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.

The New Year - January 2016

Golden Biscuit Hour – The New Year – January 2016 by Jeni & Billy on Mixcloud

Hello Everybody!

Welcome to the first official episode of the Golden Biscuit Radio Hour.

I'm Jeni Hankins, your host, from the Appalachian folk duo Jeni and Billy. My co-host — and my Dad — is Greg Hankins, the guy who played guitar and sang Puff the Magic Dragon for me when I was a kid.

We want to use this first two-hour edition to fill you in on what you can expect from the Golden Biscuit Hour.  Mostly, you can expect some really great music from English-Language folk artists spanning the globe and spanning the decades. We'll be playing original and traditional music from brand new artists and from the legends of folk. Plus, we hope to bring you plenty of artists under the radar who we think you’ll love.  Every show will have a theme: courting, murderers, labor, ghosts, sailors.

We hope you will help us select some themes for future shows — and tell us about artists whose music we need to play. Just email us with your suggestions and recommendations.

Every show will be accompanied by a blog post like this one — basically an expanded version of what Dad and I said during the show, supplemented with photos, videos, additional information about the artists, and links that will also you to purchase their music. 

The best way to buy music, of course, is directly from the artist, but sometimes their tour schedule doesn't include your town. Most of our links will take you to Amazon. If you click on one of our links and then buy that CD within the next few days, Amazon will reward The Golden Biscuit Hour with four percent of the purchase price out of Amazon's share, not the artist's.

Fine Sally

One of the things we really enjoy is comparing different versions of the same song or songs that are related – maybe they share a floating verse or a title. For us, that’s one of the magical aspects of the folk tradition — listening to different artists put their unique interpretation on traditional songs.

Since Dad lives in Mount Gilead, North Carolina, we’ll kick off the Golden Biscuit Hour with a song from one of my favorite ballad singers, Cas Wallin, from up in Madison County in Western North Carolina. This recording  is from the Smithsonian Folkways disc Old Love Songs & Ballads from Big Laurel, North Carolina, recorded by Peter Gotte & John Cohen and released in 1964. Here’s Cas Wallin singing Fine Sally.

Fine Sally - Cas Wallin - Songs & Ballads from Big Laurel, North Carolina

Fine Sally - Bellowhead - Revival

We followed up Cas Wallin’s version of Fine Sally with a very different arrangement from Bellowhead, a band that has revolutionized English folk music over the past decade — and that, sadly, has announced their farewell tour.

Percussionist Pete Flood arranged this one, available on Bellowhead's recent Island Records release Revival. That's frontman Jon Boden on lead vocals, of course. An eleven piece folk band, with a horn section. For Dad, who grew up listening to Woody Guthrie at home while playing Chicago and Blood Sweat and Tears in jazz band, it just doesn't get much better.

When I was a kid we lugged Mom and Dad’s record collection – including Woody Guthrie and Blood Sweat and Tears – around a lot, since we moved many times. To me January is about starting a new adventure — and I think a lot of people feel that way – like it’s time to slough off the old skin and reinvent themselves.

New Year - New Adventure

Here are two great songs about striking out on a new path:

When First I Came to Caledonia - Fine Friday - Mowing the MacHair

Pretty Saro - Jeni & Billy - Unreleased

When First I Came to Caledonia

That version of When First I Came to Caledonia is sung by Kris Drever as part of the group Fine Friday, from their 2005 album Mowing the Machair.

Nuala Kennedy and Anna-Wendy Stevenson round out the trio. Nuala is a fine Irish singer and flute player with three solo recordings on Compass Records. Educated in Edinburgh, she draws on both Ireland and Scotland for her tunes. 

The fiddler Anna-Wendy Stevenson is a native of Edinburgh who has solo albums and is much in demand as a session musician.  She is a lecturer in traditional music at the Lews Castle college in Benbecula, Outer Hebrides. And she has taught at the Swannanoa Gathering in North Carolina and Ohio School of the arts in the USA.

