Whisky, Home Brew, and Real Ale – March 2016

On this edition of the Golden Biscuit Hour, we’re going to be hearing songs and tunes about Whisky, Home Brew, and Real Ale; the folks that love them; and the folks that love them a bit to much.

Let’s get things started with a morning pint and join Chuck Brodsky in the pub.

Pubs & Ale

1. The 9:30 Pint - Chuck Brodsky - Color Came One Day
2. When Jones’s Ale was New - John Kirkpatrick - Song Links
3. Jock Stewart - Ewan McLennan - Rags and Robes 
4. Summat’s Brewin’ - O’Hooley & Tidow - Summat’s Brewin'
5. Armitage Shanks - Chuck Brodsky - Two Sets

Armitage Shanks - Chuck Brodsky - Two Sets
That  set ended with Chuck Brodsky doing Armitage Shanks from his album Two Sets. Billy and Jeni met Chuck at the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance Conference (also known as NERFA) in upstate New York back in the fall of 2009, and they were lucky enough to hear him perform Armitage Shanks — and have never forgotten it.

The 9:30 Pint - Chuck Brodsky - Color Came One Day
We started that group of songs with Chuck’s superb tale of the bartender who opens at 9:30 in the morning — The 9:30 Pint, from the album Color Came One Day. We love the song for the way that it turns your assumptions on their heads about people who might want a pint at 9:30 in the morning.

Chuck Brodsky tours in North America and abroad. It looks like he is leading two group tours to Ireland in August in September, so visit chuckbrodsky.com and check it out!

Summat’s Brewin’ - O’Hooley & Tidow - Summat’s Brewin'

Before Armitage Shanks, you heard Belinda O’Hooley and Heidi Tidow sing their celebration of Real Ale called Summat’s Brewin'. We want to wish them merry on their recent nuptials and raise a glass to their happiness.

“Summat” is Yorkshire slang for “something.” (boffle here) So, Something’s brewing!

We have to love a song that mentions so many Yorkshire towns we love, Huddersfield, for one! The Biscuit Hour also recommends their record, The Hum, which centers around their life in the West Riding village of Golcar where they record their music within earshot of the very last working factory. They very creatively and intentionally incorporated this sound of the factory hum into their album, which won loads of awards in Britain.

Jock Stewart - Ewan McLennan - Rags and Robes 

Before O’Hooley & Tidow, we heard Ewan McLennan, a fantastic young Scottish singer and guitarist, doing Jock Stewart, a traditional verse that he performs to great effect on his CD Rags & Robes. Apparently the song finds its roots in the Irish Music Hall, but jumped the North Channel and became a standard drinking song in Aberdeenshire. It shares a bit of its chorus with a song called The Man You Don’t Meet Every Day, recorded by Cecil Sharp in Somerset.

If you haven’t heard Ewan McLennan previously, you should definitely look him up. He does a marvelous job on songs like Jamie Foyers, Banks of Marble, and Tramps & Hawkers. You’ll find links on our website at goldenbiscuithour.com.

When Jones’s Ale was New - John Kirkpatrick - Song Links

The second song in that set was sung by John Kirkpatrick and Danny Spooner and can be found on the album Song Links. It's an old standard drinking song: When Jones’s Ale Was New. And by old standard, we mean really old. Here’s what A.L. Lloyd had to say about it in the liner notes of his 1956 album English Drinking Songs:

"Here and there at Easter time, the “Jolly-boys” or “Pace-eggers” go from house to house, singing songs and begging for eggs. They wear clownish disguises: the hunch-backed man, the long-nosed man, the fettered prisoner, the man-woman etc. Jones's Ale is one of their favourite songs. Whether the drinking song comes from the pace-egging version or the other way round, we do not know. It is an old song. Ben Johnson knew it and mentioned it in his 16th century Tale of a Tub. Its qualities are durable, for it has altered little in 350 years. It appeals most to those who are most elevated."

It’s pretty clear what Lloyd meant by “elevated.” It often comes from too much grog.

The Wages of Sin #1

1. All for Me Grog - Louis Killen - Song Links
2. Wagon Yard - The Red Clay Ramblers with Fiddlin’ Al McCanless
3. The Tailor’s Breeches - John Roberts and Debra Cowan - Ballads Long and Short

The Tailor’s Breeches - John Roberts and Debra Cowan - Ballads Long and Short

We concluded that set with The Tailor’s Breeches, sung by John Roberts and Debra Cowan, who teamed up for this brilliant new record, one of my favorites of 2014, Ballads Long and Short. This record has everything: wonderful stories in the songs, terrific musicianship, and two voices that sound great together.

Deb and John deliver a story inside a song with incredible finesse and joy. Highly recommended. British novelist, Thomas Hardy, mentions this song in two of his books in the late 1800’s so it goes back at least to the 19th century.

Wagon Yard - The Red Clay Ramblers with Fiddlin’ Al McCanless

Before The Tailor’s Breeches, we heard Wagon Yard, by North Carolina’s own Red Clay Ramblers with Fiddlin’ Al McCanless. And that happens to be the name of the 1974 album on which you’ll find Wagon Yard.

McCanless, a bluegrass fiddler, sings lead on this number and fiddles the high harmony, while Bill Hicks fiddles the melody. The song was originally recorded in the 1920s by Lowe Stokes, but McCanless’s melody was learned from Grandpa Jones' version.

All for Me Grog - Louis Killen - Song Links

All for Me Grog was delivered by Louis Killen, a wonderful and very influential folk singer from Gateshead who was active in the British folk scene in the 1960s, influencing folk revival singers like Tony Rose, Peter Bellamy, and The Watersons. He came to the US in 1967 and joined The Clancy Brothers, an Irish band, in 1971. Killen returned to live in his hometown of Gateshead in the early 1990s, resuming his British-based singing career, performing in concerts and festivals, sometimes in a duo with Mike Waterson.

