. That's as true when I hear each of these women in concert, as well, which I recommend to you.

Cathie Ryan The Farthest Wave Hope, healing, and change framed in a deep connection to the music and the landscapes of Ireland and America. The title track travels the path between grief and hope with grace and dignity, and the opening track, What's Closest to the Heart, is several sorts of invitation, in two languages, to risk it all. The rest of the album is as good. Ryan's other albums are equally fine and stay close to the playlist too.

Carrie Newcomer A Gathering of Spirits
Newcomer has been called a poet of the sacred ordinary. That works for the songs here, both serious and funny. Thanksgiving for hymns of geese and a smile in the checkout lane along with thoughts on vocation, the persistence of love, and overcoming hate. And daily walking the walk of love, taking the next step without necessarily knowing anything but trusting all. Newcomer's other recordings are well worth seeking out too.

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Music Road: Voices: Carrie Newcomer: faith and laughter

Music Road: Songs of the Immigrants

now playing:Gretchen Peters

Burnt Toast & Offerings


The unraveling of of a deeply felt relationship -- and many not so deeply felt ones -- is common territory for songwriters. The downs and ups and the just thinking about it all, and the just surviving it all, are the through line of what Gretchen Peters wrtites about on this album. That she comes at such an often treated subject with freshness and grace will be no surprise to those who know her work, and to those who don’t it’s reason to get to know her.


You may actually know her songs better than you know her name, at least if you live in the United States. Martina McBride, Patty Loveless, George Strait, Ryan Adams, Shania Twain, Etta James, Bonnie Raitt, and Longview are some of those who have found her ideas and her way with words and melody compelling. Though she is based in Nashville, it is in the UK that she’s as well known as a performer as she is as a writer.

Either way you come at this disc, it’s a fine one. Peters has an expressive, conversational soprano with which she illuminates the searching Ghost and the not so complete resignation of To Say Goodbye, and rocks out on the to hell with it story of England Blues. The Way You Move Me is a gorgeous love song, and Jezebel a somewhat enigmatic look at the other side of that, while Breakfast at Our House is a three minute novel so vividly imagined you can smell the burnt toast. The other tracks are equally strong, both on their own and as part of the unfolding story.

now playing: Mary Black

Best of Mary Black vol 2

Mary Black is Irish, no doubt about that, and she brings both her mother's Dublin heritage and her dad's background on Rathlin Island off the coast of County Antrim to all that she does. What she does, though, is entirely her own, songs from the best of contemporary songwriters, well known and unknown.

This is a two disc set, the first a best of selection ranaging across several albums, inlcuidng songs such as Bless the Road, Still Believing, The Dimming of the Day, and Song for Ireland. The second disc is called Hidden Harvest and comprises fourteen tracks (there are sixteen on the first one) of outakes, one offs, and collaborations, among them Ring Them Bells with Joan Baez, Across the Universe with Noel Bridgeman, and Bruach na Carriage Baine with Seamus Begley, and Black on her own with Who Knows Where the Time Goes, Good Morning Heartache, and others. Compiled during a time when Black was deciding if it was time "hang up her boots" as a singer, this is an excellent retrospective, and one that will make listeners glad that the Irish musician decided to continue exploring where her musical path will lead.

I had the chance to speak with Mary Black recently, and an article from that conversation appears in the February 2007 issue of the folk and world music magazine Dirty Linen.

you may also wish to
Reflections with Mary Black
Music, Time, Memory: Mary Black
Robert Burns, Altan, and Mary Black

Tish Hinojosa: Best of the Sandia

Best of the Sandia: the Watermelon Years

Tish Hinojosa is a major talent, an artist of real substance, a first generation Mexican American who makes that experience the substance of her musical ideas on love, loss, change, connection, and trust. These tracks are taken from projects recorded in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and include a heretofore unreleased duet with Kris Kristofferson. She’s still a major talent a decade an half on from these songs, and these are still worth repeated listening. Taos to Tennessee, Eres Tu, and Prairie Moon are three of my favorites.



read about Hinojosa's latest project Our Little Planet

photograph of Tish Hinojosa and Marvin Dykhuis at the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar in Austin, Texas

If you enjoy what you are reading here, come visit -- and perhaps, subscribe -- to my newsletter at Substack for more stories about music, the people who make it, and the places which inspire it.

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through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.

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creative practice: curragh, part two

what appears afar off in the distance may at times be closer that it seems. sometimes, however, still takes a while to reach.

now playing: Cherish the Ladies

The Back Door


The Back Door is the first recording by the top notch Irish music ensemble Cherish the Ladies. At the time, each of the women in the band was the daughter of immigrants, a fact pointed up in the title track, which was written by singer Cathie Ryan. It is also one of the very first songs Ryan ever wrote. She’s ten years and more into a solo career now, and has grown as a writer. Still this stands well. It is a unique look at immigration through the eyes of an undocumented Irish woman, who could really be of any era. Her concerns, too, are shared with those who come from other lands.