Drever is a wonderful vocalist and has recorded solo projects, as well as joint efforts with Eamonn Coyne and John McCusker. His version of When First I Came to Caledonia hews closely to the lyric of perhaps the most famous version the song, sung by Norma Waterson on the 1994 Topic Records CD Waterson:Carthy, accompanied by Martin Carthy on guitar and Eliza Carthy on fiddle.

The Caledonia in question is not, in fact, Scotland, but rather the Caledonia coal mines in Glace Bay, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia — an industry that attracted a number of immigrants from Scotland. The Number 3 at which our immigrant protagonist first finds work is one of the coal pits. According to Martin Carthy "Norma learned When First I Came to Caledonia from the estimable collection called Songs and Stories of Deep Cove, Cape Breton [by Amby Thomas]. Caledonia is the name of a pit, number three seam. Scatarie is an island abandoned by people whose fishing has dried up and is still uninhabited today. Boularderie is the name of that part of the community where all the rich people live and whence comes the woman with whom the character in the song falls blazingly in love at first sight."

If you like the song, you might want to check out Martin Simpson’s version on his 2005 release Kind Letters, John Boden’s version (with duet concertina!) on His “Folk Song A Day" album or website for February 6. There’a a wonderful version by the late Scots guitarist Tony Cuffe on his album by the same name. You can find a video on YouTube of Cuffe performing the song with fiddler Ed Pearlman for a concert in Newburyport, Massachusetts in 1998. 

Chris Wood and Andy Cutting (on melodeon) have a version that we can only find on You Tube. 

Pretty Saro

The second selection you heard about starting out in a new place has a similar theme of an unrequited but unforgettable love: Pretty Saro. 

That audio was from an as-yet-unreleased live Jeni & Billy performance recorded at All Saints Church in Barwick-in-Elmet, England by Si McGrath of the band King Courgette. Jeni & Billy often share concerts with the Courgettes when they are on tour. Last summer (2015), McGrath approached us about working with him on his final portfolio for his Master of Recording Arts. McGrath lives in Barwick and arranged for us to record at All Saints. You can hear us performing the song on that same tour in a video by our dear friend and chief archivist in Britain, Peter Knipe, at Woodend Creative in Scarborough, Yorkshire, on June 27, 2015.

Pretty Saro has been covered by a huge number of people, but one of my favorite performances and the one that I learned from is Cas Wallin’s. We heard from Cas earlier in this edition the Golden Biscuit Hour and find his Pretty Saro on the same Folkways release as Fine Sally: Old Love Songs and Ballads. The Alan Lomax archive on YouTube includes a wonderful video of Wallin singing the song in 1982 on the front porch of the home of his sister-in-law, Dellie Chandler Norton, in Burton Cove, Sodom Laurel, Madison County, North Carolina. 

Pretty Saro was collected by a number of folksong enthusiasts in the early 1900s, included John Allen Lomax, who published the lyric in the July 1911 edition of The North Carolina Booklet, a publication of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Here’s the lyric published in 1911:

Pretty Sarah

When I came to this country, in 1829,

I saw many lovyers, but I didn't see mine.

I looked all around me and saw I was alone,

And me a poor stranger, a long way from home.

It's not this long journey I'm dreading to go,

Nor leaving my country, nor the debts that I owe.

There's nothing to pester, nor trouble my mind,

Like leaving pretty Sarah, my darling, behind.

My love, she won't have me, as I do understand,

She wants a freeholder, and I have no land.

But I can maintain her with silver and gold,

And it's many pretty fine things my love's house can hold.

I wish I was a poet, and could write a fine hand,

I'd write my love a letter that she could understand.

I'd send it by the waters when the water overflows,

I think of pretty Sarah wherever she goes.

I wish I was a dove, and had wings and could fly,

About my love's dwelling this night I'd draw nigh.