While living in America in the early 1990s, Killen lived at times as a transgender person. Two years before her death in 2013, Louis Killen became Louisa Jo Killen. She continued to perform occasionally until illness made travel too difficult.

Where there is drinking, dissipation follows hard upon it. So, I’m afraid we may need a few more songs of hard luck. First off, Billy and I tell a very sad tale: I Saw a Man at the Close of Day.

The Wages of Sin #2

1. I Saw a Man at the Close of Day - Jeni & Billy - Longing for Heaven 
2. Down Where the Drunkards Roll - Richard & Linda Thompson - I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight
3. Long Year - Todd Snider - Happy to Be Here
4. I told Him That My Dog Wouldn’t Run - Patty Larkin - Angels Running

I told Him That My Dog Wouldn’t Run - Patty Larkin - Angels Running

Patty Larkin with I Told Him My Dog Wouldn’t Run wrapped up that set – one of Jeni's favorite songs of hers. Close listeners will say, “Well, that song never mentioned drinking at all.” And they would be right. But we think the character in the song is struggling to maintain a path in the face of personal demons — like the demons so often caused by too much drink.

The Biscuit Hour tried to learn more about the song, but Patty Larkin came to the fore in the 1980s, before everything went from a person’s brain straight into Google. We did find that the song is used as a reference in a psychology textbook. If you are looking for a classic singer-songwriter record from the canon of Northeast Folk in the USA, Patty’s Angels Running is a must have.

Long Year - Todd Snider - Happy to Be Here - Greg - DB Cooper

Before Patty Larkin, we heard Todd Snider with Long Year, from his album Happy to Be Here. Jeni & Greg both love that line: “you know I’ve always been afraid of the twelve step crowd. They laugh too much, talk too loud . . .”

Todd Snider was one of the first  Americana artists that Jeni and Greg started to follow while Jeni was learning guitar and we were building our own banjos back around 2002. We even learned to play Snider's song D.B. Cooper about the famed hijacker who disappeared with $200,000 in 1971 and has never been found. Todd Snider has a great ear for tales of every day life and turns them into quirky songs which he performs with tremendous verve.

Down Where the Drunkards Roll - Richard & Linda Thompson - I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight

The second song in that set was Down Where the Drunkards Roll, from Richard & Linda Thompson’s 1974 debut album I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight. It seems almost redundant to talk about how great both of these performers are or what a masterpiece they created at their first go, and what masterpieces both have continued to create after they went their separate ways. 

Instead we want to say this: Those wonderful solos that feature some stringed instrument being played with a slide are not being played by Richard Thompson on a guitar, but by fellow Fairport Convention bandmate Simon Nichol on an Appalachian dulcimer. It’s a wonderful instrument that can do far more than we sometimes give it credit for.

I Saw a Man at the Close of Day - Jeni & Billy - Longing for Heaven 

We started off that set of songs with Jeni & Billy singing I Saw A Man at the Close of Day. You can find it on their CD Longing for Heaven. Jeni first heard that song on Dry Branch Fire Squad’s album, Hand Hewn, which has to be one of my favorite bluegrass-mountain music albums of all time.

Ron Thomason, lead singer for Dry Branch, comes from the next town over from Richlands, Virginia, where Jeni and Greg were born – a town called Honaker. Hearing his voice always makes me think of home.

I Saw A Man at the Close of Day is a very old song that goes back to the days when a person would drink their liquor from a golden bowl. The lyrics have changed in the hands of many singers from Grayson and Whittier to Doc Watson, but the warning remains the same.

Moonshine

There’s a bit of irony in the fact that This edition of the Golden Biscuit Hour is about drinking. After all, Jeni’s a teetotaler. And Greg has reached that age when every annual visit to my physician subtracts another item from his list of vices. Drinking bit the dust about five years ago. And Greg fears he is rapidly running out of vices, so he bought a concertina and a melodeon a year or two ago, just trying to keep ahead of the doctor.

But here’s the thing: Jeni counts moonshiners amongst her ancestors on both sides of the family — and we’re talking recent ancestors. One of her great uncle’s moonshine stills is featured in a history museum near Tazewell, Virginia. Greg will admit to having tried making a bit of ‘shine myself, when I was in the sixth or seventh grade. Though he got nothing from that experiment but a second degree burn, he did craft some mighty fine home-brewed ale a few decades later.

So here are some songs in honor of our moonshining heritage.

Moonshine

1. Moonshiner - Redbird - Redbird
2. Home Brew Rag - Ron Kane & Skip Gorman - Powder River
3. Copperhead Road - Steve Earle - Copperhead Road
4. Oxycodone - Jeni & Billy - Jewell Ridge Coal

Oxycodone - Jeni & Billy - Jewell Ridge Coal

That was Oxycodone, a song that Jeni & Billy wrote just before finishing up Jewell Ridge Coal in the spring of 2008. Greg sent them a link to a Washington Post article by Nick Miroff called “A Dark Addiction,” which told about the opening of a methadone clinic in our native Tazewell County in Southwest Virginia. Addicts on oxycodone, many of whom were miners, could come to the clinic for a daily dose of methadone, in order to escape their addiction and get their lives back in order. There was a great uproar from the local community, but others whose lives had been upended by oxycodone, saw the clinic as a chance to begin again.

People from Southwest Virginia have written to Jeni about this song more than any other. And we were all were really relieved that Nick Miroff, who wrote the article, liked it, too, and felt liked we’d captured the spirit of what he wrote.

