saw Folk ies young and old at the Blue Olive Friday night, May21, 2010
Lots of musicians from Miker Bigger to Jessica Rhaye . With wonderful folk era sets by Bill Preeper/Sandy MacKay , Heckman and Downes and Denis Legere and his playing partner….if someone caught his name. let me know. the evening finishing with the rock era Dylan hits by the Brent Mason Band.Sandy MacKay of artslink NB and Bill Preeper of CBC Saint John.
Gerry’s new job!!! Waiting on people at the Blue Olive!!! Great night.
Below Rob Ward, potter and Frank Hand retired wonder-kind and guitar player and singer
handsome men across the table
…now where did our server go?
.
the last member of our group…enjoying the music,
which was a little loud for my old ears…but terrific just the same.
Enjoying Bill and Sandy!
After supper, with my take home lunch for tomorrow!
A picture on a CD, from Moncton, ten years ago I would have been sure was trick photography!
It’s a picture of New Brunswick’s veteran king of the bluegrass fiddle, Eddy Poirier, sitting across a circular table from a leading senior folk and Irish music interpreter, Bernie Houlahan, little tea cups raised. Eddy, on the left, a saucer in front of him and Bernie,on the right, an orange and black cat perched. Between them is a teapot….a Brown Betty, no less…objects I would never have associated with either.
Yet, I must admit years ago, whenever I’d meet Eddy at a festival he’s always invite me to: “Come over to my camper and have a cup of tea, We need to talk.”
Funny thing it never was tea. But it was served in mugs. Mugs! Not dainty little china cups!
Here’s another rub, too! They even named this album of six instrumental Irish fiddling tracks… each a medley of two tunes…and six Irish songs The Cup Of Tea- Irish Traditional Music.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise though. Eddy and Bernie have been getting together for years and have played the odd Moncton venue together. And each has always had a great admiration for the other’s musical talents. The surprise should have been that it took so long!
I have listened all night long to Eddy’s fiddle and banjo around campfires at early NB festivals that his Bluegrass 4 staged on the old Shediac Road! And on more nights until near daylight listening to Bernie sing dozens of songs from the inexhaustible repertoire he’s filed in memory during a lifetime dedicated to learning all the beautiful songs and melodies, he’d find, through ceaseless searching.
They’re two of my favourite musicians and people. But, so different in the perception of many who know them. Both driven, however, by the same unquenchable thirst to learn both old or new-to-them music and perform it for audiences in an effort to give such discoveries a deserved new life, the appreciation such treasures deserve!
‘Two veterans of the Maritime music scene,’ this CD’s back notes read, ‘have collaborated on a collection of their favourite Irish music. Although they’ve pursued somewhat different musical paths they’ve always enjoyed getting together to ‘play a few tunes’ around a kitchen table or to appear together in public performance.’
Well, in their words, “ it’s nothing fancy”, but to most of us who have known them since the 1970s this CD is a treasure. A wealth of Irish fiddle tunes…12 on six tracks… with six of the loveliest, and perhaps most enduring, Irish ballads thrown in to sweeten the pot… brew, that is!
The fiddle tunes played by Eddy, Bernie’s guitar backing him, include: Toss The Feathers, Woman of the House, Cup Of Tea (the title theme), Tarbolton Lodge, Home Ruler, Cross The Fence, Jackson’s Morning Brush, Tongs By The Fire, Cooley’s Reel, The Wise Maid, The Peeler’s Jacket and Love At The Endings.
Eddy Poirier has been featured on nearly a hundred albums…lps, cassettes, CDs and, I think, maybe an 8-track or two, over at least four decades. Many of those were as one of the Blue Diamonds during the decade that that quartet of singing musicians were Toronto’s leading country club band. Then he did a few with Smiley Bates, and with his wife Rose and Smiley. Then back home with various alliances of top NB performers called The Bluegrass 4, a number of solo recordings and an unknown number with performers Moncton to Toronto he’s backed at recording sessions in those years.