And in her lily white arms all night I would lay,

And watch some little window for the dawning of day.

As pretty Sarah, pretty Sarah, pretty Sarah, I know,

How much I love you, I never can show.

At the foot of old Coey, on the mountain's sad brow,

I used to love you dearly--and I don't hate you now.

Sarah Songs

Saro is often a nickname for Sarah, so how about a round of Sarah songs? Flatt & Scruggs will get us started:

My Saro Jane - Flatt & Scruggs - ’Tis Sweet To Be Remembered: The Essential Flatt & Scruggs

Rock About Saro Jane - Uncle Dave Macon - Go Long Mule - County Records

Sara - Bob Dylan - Desire - Columbia Records

The last song in that set was Sara, Bob Dylan’s homage to his former wife, from the 1976 release Desire. Sara & Bob Dylan were married in 1965; the marriage ended in 1977. She is the mother of four Dylan children, including the singer-songwriter Jakob Dylan. Many believe the songs on Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks reflect the tensions in their marriage.

Before that we heard Uncle Dave Macon do Rock About My Saro Jane from the CD Go Long Mule, and Flatt & Scruggs with My Saro Jane from “Tis Sweet to be Remembered: The Essential Flatt & Scruggs.

Those Sarah songs are in honor of my sister, Sarah Hankins, and actor, director, and teacher studying for her MFA in theatrical directing at the University of North Carolina - Greensboro. We’ve gotten to spend some time with Sarah over the Holidays, and, as always, it’s a party when Sarah Hankins is down on the farm.

Here’s an unreleased song that Billy and I wrote in West Baltimore. It’s one of the first songs we wrote together. Billy wrote the melody, and it made me think of actors backstage. I wrote the lyric in honor of my sister who has spent a lot of time performing Shakespeare.

Pretty Girls in a Line - Jeni & Billy - Unreleased

If you enjoyed that song, it will be the downloadable song of the month, this month at the Golden Biscuit Club, Jeni & Billy’s online Fan Club. You can sign up here. Each month we send an unreleased song along with a story out to our fans. Subscriptions start at $1 a month and go up from there. I'll even make you a quilt for a larger pledge. Check it out!

New Year’s Resolutions

The other thing that the new year reminds me of is New Year’s resolutions. And here’s a good one from a band I sorely miss, The Reeltime Travelers:

Ain’t a Gwine Drink A’ No More – The Reeltime Travelers – Livin’ Reeltime, Thinking’ Old-time

28th of January – Craig Eastman – Pepper Peg

Breaking up Christmas – Joe Newberry - Two Hands

8th of January – Sheila Kay Adams – All the Other Fine Things

That last number was was Sheila Kay Adams, a fiddler, banjo player, and ballad singer from Madison County, NC doing the fiddle tune Eighth of January, followed by Cumberland Gap, followed by the Eighth of January.

The sharp-eared amongst you might have noticed that the Eighth of January is the tune that Jimmy Driftwood elected to use for his song The Battle of New Orleans. Sheila Kay's version is found on her album All the Other Fine Things.

I had the great good pleasure of taking a ballad singing class with Sheila Kay a few years back. Here’s an older video of Sheila Kay doing a song that I learned from her: Little Margaret. 



Sheila was filmed in 1982 by Alan Lomax’s crew at the home of her great-aunt, Dellie Chandler Norton, on the same front porch on which Cas Wallin sang Pretty Saro. And here’s a 2014 video of her singing one of Dad’s favorites: The Farmer’s Cursed Wife.

Before that, we had Breaking Up Christmas from Joe Newberry's album Two Hands. Newberry grew up in Missouri, one of two cradles of old time music in America. And he moved to the other – North Carolina – as a young man. His fine clawhammer banjo playing has found him a berth in a number of fine bands, including Big Medicine and A Prairie Home Companion's Jumpsteady Boys.  