Copperhead Road - Steve Earle - Copperhead Road

Before Oxycodone, we heard Steve Earle’s Copperhead Road from the album of the same name. It takes us from the moonshining days to today, where you are more likely to find a field of marijuana growing up some Appalachian holler than a copper still in the woods. Helicopters have replaced horses as the trusty steed of the revenuers (or the DEA) looking for someone’s stash. It’s not uncommon to hear a helicopter go over Mawmaw’s house once in a while.

And where there aren’t fields of marijuana, there are tractor trailer containers buried underground fitted with meth labs. Ever since people started settling the Appalachians, there have always been a few folks who have come there because it is hidden, remote, and hard for the law to keep track of what people are up to.

Home Brew Rag - Ron Kane & Skip Gorman - Powder River

Before Steve Earle’s Copperhead Road — one of Greg's all-time favorites — we heard Home Brew Rag from an album called Powder River, a 1977 recording by Ron Kane & Skip Gorman.  Both are veterans of the Deseret String Band, a Utah-based old-time band that began in 1972 and persisted through plentiful changes in personnel until at least 2002. Kane & Gorman still play gigs together in both the US and Europe.

Home brew, as the lyrics suggest, is a creature of the American experiment with prohibition, a thirteen year ban on the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages which resulted in many creative, do-it-yourself approaches. Some of the country’s brewers, finding their product suddenly outlawed, turned to the production of barley malt syrup. A can or two of that diluted with water and combined with yeast in an old churn produced an elixir that fueled many house party in the 1920s.

Moonshiner - Redbird - Redbird

We began that set with a version of Moonshiner, from Redbird’s eponymous CD. The trio brings together three singer-songwriters who more often perform as solo artists: Jeffrey Foucault, Kris Delmhorst, and Peter Mulvey. The song is a cover of Bob Dylan’s version of Moonshiner. The Clancy Brothers — and before them, the Irish singer Delia Murphy — recorded a song called Moonshiner that shares many of the lyrics, but is a decidedly upbeat drinking song. This version is more somber, more world-weary. 

The current consensus at the Biscuit Hour is that Dylan invented that somber tune himself, but we have little basis for that conclusion beyond our own intuition. If you, gentle listener, have additional information on this point, we’d love to hear about it. You can find our contact information on the website at goldenbiscuithour.com.

Speaking of Bob Dylan, our resident Dylan scholar, Mr. Music himself, Billy Kemp, is off riding the range this month, rounding up song for the new Jeni & Billy CD Heart of the Mountain. But he took a quick break to send along three song from The Country Side of Folk.

The Country Side of Folk

1. Swinging Doors - Merle Haggard - HAG: The Hits Volume 2
2. I Like Beer - Tom T. Hall - 20th Century Masters
3. Up on Cripple Creek - The Band - The Band

The Band wrapped up that set with Up on Cripple Creek, from their 1969 album The Band. They were preceded by the beer-loving Tom T. Hall, with I Like Beer.

And we started that set with the unmistakeable Merle Haggard, dealing with a breakup by setting up housekeeping behind Swinging Doors.

If you’re living in a bar, you might as well start the morning off right — with a little Whisky for Breakfast.

Instrumentals

1. Whisky for Breakfast - Fiddler Dave Tweedie - Cecil Train Heads West
2. The Drunken Hiccups - Tommy Jarrell - Sail Away Ladies
3. Peter’s Pub/Pull Me Another Pint - Moirai - Sideways

Peter’s Pub/Pull Me Another Pint - Moirai - Sideways

That was Moirai with a medley of Peter’s Pub and Pull Me Another Pint. Moirai is a new British trio that combines fiddle, melodeon, and saxophone (along with other wind instruments).

They are just out with a fine new CD of songs and tunes called Sideways and a new schedule of gigs.

The Drunken Hiccups - Tommy Jarrell - Sail Away Ladies

Before Peter’s Pub, we heard Tommy Jarrell doing the Drunken Hiccups from the album Sail Away Ladies. We love that he talks about the different names that folks have called the song. We've often been tickled when we’ve heard folks argue about the title of one fiddle tune or another, because it’s pretty plain that the names of fiddle tunes are about as slippery as the names of quilt blocks – one quilt pattern can have dozens of names depending on the part of the country where it was sewn, where seamstress was born, or what magazine might have published it as something new altogether, though it had been around for fifty or a hundred years. Fiddle tunes are much the same.

Tommy Jarrell, who was born in Surry County, North Carolina, is one of the most influential among the masters of the old-time, clawhammer style of banjo playing which has been called Round Peak in recent years. He was a man whose house and kitchen were open to many folk musicians who wanted to take up residence on his couch for days or weeks at a time and drink from the fountain of his knowledge about old tunes and songs. He was a fine singer as well as a player and, though he worked construction most of his life, his legacy is his music, for which he won a National Heritage Award in 1982.

Whisky for Breakfast - Fiddler Dave Tweedie - Cecil Train Heads West

We started that set with one of Greg's favorite traditional tunes — Whisky for Breakfast — and my very favorite arrangement of that tune, featuring Fiddler Dave Tweedie and the wonderful clawhammer playing of Bob Zentz.

Fiddler Dave is a regular band member of Molasses Creek, a bluegrass band that makes its home on Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It turns out that Fiddler Dave is a graduate of Davidson College, a very fine, very small North Carolina liberal arts college that Jeni & Greg both attended, as did Jeni’s sister Sarah.

Whisky for Breakfast is from Fiddler Dave’s solo album, called Cecil Train Heads West.

Banjo is only one of the nearly 50 instruments Bob Zentz plays. For many years, he ran a mecca for fans of traditional acoustic music in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia called Ramblin' Conrad’s Guitar Shop & Folklore Center.  