I first met Bernie Houlahan when he joined our Saint John Folk club in the late 1970’s.. By then he had belonged to several Moncton music groups and during at least one bluegrass flirtation was part of an alliance that brought in such legendary acts as Flatts & Scruggs, Mac Wiseman and others. At that time he was hosting a weekly Moncton radio folk music show that had a long run of nearly 18 years. And Bernie was a part of the Hal ‘n Tow folk trio, from the early 1980s until this past September, with composer, multi-instrumentalist James Stewart and the late, lamented great musican and vocalist John Murphy. For the last twenty he has been a member of the Miramichi’s Comhaltas Irish Chapter, too,
Some of the most treasured evenings of my life have been listening to Bernie and Portland, Maine’s Kendall Morse taking turns dredging up old songs from memory and performing them thrillingly downstairs at a club in Belfast, Maine during folk gatherings yearly .
On The Cup of Tea Bernie sings: The Blarney Roses, Welcome Paddy Home, Lord of the Dance, Bridget Flynn, Galway City and Far Away In Australia.
This great CD was recorded at E.J.P. Studio in Moncton, mi
xed and mastered by Eddy Poirier. For copies, phone Bernie at (506) 389-2042 or Eddy at (506) 384-8655.
Yuri Gagarin, Oh Yuri Gagarin/ He rode into the sky/
On a pillar of fire/And he gave us his name/
In a story that will never die/ This young Russia pilot/
Who did what no man had done.
Can you imagine any US songwriter being brave enough to write and record a song like that as the States was just emerging from the dark shadow of McCarthyism? The 1950’s inquisition into perceived un-American activities that had driven such entertainment immortals as Paul Robeson and Charlie Chaplin from it’s shores.
Well, Utah Phillips, who left this world greatly bereft in his 73rd year, on May 23, 2008 did! Bruce, his given name, has been a music hero of mine since the day in the mid 1960’s I discovered his Prestige International lp with that song on it. A hero, not only for that song, but for all the beautifully poetic songs he composed, as well as courageous ones he continued to write, since that first album, right up until his death.
Somewhat as a balm for the grief of his passing, Canada Post left me a Righteous Babe Records treasure trove in our mail box the first week of January: a belated Christmas present arranged by my wife, Carol.
It’s a 2 CD Tribute To Utah Phillips entitled Singing Through The Hard Times that embodies 39 songs, 29 of them written by Utah. Of the other ten, one is a rare Robert Service gem,Michael,I’d never heard or even read before, three are traditional songs and six were written by singer/songwriters with close ties to Utah. This, to my ear, incomparable set is the best of the five nominees in the Best Traditional Folk Album category for a Grammy at the 2010 Awards being telecast by CBS on January 31.
The Prestige International disc Nobody Knows Me was recorded when he was calling himself U. Utah Phillips because as he told me once “Back in those days I was a country and western singer and there was this guy recording in Nashville, T. Texas Tyler, so I thought, since I was living in Salt Lake City again, after a three-year army hitch in Korea, I’d call myself U.Utah Phillips. Why not?”
Nobody Knows Me is an album of 16 songs so rare it’s not even listed in his Wikipedia bio. I have a copy autographed by Utah at our first meeting, a concert of his in Portland, Maine over 20 years ago.
I was with Kendall Morse, a gifted Maine folk singer and story-teller, at that concert. He, his wife Jacqui and Dan Schatz are the producers of this monumental 2-CD set. And those three are among the 38 fabled folk singers, instrumentalists and groups featured, one selection each, on the two CD set. Some like Kendall are among those that have come up to regular summer weekend folk gatherings in NB for three decades.
On this set Kendall sings one of the more poignantly beautiful songs Utah wrote, Phoebe Snow; his wife Jacqui The Miner’s Lullaby; Gordon Bok the classic Goodnight Loving Trail; Kat Logan, who beguiled breakfasters at an impromptu Kingston Farmers Market concert four Augusts ago, his exquisite Faded Roses of December; Will Brown, Cindy Kallet and Grey Larsen render Going Away; Ed Trickett (part of a trio with Ann Mayo Muir and Gordon Bok for 30 years) sings The Telling Takes Me Home; the beautiful voice of Lisa Null is heard on All About Preachers and Caroline Paton’s (she with husband Sandy founded Folk Legacy Records) interprets the song , Singing In The Country, that Utah’s family and friends sang as he was lowered into his Nevada City, California grave, May 29, 2008; Harry Tufts sings the haunting She’ll Never Be Mine.