Here’s a profile of Newberry from “Our State,” a North Carolina magazine.  Newberry is an accomplished songwriter. Here’s a video of his Resurrection Day, performed on the stage of A Prairie Home companion, with Garrison Keillor and Heather Massey. 



Or, if you prefer a little old-time, here’s a rousing clawhammer number with Bruce Molsky on fiddle, Mike Compton on mandolin, and Tom T. Ball on Bass. 

And before that, we heard the 28th of January, performed by our good friend Craig Eastman. Here’s a video of Craig doing that number. You can get Craig Eastman's records by contacting him through his website. And you can also hear Craig as a treasured member of our Big Picnic Band on our records Picnic in the Sky and Live in LA with the Big Picnic Band. 

We started that set off with Reeltime Travelers, Doing Ain’t Gwine A Drink A No More from their album Living Reeltime, Thinking Old-Time. The band, which Dad and I saw at Merlefest in 2004, consisted of Brandon Story, Heidi Andrade, Martha Scanlan, Roy Andrade, and Thomas Sneed. They were part of the Down From the Mountain tour (which highlighted music from Oh Brother Where Art Thou), the Great High Mountain Tour, played the The Grand Ole Opry and performed on the soundtrack to the movie Cold Mountain. 

Here they are with a 2003 performance of Maybe the Last Time, a square dance with some lyrics lifted from Woody Guthrie. 



Alas, despite all that success, they disbanded in 2006. Roy Andrade and Thomas Sneed continue to perform with other artists as the New Reeltime Travellers. And Martha Scanlon — a gifted songwriter — has released three solo albums. Here are the Travellers doing her song Hallelujah. Heidi Andrade often plays with Ron Thomason.

The Country Side of Folk with Billy Kemp

When Jeni and Greg told me the theme for the first Golden Biscuit Hour show was on new beginnings in the new year, I had some immediate ideas. So following the advice of Allen Ginsberg who said, “first thought, best thought,” here are four songs starting with Bob Dylan’s New Morning from the 1970 album release of the same name. The song was written for a play called Scratch by poet Archibald MacLeish.

Bob Dylan -  New Morning – New Morning

Bobby Bare - Detroit City - The Essential Bobby Bare

Hank Snow - I’m Moving On - The Essential Hank Snow

Willie Nelson - Across the Borderline - Across the Borderline

That was Willie Nelson singing  Across The Borderline, from his 1993 album release of the same name. The song was  written by Ry Cooder, John Hiatt, and Jim Dickinson. Willie’s version is a remake of the Freddy Fender recording that was featured on the motion picture soundtrack for The Border.

Before that was a song written and recorded by Hank Snow, I’m Moving On, an irregular twelve-bar blues that stayed in the number one position on the country Billboard singles chart for 21 weeks and 44 weeks in the top ten in 1950. I love that line, "you were flying too high for my little old sky."  I played on the Grand Ole Opry for almost a year with country singer Jeanne Pruett back in 1985, and on my first night I stood in the wings back-stage waiting to go on and chatted with Hank — and what a gentleman he was.

And before that was Bobby Bare’s recording of Detroit City written by Danny Dill and Mel Tillis. It was Bare’s first top ten hit on the Billboard Country singles chart in 1963. It was produced by Chet Atkins. I just love that guitar lick on the intro where, supposedly, Chet turned the low E string tuning machine to find the right notes as it was being played.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this country side of folk. See ya next time on the Golden Biscuit Hour.

Further West Review

That was the opening song and title track of Further West, the newest record by duo Hungrytown – Rebecca Hall and Ken Anderson. 

This is a song and a record of highway travelers glimpsing a world zooming by them in all of its complexity, from the denizens under bridges to the beauty of a turnstile. As Hall writes, “Imperfect rhyme matters sometimes.” As a fan of slant rhymes, myself, I understand what she’s getting at. Life is not as simple as an inspirational poster or a Facebook meme. Simple slogans certainly have truth in them, but it’s difficult to bring all of life, like blood on someone’s hands, under that umbrella.