The Wages of Sin #3

1. Whiskey is the Life of Man - Bellowhead - Matachin 
2. Dunkard’s Lantern - Jones & Leva - Journey Home 
3. Drunkard’s Path - Jeni & Billy - Sweet Song Coming Round 
4. Song of the Drinking Man’s Wife - Nancy Kerr & James Fagan - Starry Gazy Pie

Song of the Drinking Man’s Wife - Nancy Kerr & James Fagan - Starry Gazy Pie

You’re listening to the Golden Biscuit Hour. I’m Greg Hankins, and That was Nancy Kerr & James Fagan doing Song of a Drinking Man’s Wife from their album Starry Gazy Pie. Kerr is the 2015 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards "Folk Singer of the Year.” Fagan, originally from Australia, is Kerr’s husband. They won “Best Duo” in BBC Radio 2’s Folk Awards in both 2003 and 2011. Both Kerr and Fagan perform and record, individually and together, with a variety of groups.

Song of a Drinking Man’s wife was written by Alastair Hulett, a Scotsman whose career as a folksinger blossomed in the 1990s in Australia and the UK.

Drunkard’s Path - Jeni & Billy - Sweet Song Coming Round - Jeni

Before Nancy Kerr & James Fagan, we heard a song that Jeni & Billy wrote from the name of a curvy wayward quilt pattern called Drunkard’s Path.

They wrote that song near Austin, Texas, when we were attending the SXSW conference. Billy woke up in the night in the Airstream with the tune in his head, went out to the Jeep, so as not to disturb Jeni, and wrote it down. In the morning, she asked him to play me his new tune, and in it she heard the story of the Drunkard’s Path.

When Jeni thinks about kids, and herself as a kid, she thinks there’s a time in every kid’s life, maybe several times, where an adult or some other kid tries to explain to them or warn them what the word “Drunkard” means. And what a strange thing that is, but part of our human existence since the dawn of time. So, this song tries to capture that experience of children. Drunkard’s Path is available on our Live Double CD, Sweet Song Coming ‘Round.

Drunkard’s Lantern - Jones & Leva - Journey Home

Before Drunkard’s Path, we heard Carol Elizabeth Jones & James Leva sing “Drunkard’s Lantern" from their record Journey Home. Carol Elizabeth Jones is one of the Biscuit Hour's favorite traditional singers, who also does a great job at writing original songs from the tradition.

Early on, she collaborated with her husband, James Leva, and, after they parted ways, she made a marvelous record called Girl From Jericho with Dobro player, Laurel Bliss. You’ll be hearing songs from that record on future installments of the Golden Biscuit Hour.

We didn’t turn up any historical precedent for the metaphor of the Drunkard’s Lantern, so we can only conjecture that it was invented by Jones & Leva. Inventing powerful metaphors that harken to older times is part of what writing songs in the tradition is all about, and Jones & Leva have done wonderful work here.

Whiskey is the Life of Man - Bellowhead - Matachin 

We started that set with a traditional sea shanty — Whisky is the Life of Man — given an up-tempo makeover by the British band Bellowhead on their CD Matachin. “Whisky-o, Johnny-o, rise it up from down below. Up aloft this yard must go. Rise him up from down below.” You can just see the sailors hoisting the yard arm, heavy with a full sheet of sail, hopeful of a ration of grog once the task was done.

Greg particularly likes the verse in which the shantyman sings “A glass of grog for every man, and a bottle full for the shantyman.” After all, musicians should be well paid, you know! Some versions that allocate a barrel full to the shantyman.

We're am all for musician’s being paid! We’ll toast to that. But let’s hope that when they are paid in beer, it’s full strength and not watered down. Here’s a song from John Roberts & Tony Barrand about The Man that Waters the Workers’ Beer.

Prohibition is a failure

1. The Man that Waters the Workers’ Beer - John Roberts & Tony Barrand - Live at Holsteins
2. John Law Burned Down the Liquor Store - Chris Thomas King - The Roots
3. Prohibition is a Failure - The New Lost City Ramblers - The New Lost City Ramblers 

Prohibition is a Failure - The New Lost City Ramblers - The New Lost City Ramblers 

This is Greg Hankins, and you’re listening to the Golden Biscuit Hour. That was The New Lost City Ramblers with “Prohibition is a Failure.” Like Wagon Yard, which we heard earlier, that’s another number originally recorded by Lowe Stokes in the 1920s. The New Lost City Ramblers —  Mike Seeger, John Cohen, and Tom Paley — got together in 1958 and played a critical role in bringing to light songs, like this one, originally recorded on 78 RPM records. They hewed very close to the originals in their arrangements, and influenced the musical direction of younger folks in the American folk revival, including Bob Dylan and even the Grateful Dead.

John Law Burned Down the Liquor Store - Chris Thomas King - The Roots

Before the Ramblers, we heard Chris Thomas King doing his song John Law Burned Down the Liquor store from his CD The Roots.

In the film O Brother Where Art Thou, King played the part of a crackerjack blues guitar player who claims to have sold his soul to the devil to acquire his skill. In “John Law” the New Orleans-based King tells a story familiar to any moonshiner: the sheriff turns a blind eye until the bribe money runs low. Then the judge turns a blind eye for the promise of a regular supply of good 'shine. 

The Man that Waters the Workers’ Beer - John Roberts & Tony Barrand - Live at Holsteins

The first song in that set was another sung by John Roberts, who we heard earlier in the show with Debra Cowan. This song called “The Man Who Waters the Worker’s Beer,” is from the album Live at Holsteins and showcases the longtime collaboration between Roberts and fellow Brit, Tony Barrand.