Irish music played and sung in top form by women doesn’t seem such an unusual concept now, but when Cherish first formed, and still by the time of this first recording, it was. Joanie Madden is still leading the group, though the lineup has changed over the years. More to be said on that later, but meanwhile,The Back Door, fifteen years on, would easily best the work of any dozen other groups were it recorded today.

you may also want to see
Voices: Cherish the Ladies

now playing: Jody Stecher & Kate Brislin

Songs of the Carter Family

Songs of Maybelle, AP, and Sarah Carter are known all over the world in many variations. California based folk singers Stecher and Brislin respect the mystery and the musicality behind the straightforward on the surface songs. In some ways, it’s like touching a well worn stair rail, the lines and melodies are so familiar, but the fresh wood roughness of new construction is there too. Tracks include Away Out on the Old Saint Sabbath, Dark and Stormy Weather, and River of Jordan.

now playing: will taylor & strings attached

Will Taylor and Strings Attached

Collaborations

Take a handful of songs from a singer songwriter known for a distinctive style, strip that music down to its essence, write arrangements for the songs that support a jazz/world music flavored backing ensemble, and what do you get? Several years ago, composer and violinist Will Taylor ran with this idea came up with the Strings Attached concert series, held each month at Saint David’s Episcopal Church in downtown Austin, Texas. The dozen collaborations (and two bonus video tracks) gathered on this disc represent s slice of the best shows of this inventive series. Musicians love doing the series because it allows them to see their creations through the eyes of other players, in ways they may not have imagined, and to share them with their audiences in new ways. The audiences love that energy of creation and discovery as well, and a bit of that has been translated to this recorded collection, which was put together to benefit CASA, a Texas organization which focuses on the rights of abused and neglected children. Each of the tracks is worth listening to more than once, and especially outstanding tracks include Eliza Gilkyson's with Easy Rider, Jimmy LaFave’s Never is a Moment, Shawn Colvin’s Set the Prairie on Fire, and Ruthie Foster with Ocean of Tears. Guy Forsyth, Patrice Pike, Ian Moore, Libby Kirkpatrick, Barbara K, Slaid Cleaves, and Sara Hickman are the other artists represented, and there is an original instrumental from Taylor as well. It’s a well presented introduction to an original way of musical collaboration.

Now playing: alison brown

Alison Brown

Stolen Moments

acoustic adventures from all points of the compass

Bluegrass, jazz, newgrass, Celtic , country: whatever she’s playing, Alison Brown shows a gift for melody, a gift most often expressed on the banjo.

She brings all those aspects of her searching music spirit together in the eleven tracks here.

Top cuts include Celtic tinged original instrumental “Carrowkeel,” Brown picking up her guitar to collaborate with John Doyle in supporting the graceful lead vocals of Andrea Zonn on the trad piece “One Morning in May.” Jimi Hendrix’ “Angel” with Beth Nielsen Chapman on lead vocals. The Indigo Girls, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Kenny Malone and Stuart Duncan also sit in.

this is a post from the early days of Music Road at. Learn more about Alison Bown's work in these more recent stories

Alison Borwn: Song of the Banjo at Wandering Educators

The Company You Keep, another album from Alison

Alison is teaching banjo online at ArtistWorks...

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now playing: oisin mcauley

Far From the Hills of Donegal

Quebec Reels might indeed seem to have their origin far from the hills of Donegal. The set makes a fine opening track for Oisin McAuley’s first solo album. Best known for his inventive fiddle work with the top Irish band Danu, McAuley was raised in Donegal, took a degree in classical music in Belfast, and lived for a time in Brittany. Now he is based in New England and travels the world playing music with Danu. It’s good to see how he gets these experiences going in a set of tunes which is based in the west of Ireland ideas and adds these perspectives to that style. There's traditional music, including a medley John Doherty’s Highland, Nell Gow’s Wife, and Frank Cassidy’s. Doherty is a particular influence on McAuley, for, the fiddler says. “the way he mixed things up. I thought if he did it could do the same.” Reels, swing, hornpipes and great stash of original tunes play out that idea here. Other notable cuts include Tune for Gillian and Lover’s Ghost.

by Kerry Dexter

now playing: Joan Baez

Joan Baez: Vanguard Visionaries

In the early days of the folk music revival, and for some years beyond, the people at Vanguard did something unusual -- they treated recording of folk and pop music with as much care as they gave to the sound quality of their classical music catalogue. One result of that is an extensive and fine sounding range of archival material, which they’ve mined in various ways over the years. This summer, they’ve chosen thirty artists to be featured as Vanguard Visionaries, each represented by a budget priced CD with minimal liner notes. This approach forces the listener to focus on the music, and as part of the impetus of this collection is to make connection between these artists and those more recently in the mainstream, that’s likely a wise choice -- this series is intended to open doors, and ears, rather than offer extensive narrative about the music.

Joan Baez was perhaps Vanguard’s flagship folk artist, with nearly two dozen albums to her credit on the label. Compilation producer Vince Hans has done an excellent job of selecting ten sides from all that material, songs which represent the range and breadth of the music Baez chose, and the range of he musical styles as well. These choices inlcude Silver Dagger and Mary Hamilton from the Appalachian and Anglo folk tradition, Birmingham Sunday form the Civil Rights times, Long Black Veil from the country side of things, and of course Dylan, represented by Love Is Just a Four Letter Word and Farewell, Angelina. The collection closes, fittingly enough, with Hickory Wind, a song long associated with its writer, Gram Parsons, and taken into progressive country territory in subsequent years by a woman who was influenced by both Baez and Parsons, Emmylou Harris.