Hungrytown - Further West - Further West

As Hall asks when describing her lean street urchin in Hard Way to Learn, my favorite Hall composition, “Tell me how your bright ideal measures up to a life so real.” Far from standing on a soapbox, Hall admits her own limitations as a passenger seat observer when she admits, “No time to rest, we head further west for someplace I’ve got to be.” This is both literally true — because Hungrytown is on tour far more than they are home — but also because that is indeed the rhythm of America, to be on the move, busy with appointments. And it’s a global trend as we all become more interconnected via the web. It’s a trend that like Hall’s imperfect rhyme is somewhat unsettling and a thing we will all be reckoning with for days to come. “Flashing, is it danger, or just another town” a line from Highway Song seems to sum up our plight rather well.

The title track, Further West, is a perfect introduction to this record, which is full of characters living on the razor’s age. And the album, in fact, ends with Hall lamenting, “Life goes on from dream to dream, nothing but troubles in between.” The record itself is like a dream where many players drift in and out revealing both plain and cloaked messages, only to vanish upon waking. Just a few among the cast of characters we meet are a family making an ill-fated winter mountain crossing, a runaway, and the protagonist of Don’t You Let Me Down who seems to echo what we all want, at least one good person to be sturdy and reliable in an ever shifting world.

In keeping with the theme of the beleaguered wanderer, Hungrytown’s stunning cover of Woody Guthrie’s Pastures of Plenty throws the plight of migrant farm workers and farmers into high relief, so that they are not merely the anonymous subject of a depression era photograph, but a flesh and blood person doing what Hall describes as “Balancing each day upon a blade of light and shade.” With many years of international touring under her belt, armed with keen powers of perception and a tremendous amount of empathy, very little escapes Hall’s notice — including other journeymen. She acknowledges us, her listeners, as fellow travelers and friends when she and Anderson whisper to us in the song Static, “I know just how it feels to think you’ve lost whatever signal you once had.”

But among the troubles, Hall knows that beauty speaks to us too, and provides a gentle and vital respite when she gives us images like a “Flock of birds high over head . . . drifting softly down, as one by one they come to set their feet upon the ground.”

Anderson, who was at the helm in Hungrytown's studio, has a deep understanding of harmony and layering that he puts to use creating soundscapes which echo everything from Simon & Garfunkel and Fairport Convention to Neko Case and The Milk Carton Kids. But the sound combinations are particularly Anderson’s — whose brain seems to be full of these layers on a constant basis. He deftly played many of the instruments on the record, plus they had a few special guests step into the studio for the gorgeous string parts which Anderson wrote and arranged. He sings harmony in a way that delicately crosses and buoys Hall’s voice which is showcased in Pastures of Plenty. Just listen for little secret sound wonders of production conjured by Anderson like the sweet “la la la’s” at the end of Highway Song. Anderson’s box of musical treasures reveals these sound gifts to you on repeat listenings.

Hall’s voice rings clearly and she soars and dives with an incredible range. I was able to excerpt all of these lyrics without even consulting the liner notes, because she sings so clearly and Anderson’s full but sympathetic production never crowds out their voices. Hall writes with an aim to communicate and sings with an aim to broadcast that communication clearly and tunefully. While her voice is widely expressive from the strident warning of Don’t Cross that Mountain to the secret whisper of the song Static, you still can hear every word.

There were many times that my hair stood on end while listening to this record —and it wasn’t my first listen, but my umpteenth. Once, during this listen, I was brought to tears. And I think that comes of listening all the way through to an honest work without any distractions in a quiet room. Listening this way is a great gift you could give to yourself. I’ve also enjoyed this album thoroughly while driving down the highway or cleaning up my sewing room. There is no filter here between you and Hungrytown – it’s a plain speaking, but also lushly orchestrated record which is a combination that is so uniquely Hall and Anderson working together, both bringing their strengths to bear on their newest work. 