Both Roberts and Barrand grew up in Britain, but met in the USA in 1968 when they were psychology students at Cornell. They have been performing traditional music together ever since. Roberts recently had surgery which will keep him from performing until summer or fall, so his duo partner Debra Cowan is donating a significant portion of the sale of their record, Ballads, Long, and Short, to help with medical costs. Follow this link to order the CD from Debra and help John Roberts get back on his feet.

Well this has been fun It looks like next month, we’ve chosen Death as our theme because, as T.S. Eliot said, "April is the cruelest month.” But, before we turn our thoughts to such somber matters, lets listen to The Clancy Brothers offer a traditional farewell with The Parting Glass from the album Irish Drinking Songs.

The Parting Glass - The Clancy Brothers - Irish Drinking Songs

The Golden Biscuit Hour is produced by Jeni Hankins & Greg Hankins. It’s edited, mixed, and mastered by Billy Kemp.

We use Evernote to keep our cloudcast notes in order, because "an elephant never forgets."

We use Dropbox for our record collection, to trade big files, and to keep them organized, because when Mom says the attic is full, Dropbox is there for you.

We record the Golden Biscuit Hour on our handy Zoom H2 portable recorders, because you never know where the music might take you.

Our Golden Biscuit Hour theme song was written and is performed by Jeni & Billy and our end credit theme song – “Greg & Marcy’s Song” – was written and composed by Billy Kemp.

And remember, if you have a song in your pocket, take it out and let it shine.

Songs of Courtship — February 2016

Songs of Courtship is the theme for the February 2016 episode of The Golden Biscuit Hour. Your hosts are Jeni Hankins, coming to you from Hudson, Florida, and Greg Hankins, coming to you from Mount Gilead, North Carolina. 

We started the show with I Am Aglow, from Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah Harmer. Harmer was nominated for a Juno Award for writing that song, and the album on which it appeared — I’m a Mountain — was nominated as Best Album. 

Not only is Harmer an accomplished songwriter, she’s an accomplished environmental activist, having successfully campaigned against gravel mining on the Niagra Escarpment, helping protect wilderness areas along the 560 mile Bruce Trail — which she and her band hiked, playing gigs in towns along the way.

 After I Am Aglow, we heard The Bonnie Gateshead Lass from Bob Fox and Stu Luckley. It's on their album Box of Gold. 

Fox, who handles the lead vocal on that track, hails from the Northeast of England, where both the natives and the dialect are called "Geordie." Fox's partnership with Stu Luckley produced two acclaimed albums, the first of which, Nowt So Good’ll Pass, was voted Folk Album of the Year.

Fox has had a storied career, including teaming up with Benny Graham for a wonderful album of coal mining songs called How’re You Off for Coals? He’s performed as the Song Man in the National Theatre’s production of Warhorse, and has just released a new CD that I desperately want to get my hands on called The Pitmen Poets, a quartet that includes Fox, Benny Graham, Billy Mitchell and Jez Lowe. 

And we followed The Bonnie Gateshead Lass with Archie Fisher’s The Flower of France & England, from his album Will Ye Gang, Love. Fisher was born in Glasgow into a family full of musicians.

His sisters Ray and Cilla both had successful careers during the folk revival. Cilla eventually moved away from folk music and became one half of the Singing Kettle, a long-running Scottish children’s show. Archie hosted the BBC Scotland radio show Travelling Folk for 27 years.

We then turned to a song about courting in the Land Down Under: The Free Selector’s Daughter from Gerry Hallom’s album Undiscovered Australia II.

Hallom is an English folk singer whose career began in the 1970s in Australia. He moved back to England in 1979 and toured in both the US and Canada before returning to school and ultimately becoming a lecturer in sociology.

Before it was a song, The Free Selector’s Daughter was a poem, written in 1891 by Henry Lawson, one of Australia’s most famous poets — famous to the degree that he was given a state funeral when he died and was featured on the Australian ten dollar bill and a postage stamp.

We then heard from Carthy Hardy Farrell Young, a collaboration of four British fiddlers: Eliza Carthy, Bella Hardy, Lucy Farrell, and Kate Young. Their CD Laylam was released in 2013, and the foursome were a featured ensemble on the UK festival circuit after its release.

Lead vocals on Chickens in the Garden were handled by Eliza Carthy, the daughter of two stalwarts of the folk scene: Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson. The Watersons recorded Chickens in the Garden for their 1975 album Four Pence and Spicy Ale. Legend has it that they heard the song at a shepherd’s meet in the Lake District in 1974. Beyond that, its origins are unknown.

Aberdeen, a touching remembrance of a relationship that didn’t quite happen, can be found on Kirsty McGee’s beautiful album Contraband.

McGee is a hugely talented singer-songwriter from Manchester who seems to thrive on collaborations with other artists and performs in ensembles ranging from a duo to a ten-piece orchestra. Her latest record is called Those Old Demons.

Botched Courtship

So far, we’ve heard some reasonably happy songs of courtship, but, alas, things do not always go so well — especially when the person you are pursuing is not much interested in you!

Recording Lulu Wall in Nashville

That would be the case with Lulu Wall, which we heard from Jeni & Billy. Jeni learned Lulu Wall from a Carter Family recording and taught it to Billy.

That version came from the original 2007 Nashville Jewell Ridge Coal recording session at Oceanway Studios with Grammy-winning producer, Bil VornDick. Most of those recordings were archived when Jeni & Billy took the album in a direction more focused on songs about Jewell Ridge.

LuLu Wall will be the song of the month on Mawmaw’s Golden Biscuit Club on Patreon. So, if you would like to be able to download that rare track for your Jeni & Billy collection, you can join up.