Utah Phillips was a long time member of the Industrial Workers Of The World (IWW or Wobblies). A spiritual heir of Woody Guthrie and Joe Hill. He wrote, along with his much loved eloquent anthems and ballads, such incendiary broadsides as All Used Up sung on this tribute set by another of my favourites, John McCutcheon who, himself, wrote the unforgetable masterpiece Christmas In The Trenches. John’s oft-times touring companion, Si Kahn sings John Brill’s Dump The Bosses Off Our Backs.
The most incredible paring on this unbelievable set of recordings is Emmylou Harris, one of Nashville’s most honoured singers joining her voice with the Irish Republic’s most celebrated traditional and contemporary song interpreter Mary Black, in a ethereal rendition of Utah’s Green Rolling Hills of West Virginia. In Ireland,Black has been officially proclaimed one of the most important vocalists of her generation.
Saul Broudy sings Utah’s classic, oft recorded Starlight On The Rails; Larry Penn sings T-Bone Slim’s The Popular Wobbly; Utah’s Room For The Poor is sung by Cathy Fink (who with Canadian Duck Donald was once a headliner act on the international bluegrass circuit); a traditional ballad, Ruben’s Train, is sung by Kristin Morris, Sparky and Rhonda Rucker and East Rattler perform Utah’s Patty Come Back; Faith Petric, a wonderful oldtime songstress sings her friend Utah’s If I Could Be The Rain; Dan Schatz sings Utah’s oft recorded Queen Of The Rails; Judy Cook, his inspiring Kid’s Deliberation and Pete Seeger a song of his Utah was fond of, Or Else! (One Of These Days); a close friend of Utah’s for over 50 years Rosalie Sorrels, a prolific recording artist, sings his The Soldiers Return, a song inspired by seeing Panmonjan, Korea, in ruins.
Folk music icon Tom Paxton sings Utah’s very moving I Remember Loving You (Back When The World Was New); Elizabeth LaPrelle sings Jessie’s Corrido, a song Utah wrote with Sorrels; old-time folk legend Dakota Dave Hull sings Utah’s Old Buddy, Goodnight; Bruce Brackney Utah’s Hood River, Roll On; Mick Lane a traditional ballad, Halleleujah! I’m A Bum,; Ani DiFranco, who became a collaborator of Utah’s in the last decade and a half of his life (she’s appearing at The Playhouse in Fredericton next Wednesday) leads a quartet of musicians in The Internationale; Jay Peterson performs Utah’s Daddy What’s A Train?, Ottawa folk act The Finest Kind led by Ian Robb interprets He Comes Like The Rain; Mark Ross sings Utah’s Look For Me In Bute; Jean Ritchie sings Old George’s Square, a song Utah identified with: he was one of 19 in his Korean unit who received Dear John Letters; Emma’s Revolution sings Utah’s Hymn Song; and another whose records I treasure, Art Thieme, sings The Hobo’s Last Ride; Taylor Whiteside sings Rock, Salt and Nails. And just about everyone on the two disc set join in on the title song, Singing Through The Hard Times, it’s biggest production number,
The song that most intrigued me, however, is one I hadn’t heard before, Larimer Street, written by Utah, sung by Rik Palieri, just the right voice to interpret the sardonic humour of a wrecking ball clearing away the dwellings of the poor to create yet another parking lot and demolishing a betting parlour, so as to put up a stock market investment facility.