And work it is. When talking about artists like Hungrytown, I am talking about two working musicians, who make their own records, drive their own vehicle to gigs, set up their own sound, book their own shows, create their own posters, and do their own everything 98% of the time. (I think they mostly leave major car repairs to the experts.) This is quite a feat, but yet they manage to do all of this while also creating remarkable, unfussy art of the highest caliber. You know what would be great, is if you followed this link and bought this record.

After a busy holiday season and the start of the new year, it can all feel like a giant rush to get back on the horse and survey the land called “the year ahead.” But remember as Hall says in her song Sometime, "Halfway round the world they’ve flown, but now they’re coming down. We’ve all got to rest sometime." 

Hungrytown is on tour right now heading across America, go catch a show! Good luck out there, Hungrytown!

Here is “Static” from Further West.

Static - Hungrytown - Further West

Starting Out Fresh

You know, Dad, I am thinking about the New Year again and that makes me want to play some songs about people who trying to make a fresh start – a bit like the hobo who’s going to hang up his walking shoes in our song, If I Ever Get $10. I’ve always loved those characters. Let’s get started with Amber Cross’s Selma from her album You Can Come In.

Selma – Amber Cross - You Can Come In

John Prine – All the Best - The Missing Years

Another Train – Pete Morton - One Big Joke

The first song in that set was by Amber Cross, a great friend of mine and one of my favorite songwriters emerging from the folk and, in particular, the Western music scene today. She’s just wrapping up a new record and we can’t wait to get our hands on it. But you can’t go wrong with her record You Can Come In.

And in the middle of that trio, you heard John Prine, a writer whose songs have probably influenced me more than any other songwriter’s songs have, because Dad sang so many of his songs to me when I was a kid. I really hope we can go up and have a chat with him when we play Merlefest in April.

We ended that set with Pete Morton’s Another Train, reassuring us that, no matter how bleak things look, there is always a new beginning to be had. A powerful version of that song recorded a cappella by the Poozies has made it a standard among university a cappella ensembles. 




If you’re in a mood to shed a tear or two, you can search for Another Train on You Tube and find some touching renditions. It's a great honor for a songwriter when one of their songs becomes a part of the larger musical conversation.

Thinking about Amber Cross's CD You Can Come In, I think coming in is going to be on the mind of a lot of people in the new year – whether they can come in, whether they’ll be welcome in countries across the world when their country is broken by war, and when they are afraid for their lives and for the lives of their families.

Cisco Houston - Deportee - Cisco Houston Sings the Songs of Woody Guthrie

Steve Deasy - People Were Once Welcome Here – People Once Were Welcome Here

Nerissa & Katryna Nield - Jesus was a Refugee - Unreleased

That was Nerissa & Katryna Nield, two of our favorite songwriters and performers, doing a brand new song, Jesus Was a Refugee. They recorded this song on the spur of the moment on their computer — and we’re tickled to be able to share it with you.

Before that, we heard Steve Deasy telling it like it is, with People Once Were Welcome Here.

And we opened that set with the great Cisco Houston, doing Woody Guthrie’s song Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos). Woody wrote that song after reading a newspaper article about the wreck of a plane carrying deported migrant workers back to Mexico. The crash was reported, but not the names to the victims. As Woody wrote, “they were just deportees."

Well, folks, we are just about out of time. Billy is going to be editing and putting this show together until next January if we don’t wrap things up.

We encourage you to leave a comment right here, or on Mixcloud, Facebook, or Twitter letting us know what you thought of our cloudcast and which songs you enjoyed. We’ll be back in February with songs of courting.

Sweet Song Comin’ ‘Round – Jeni & Billy – Live in LA

Credits

The Golden Biscuit Hour is produced by Jeni Hankins & Greg Hankins. It is 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 music might take you.

None of these companies sponsor us. We just like their stuff.

Our theme song was written by and is performed by Jeni & Billy and our end credit theme 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.