After Lulu Wall, we heard Courting too Slow from Spiers & Boden's album Bellow. They are, without question, Greg's favorite interpreters of traditional British songs. The duo includes Jon Boden on fiddle and lead vocals, with John Spiers on anglo concertina or melodeon (which is what the British call a diatonic button accordion). In addition to touring as a duo, the pair created the folk orchestra Bellowhead. Both the Duo and the orchestra, alas, are disbanding.

Spiers & Boden borrowed Courting Too Slow from the great Peter Bellamy, a seminal figure in the English Folk Revival of the 1960s. It appears on his album Fair Annie. Bellamy found the lyric on an antique broadside — a single sheet printed on cheap paper sold in the streets of British towns and cities for a penny or two. Broadsides were commonplace in the 16th and 17th centuries and often contained a song lyric, a wood cut illustration, and a bit of news or gossip. The broadsides contained lyrics, but not tunes. Bellamy himself composed the tune for Courting Too Slow.

That set included two Jeni & Billy recordings, Lulu Wall and their version of Henry Lee, which can only be found on a little EP called Pretty Fair Miss. They created the lyric by listening to several versions of the song, including Peggy Seeger’s and Dick Justice’s from Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music.

They added an extra verse at the end that turns the bird into the storyteller — which always makes Jeni smile. she always liked animals that talked in Children’s books, like the characters created by Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit or Arnold Lobel’s Frog & Toad. Actually, the news is that there is a new Beatrix Potter story coming out soon called Kitty in Boots and illustrated by renowned British Illustrator Quentin Blake.

Jeni & Billy recorded Henry Lee, the Scotland Man in a borrowed cabin in Western North Carolina and made a video of the unusual recording process. They actually sang into a couple of large metal food cans taped together.

The final song in that set was The Ace, by North Carolina’s own Red Clay Ramblers. The Ramblers have been around since 1972, with an ever-shifting cast of characters, not only making records and playing concerts, but mounting theatrical productions with the likes of Sam Shepherd and the Carolina Opera.

The Ace, released in 1978 on the seminal Ramblers recording Merchants Lunch, was written by founding members Mike Craver and Tommy Thompson. Thompson is no longer with us, but Craver is still performing — though not as a part of the Red Clay Ramblers.

Ironically, he and another founding member, Jim Watson, currently perform around the state with Joe Newberry and Bill Hicks as Craver, Hicks, Watson, Newberry, and sometimes as just the “Ramblers,” without the Red Clay. Back in November, they were featured on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion.

Interference

One thing two lovers can count on is interference from one direction or another. Here are some songs on that very theme, beginning with Kathy & Carol singing A Maid in Bedlam from the album Keepsake by a duo from the west coast of the USA, Kathy & Carol.

Kathy & Carol made a record in 1965, but then went their separate ways, Kathy becoming a visual artist and Carol becoming a performer who played with folk icons like Mimi Farina. Carol has also been a guitar teacher in the San Francisco Bay area for several decades. In 2010, they reunited as a musical duo to record Keepsake and they play from time to time mainly in the Bay area. Jeni & Billy had a chance to see them in 2010 and fell in love with their harmonies right away.

A Maid in Bedlam was followed by Nic Jones’ version of The Drowned Lovers. It’s found on his album Penguin Eggs, the crowning achievement of a not quite twenty year career cut short in 1982 by a tragic auto accident that left Jones unable to perform. He returned for some brief appearances in 2012. Penguin Eggs is an unbelievably good album that has served as a starting point and roadmap for generations of young would-be folk singers and guitarists since its release in 1980. If you don’t have a copy, you should. 

The Drowned Lovers, also known as Clyde’s Water, is Child Ballad 216. All of Child's traditional sources of the ballad were found Scotland, as of course, is the River Clyde.

Jones’ arrangement, with its clacky melodeon accompaniment, is a bouncy, happy thing, but the story itself is a fairly devastating tale of parental interference on both sides of the relationship of poor Willie and May Margaret. As Martin Carthy, who also recorded the song, put it: "Clyde's Water is an astonishing song of iron parental control. There is no question of the iron fist being encased in a velvet glove—the glove too is made of iron. I don't think I have ever heard a song so relentless."

Annachie Gordon, one of the saddest ballads in folk music, comes to us from the great Irish singer Sinead O’Connor. This recording comes not from a Sinead O’Connor record, but from Sharon Shannon, an Irish fiddler and accordionist, whose 1991 album, Sharon Shannon, still stands as the best selling record of all time in Ireland. Shannon collaborates with several notable singers on the album Libertango where we found this song.

Annachie Gordon is one of the Child Ballads, number 239, and has been sung by everyone from Lorenna McKennitt to Nic Jones to the Unthanks. But this performance is our absolute favorite.

Here's the great Mary Black singing Annachie Gordon -- an interpretation that may be the source of Sinead's version.

Bob Davenport sang Edmund in the Lowlands on Melodeon player Simon Ritchie’s album Squeezebox Schizophrenia. Davenport is another veteran of the 60s folk revival; he performed at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963 at the invitation of Pete Seeger. He hails from the Northeast of England — “My Northeast is Durham and Northumberland,” he told a newspaper reporter.

He performed for forty years with a four-piece traditional band called The Rakes. It’s great stuff.

Doubt & Warnings

Courting is often fraught with doubt and warnings. Here’s another duo, Jess & Richard Arrowsmith, to get us started on some songs about being wary of and worried about love, with their version of Single Girl’s Lament from their CD Customs & Exercise.

The Arrowsmiths hail from Sheffield in South Yorkshire. Jess plays fiddle, Richard plays melodeon, and both sing. They have two delightful children’s albums out, and perform with Nancy Kerr and James Fagan as the Melrose Quartet and with the Ceilidh band Hekety. That’s Nancy Kerr singing harmony vocals on Single Girl’s Lament. The Arrowsmiths have gigs lined up March through May, so check their website.