All profits from this 2-CD set, originally intended as a fund-raiser to help Utah with mounting medical bills will now go to his family. And, if you are a lover of real folk music this absolutely essential 2 CD set, A Tribute To Utah Phillips, is available by visiting www.rightousbabe.com
2010 Producers of "Singing Through The Hard Times" CD
TWO MEETINGS WITH UTAH
The evening in Portland that I first met Utah, I’d arrived just at concert time so I was making my way to a washroom at intermission when I passed Utah in conversation with a fan. I heard him say “I’m looking for the words to a song Wilf Carter wrote “I BoughtA Rock For A Rocky Mountain Girl”. I stopped and said, “Wilf didn’t write it, Red River Dave McInery did. He was a friend of Wilf’s in the 30’s in New York. Dave didn’t have a record contract at the time so he let Wilf record it.” On the way back they were still conversing and Utah said “Another song I’m looking for is The Hobo’s Lullabye that Wilf Carter wrote.” I stopped and said “No, Wilf didn’t write that one either, Gobel Reeves did.” Utah said, “Who the hell are you anyway?” I told him I was a record collector from New Brunswick.
Seven years later Utah was appearing at the Left Bank Cafe in Blue Hill, Maine, so Carol and I went down to hear him. He was sitting across the room from us, I noticed, with another couple, as we were being seated. We had just picked up our menus when Carol said, “He’s coming over.” I looked up as he stopped by our table, “You’re that record collector from New Brunswick, I was hoping I’d find you again someday,” he said. It was more of a statement than a question. What a memory he had for faces! In conversations with him then, at intermission and afterwards I agreed to put all of Wilf Carter’s and Gobel Reeves’ hobo songs on tape for him. I did and he sent me back two of his albums, Legends of Folk and The Moscow Hold I didn’t have.
Sometime toward the end of the past millennium I had a letter from Red House Records saying that one of their roster, Utah Phillips was appearing in concert at a college on the Maine coast, could I give it some publicity in NB? Well, I phoned the college intending to reserve tickets, as well as inquire about details, but they had no notice of such a concert. I phoned his home in California: “He’s on the east coast,” his wife said, “but I don’t know where all he has concerts booked.” I phoned Red House and was told, “He’s supposed to be there on such and such a date.” I phoned the college back and asked for someone in administration. “Oh, yes,” I was informed this time, “He’s here then but it isn’t a concert. He’s addressing our graduating class. Utah’s our convocation speaker. ”
So the opportunity to talk with Utah again, my last opportunity as it has turned out, went down the tubes. No one will ever hear that eloquent voice again…except on recordings, of course.
Looking back at the year 2009, it seems New Brunswick, the southern half particular, was more bereaved by deaths in our musical community than in most recent years. Among those were:
John with Anna singing at home in Hampton
JOHN DOUGLAS JAMES MURPHY
In September 1975, John Murphy who had immigrated from England a year before, with his wife Pip (Susan), visited The Telegraph-Journal offices. He had just accepted a position as an art teacher in the Saint John area. He wanted to insert a notice of a meeting to form a folk club, such as he’d belonged to in London.
John, as it turned out played guitar and button accordion and had a very distinctive voice. Along with others who had a love of folk music I became a regular. At first it was sing a-rounds but in a few months John decided some were gifted enough to stage concerts. Admission monies raised were pooled, used later to book local name artists for special concerts, Ned Landry, Lutia and Paul Lauzon, Jim Clark and others were early featured stars.These were successful enough that in a couple of years the club was booking such famous acts as Ladies Choice Bluegrass, Stan Rogers, the National String Band, even international acts like Gordon Bok.
Bok, a Camden, Maine, musician and singer was Folk Legacy Records mainstay with over a dozen albums released in the US. A twice yearly link-up was forged between his close-knit group of Belfast to Rockland, Maine performers and our Saint John Folk Club. Out of our club a quartet, Hal an Tow emerged that became the trio of John, Bernie Houlihan and Jim Stewart. They won acclaim here and abroad with a recording, the Marco Polo Suite, for which Jim wrote the score and lyrics. The trio, also, appeared on The National Film Board’s Marco Polo: The Queen of The Seas
Another trio to emerge from our ranks was Dawg’s Breakfast (a.k.a. Exploding Do-Nuts)…Stan Carew, Costas Halavracos and Bill Preeper…all CBC Radio staffers. Preeper and Steve Sellars, a duo, were featured on an ATV New Faces episode, as were Valerie MacDonald, who staged monthly Hampton coffee-houses, and Debbie Harrity. Another trio, Windjammer…Paul McCavour, Kevin Daye and Gayle Vincent (Katie Daye when Gayle dropped out,)…emerged and a Fredericton folk club was a spin-off.