The Arrowsmiths were followed by Julie Henigan of Missouri, a folksinger, songwriter, player of banjo, guitar, fiddle, and dulcimer, who holds a Masters in folklore from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and and PhD in English Literature from the University of Notre Dame. Henigan’s work has focused traditional Irish and Southern American music, and her lone album, American Stranger, has her singing in both English and Gaelic.

Henigan told Greg that she learned Blue-Eyed Boy from her friend Anne MacFie, a Kentucky-based traditional singers, who had in turn learned it directly from Lily May Ledford, founder of the Coon Creek Girls,  who we will hear later this hour.

After Blue-Eyed Boy, you heard ballad singer Elizabeth LaPrelle singing Wagoner’s Lad. Elizabeth comes from Rural Retreat in the Southwest Virginia just over the mountain from where Jeni & Greg were born. We love to hear her sing because her voice takes us back home.

Billy and Jeni met up with Elizabeth and her duo partner, Anna, at the Orwell Bluegrass Festival in Britain last May. This recording comes from one of Elizabeth's solo records — which are very fine listening — but she and Anna also have a new record, simply called Anna & Elizabeth, on Free Dirt records. Wagoner’s Lad is one of the songs that Jeni learned to sing with North Carolina ballad singer Sheila Kay Adams. Elizabeth also spent time singing with Sheila Kay, but certainly has a style all her own.

The Wagoner’s Lad was collected in 1908 by Olive Dame Campbell, who worked with Cecil Sharpe to collect songs in the Appalachians. Beyond her songcatching, Campbell established the John C Campbell Folk School in 1925 in Southwestern North Carolina. Jeni studied clawhammer banjo and autoharp at the Folk School and made a Trip Around the World Quilt there, too. It’s a magical place where you can learn everything from cooking in an open hearth to making a dulcimer.

We ended that set with Young Men are False from Pilgrim’s Way, found on their 2011 album Wayside Courtesies. It was a brilliant inaugural effort by the foursome fronted by fiddler and vocalist Lucy Wright. Edwin Beasant, Tom Kitching, and Jon Loomes round out the group.

Wright recently completed a PhD in ethnomusicology, specialising in Northern Carnival traditions and costumes. The band was nominated for a BBC Radio 2 Young Folk award in 2012. They don’t appear to have been touring much lately, but that may be about to change. A new CD called Red Diesel is expected in mid March. That is one Greg plans to acquire right away.

The Country Side of Folk with Billy Kemp

Billy chose three of his favorite "heart” songs for this month’s edition of The Country Side of Folk, staring with Chuck Berry's 1964 recording of Nadine.

The song was recorded in Chicago at Chess Records and Chuck brings the rock and the roll together. When you listen to the recording it sounds like there were a number of musicians, a drummer, a bassist, a pianist, a couple of guitars, and some horn fills. Berry's style of rock-n-roll featured the simultaneous rhythms of straight eighths and swing eighths, with the rock represented by the straight and the roll by the swing.

The singer goes through different modes of transportation to "catch" the girl, Nadine. He starts on a bus, next on foot pushing his way through a crowd,  and then finally in a yellow taxi. His countryish sliding guitar intro starts the record off and we follow his pursuit of Nadine for four verses.

Probably the most famous story about courting and interference is William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and one of Billy's favorite recordings from Dire Straits was their Romeo and Juliet from the album Making Movies recorded in 1980.

The song includes one of Billy's favorite Mark Knopfler lines: "all I do is kiss you through the bars of a rhyme.” And the riff he plays finger style  on his National Resophonic is one of those riffs you want to hear over and over. You can hear Mark Knopfler talk about the guitar lick in Romeo and Juliet here.

Before that we heard Roger Miller's Reincarnation recorded for his second studio album, The Return of Roger Miller recorded in 1964. One of the singles released from that record, King of the Road, became a huge crossover top ten hit.

Reincarnation  finds the singer so in love with the girl that he imagines if he was a bird and she was a fish, that they'd have to hope to come back as a boy and a girl through reincarnation. This was the middle of the sixties and eastern religion was finding new followers in the US and obviously Miller, the consummate funny man, was taking it seriously.

Billy got to perform two shows with Roger Miller in the mid-1980s when he was touring with country singer, Terri Gibbs. The first time was in Santa Anna, California at the Crazy Horse and Roger performed solo, just him and his guitar. The second time was at the Hunter Mountain Music Festival in New York where he had an ensemble of musicians with him that included a guitarist Billy knew from Washington D.C. named Danny Gatton.

Tragic Romance

We’ve come to that part of romance and courting where things seem to go sideways — and what better song to begin than Tragic Romance sung by Tim & Mollie O’Brien. Tim has just finished up a tour in Britain. 

His version of Tragic Romance comes from the album Away out on the Mountain. This song of tragic misperception has been recorded by a whole host of folks. Among the earliest were Hank Snow, Cowboy Coppas, the Stanley Brothers, and Grandpa Jones.

Jones is often credited with writing the tune, but it may actually have been written by Zeke and Wiley Morris — the Morris Brothers — from Old Fort, North Carolina. Together and separately with other bands, the brothers played on radio shows all over the Carolinas in the 1930s, before they retired from the music scene to open an auto repair business.

Second in that group of songs, we played Snow Dove by Jake and Sarah Owen from their very hard to find lone recording called Jake & Sarah Owen. Jeni & Greg saw Sarah and Jake at Merlefest back in 2002 and fell in love with them right away. Jake played a gourd banjo that he had made and Sarah talked about how she was no brilliant player of banjo, but when she picked up the fiddle, everything came together for her musically.

With several children to raise, Jake and Sarah are not on the touring scene as much as fans like us would like. But we are consoled by their gorgeous record which you can still find used on Amazon and here and there. Snow Dove is their version of the familiar song which is also known as the Butcher’s Boy or The Railroad Boy. It’s right up there with Annachie Gordon as one of the most tragic songs in folk music. It also inspired Jeni's song The Hoot Owl which is an Appalachian re-interpretation of that tale. Hearing Jake and Sarah Owen was one of the events that inspired Jeni to become a songwriter and performer.

Snow Dove was followed by Omie Wise, sung by Tim Eriksen, one of our best American ballad singers, who also happens to play a zillion instruments. It's from his CD Northern Roots.

Billy and Jeni met Tim when they worked on the Help Me to Sing project with bluegrass artist Jim Lauderdale. Help Me to Sing is a collection of Sacred Harp Songs interpreted by contemporary artists.

Tim leads quite a lot of Sacred Harp “Sings” and he’s also an ethnomusicologist who consulted on the music in the movie Cold Mountain. Tim has toured Britain many times and, last year, he collaborated with the rather famous British fiddler and singer Eliza Carthy, who we heard from earlier in the show, on a record called Bottle. 

Susie, Lily Mae, & Rosie Ledford

Pretty Polly was performed by the Coon Creek Girls from the album Lilly Mae, Rosie & Susie. The Girls were an old-time string band created for radio — for the Renfro Valley Barn Dance on WLW-AM in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The personnel of the band changed from time to time, but it was built around banjo player Lily May Ledford, from Pilot, Kentucky and her sister Rosie. They played barn dances with their Brother Cayen until a talent scout recruited Lily May to appear on WLS-Chicago’s Barn Dance. She eventually became a regular, until a producer reunited the sisters and moved the group to Cincinnati, where they performed for fifteen years.

More Tragic Romance

The list of tragic romance songs is rather long so we did another group just in case there are folks out there who need warnings about poisonings and such.

Carter & Ralph Stanley

We started with Little Glass of Wine, by the Stanley Brothers. You can find it on the Complete Columbia Collection. Ralph and Carter Stanley were born just a county away from Jeni & Greg in the Southwest part of Virginia.

We love to hear them sing because we can hear the vocal inflections of Jeni's great grandmother, Narcie Smith, and the people of the Friendly Chapel Church in their voices. Ralph Stanley is a primitive Baptist and as such he travels to different host churches each Sunday. One of those churches is way at the end of Smith Ridge, where Jeni & Greg both grew up. Ralph Stanley lives on a different Smith Ridge in Dickenson County near Clintwood. Not only does he have a superb museum there in Clintwood, but he also has a festival on his Smith Ridge, the Ralph Stanley Memorial Festival, during the last weekend of May every year. 

Julie Henigan

After the Stanley Brothers, we heard Julie Henigan's John Randolph, a variant of Child Number 12, Lord Randall, that Cecil Sharp collected in Virginia.

The young man in question has been poisoned by his sweetheart, though, if you’re not listening carefully, you might miss that fact in this version. Most variants foreshadow the death of the young man by dispatching his hawks and hounds in a early verse, often noting that they have shared his supper of eels. But all the variants collected in Virginia, whether by Sharp or others, omit those verses.

In this one, we only discover the young man has been poisoned when, in the last verse, we hear that he would will to his sweetheart a cup of strong poison.

This seems like an appropriate time to bring up the fact that, although we didn't mention in the show, Greg loves eels, both as a fascinating creature with a strange and somewhat mysterious life history, and as an ingredient in sushi. He has not, however, tried eel soup with vinegar. He has, in fact, read Richard Schweid's wonderful book Consider the Eel, and suggests that you do the same.

Henigan told Greg that she learned John Randolph while still in high school, after her English professor father gave her a paperback with selections from the Sharp collection, a testimony to the value of fathers. She sang the song in English folk clubs while living and doing research in that country.

We then heard the unmistakeable Martin Simpson with the tragic tale of Little Musgrave, whose visit to church turned out poorly for both he and his fair lady. Its found on Simpson’s 2007 release Prodigal Son.

Simpson released his first album in the mid 1970s, lived in the US for a decade or two, and has been nominated nine times as Artist of the Year in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, having won that honor twice. Last year saw the much praised release of Murmurs, his collaboration with Andy Cutting and Nancy Kerr, which is highly recommended by the Biscuit Hour.

Here is Simpson doing a solo version of Bright Swift and Dark Swallow from that album.

Thanks!

Thanks so much for joining us this month on the Golden Biscuit Hour. Next month, we’ll be bringing you the songs of the drinking because that’s pretty much what people are apt to do when they’ve been cooped up in the winter months so long!

Here’s a song Jeni & Billy wrote called The Mystery of You and Me to send you on your way. Jeni's lyric was inspired by one of the great novels about courting, Emma, by Jane Austen. Great friend and fiddler, Craig Eastman, plays a solo that sounds just like Emma running down the steps to greet her true love, Mr Knightley. And here's a stop motion animation video that Jeni made for that song! Enjoy!

Credits

The Golden Biscuit Hour is produced by Jeni Hankins & Greg Hankins. It’s edited, mixed, and mastered by Billy Kemp.

We use Evernote to keep our cloudcast notes in order, because "an elephant never forgets."

We use Dropbox for our record collection, to trade big files, and to keep them organized, because when Mom says the attic is full, Dropbox is there for you.

We record the Golden Biscuit Hour on our handy Zoom H2 portable recorders, because you never know where the music might take you.

Our Golden Biscuit Hour theme song was written and is performed by Jeni & Billy and our end credit theme song – Greg & Marcy’s Song – was written and composed by Billy Kemp.

And remember, if you have a song in your pocket, take it out and let it shine.