In the mid-1980’s the Saint John Folk Club ceased to exist but remnants continued to interact with the Maine folk-scene.
John Murphy became active in school mural art projects and in school musicals. He also appeared in various local stage productions, involved himself with various local fund-raisers, became active with Amnesty International, visited Africa and helped bring about Hampton’s partnership with the Swaziland community of Piggs Peak.
He died very unexpectedly while driving into Saint John Regional Hospital in mid-September. Those of us who attended a three-day music gathering at his home only weeks before, received the news with utter disbelief. To all appearances John had been his usual imperturbable self, He is already sadly missed not only in Hampton, his home for over 30 years, but beyond. Many from Maine and England attended his Sept. 21 funeral.
A colourful and remarkably detailed mural entitled Article 26: The Right To Education, unveiled Dec 10, 2009 on the Hampton High School exterior has John’s picture at the top with other NB human right luminaries, symbols and visages, depicted across its wide expanse.
JOHN ‘EARL’ MCGINNIS
Canada Day 2009 brought sad news: John, known to most as Earl, McGinnis had died the day before at home in Norton. He was 89 but was one of those people who seem eternal. For over 30 years Earl coached the Norton Kings hockey team and was a die-hard Montreal Canadiens fan. Many of us, however, loved him for his vast repertoire of old Irish ballads, a treasure shared with his brother Willie who predeceased him. Together and individually they were hits at early variety shows in Norton, Hampton and Sussex. Austin, one of his sons, has led a country music dance band in that area for many years. Earl and his wife of 63 years, Beatrice, had two sons and three daughters. Austin’s son Darren, one of Earl’s 12 grandchildren, is now a rising young Canadian country singer with a manager and booker. In recent years Earl frequently joined Austin and Darren to perform on country shows as Three Generations of McGinnises. But for a few of us our most cherished memories of Earl were of him singing The Croppy Boy and other Irish songs at Randy Vail’s maple sugar, pancake nights on Bull Moose Hill. Although his passing left a gap Earl will live on in the memories of all who knew him.
HELEN GRACE SMITH
Another major loss occurred Aug.31 with Helen Smith’s death. She was 88, a petite woman but full of energy and spirit who once at 16, while still with chicken pox, walked five miles across Kennebecasis River ice, Summerville to Drury Cove, to play with Don Messer at a 1937 Saint John concert. Although only four-foot six, never more than 70 pounds and a widow, she had lived in her own Long Reach, Kingston Peninsula home until a week before her death when she moved to Kings Way Care Centre, Quispamsis. Friends described her as ‘comical, the life of the party and someone drawn to music like a magnet.’ She played ukelele first then guitar. Later she studied fiddle with Winston Crawford and was a member of the Maritime Fiddle Association. Her son Fraser, a singing guitarist and daughter Sylvia Campbell, a yodeling singer, who plays guitar and fiddle, organize the Long Reach Kitchen Party concerts. Helen performed on one just before moving to Kings Way. It was the second 2009 Smith family tragedy: Fraser’s son, Evan, 23, died in a snowmobile accident Feb.28.
ALLIE B. PRATT
Allie Pratt, is another that is impossible to imagine gone, even though she was 84, I had talked with her at a Tom Connors concert just weeks before her death Oct.1. She had invited Carol and I to her next Allie Oop music weekend, a gathering of musicians and fans at her home in Lower Greenwich. They were events that often saw over 300 show up to camp and enjoy barbeques, meals and music. Allie played several instruments and only two weeks before had received a standing ovation at the Grand Bay KBM. She was a CWAC staff car driver in WW 2. At the time of her 1972 retirement she had served 38 years as operator/supervisor with NBTel. I met Allie at the early Valley Jamborees which she often video-taped. We had been her guests at dinner theatres and restaurants
ROBERT ‘BOB’ CRAWFORD
Well-known, multi-instrumentalist, Bob Crawford, passed away at his Sussex home on Dec.22with his wife Helen, sons Shaun and Christopher, brothers Winston, Frank and Richard there to mourn. I first met Bob at a Saint John fiddling competition: he was his brother Winston’s guitar accompanist a role he reprised just months later when Winston won a Maritime Fiddling Championship in Dartmouth. A bout with polio when he was four resulted in Bob walking with a limp but he never let it slow him down. He was energetic and resourceful in both his daytime employments and the music which fueled his zest for life. Bob enjoyed playing with numerous musical friends in duos, trios or multiple bands but especially as part of the Crawford Brothers & Friends and with his sons. Over the years he taught many to various instruments. He was just 61 when he died, after a six month battle with cancer.
A.G. Olmstead Closes ANE with Memories of Jimmy Rodgers
[from August 2008]
Remember Peach Pickin’ Time In Georgia? In The Jailhouse Now? Keep On The Sunnyside? California Zephyr? Or Gonna Sing, Sing, Sing?
If you love the songs of Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family and Hank Williams, Sr. then you’ll revel in the Atlantic National Exhibition’s Closing Concert by A.G. Olmstead & His Old Time String Band tomorrow night, Aug 31, 8 to 10 p.m., on their Building One main stage.
Hailed as a new Jimmie Rodgers on CBC Radio One interviews and concert segments and by leading Nashville session players, who thrilled A.G. when several volunteered to back him on a debut CD a year ago.
“I grew up knowing most of the older artists’ repertoires,” A.G. told me early this spring, “especially Jimmie Rodgers’ because Dad played his records almost every night. Jimmie was his favourite singer and I guess he just naturally became mine, too.”
And, although Jimmie was born in Mississippi and A.G. (Adam to his friends) far north of the Mason-Dixon line in our Maritimes, with St Stephen now his home base, he does sound a lot like the ‘father of country music.’ Even the songs A.G. writes have a Rodgersesque feeling that is nostalgic. Songs about trains, tragedies, drinking and home that he’ll mix with old favourites in concert!
And, although A.G. never railroaded as Jimmie did, he’s has worked blue collar jobs, built logging and construction roads, rambled and lived in many of the same parts of the US that Rodgers did.
At 15, A.G. left NB for a US school with a music curriculum, after graduating, busked for three years in New York where Rodgers was formally signed by RCA, then spent three years playing California clubs, then a three year residency in Texas which was Jimmie’s favourite state and where he lived during his years of great fame. Then travels in Europe, followed by a tour of our Canadian west, a year back home writing and refocusing. Then two years in Nashville, playing clubs, haunting recording label offices, sitting in on jams and backstage parties, getting to know a lot of musicians, some very famous, although he didn’t realize that at the time. Then a recording session at O’Banyon’s Terrace Studio, and a CD of a dozen songs that he’d penned, produced by Alan O’Bryant and recorded, mixed and mastered by Tim Roberts, two prestigious names.
And, amazingly, one of the Nashville based musicians who backed A.G. on that recording, Chris Henry, is making the trip up to play mandolin with A.G.’s band Friday! Chris’s high energy vocals and blistering mandolin solos bring audiences to their feet every where! And Toronto’s Foggy Hogtown Boys fiddler John Showman, a 2004 Juno nominee is joining them: On upright bass there’s Sam Petite who plays with two renowned Toronto string bands. And on banjo NB’s multi-instrumentalist and 2005 ECMA nominee, Al Scott.
Stompin’ Tom said hello and congratulations to Ned Landry on receiving the Order of New Brunswick this year to go with his Order of Canada from a few years ago. He also mentioned that he was sad to hear that George Hector had passed away and between songs told the story of how he met Big John “T-Bone” Little and the encouragement he received from Big John when he was starting out.
Sandy MacKay of artslink NB and Bill Preeper of CBC Saint John.
Below Rob Ward, potter and Frank Hand retired wonder-kind and guitar player and singer
handsome men across the table
