A generous helping of new folk song recordings this month on the regular roundup from the Tracks we say “hmm…this is more folk than Americana, isn’t it?” In the end you, dear reader, as ever are the final judge.
We start with a song that we’re pretty confident we can recognise as Bluegrass, as Missy Raines & Allegheny sing of their communal desire to not end up in ‘Yanceyville Jail‘ and if they can run as fast as the speed of the playing they should have a reasonable chance of making a clean get away. It’s taken from the recently released album “Love & Trouble” on Compass Records and is inspired by truth, as Missy Raines explains: “At a bluegrass festival in the 70’s, I was in the audience when the promoter, Carlton Haney, came out on stage to address the crowd. In his very thick North Carolina accent, Carlton said, ‘Now I know that you folks are looking forward to hearing Jimmy Martin tonight. But you’re not gonna hear Jimmy sing tonight cause Jimmy’s gonna spend the night in the Yanceyville jail.’ I was a kid but I was old enough to know this wasn’t a good day in the life of a storied entertainer. So I decided to write a song to tell a version of what might have been going through Jimmy Martin’s head that day.”
Naturally the next thing we should do is offer up a song that definitely isn’t Bluegrass, and that is exactly the kind of music Cabin Fever insist that they do not play. The Ontario folk band released their debut EP “It’s Only Forever” in May, and ‘Devil Is A Friend’ is taken from that – and yes, it does draw inspiration from the Grateful Dead song. Cabin Fever is a trio of Kyle Faulkner on guitar and vocals, Jessica McKay on upright bass and vocals, and Colin Jolly on mandolin. Kyle explains that in the song “I tried to put myself in the shoes of a character who uses the chorus, ‘devil is a friend of the working man,’ as a kind of mantra. This character’s past life just kind of poured out onto the page. When my mother is in the audience, I especially feel compelled to assure the audience that the opening line—‘when I was a boy my momma left home’—is pure fiction.” We believe you.
But, perhaps what you’re looking for is something a little more ethereal and haunting, with perhaps a dash of Irish folk thrown in for good measure? In which case it sounds like ‘Ground Above You‘ from Lōwli (the solo project of Roisin Lowry) would be a good fit. Lōwli says of the song: “‘Ground Above You’ explores feeling lost in your sense of self while struggling to find purpose and understanding in an often unsettling and disjointed world,” although to be honest the thought did occur that if the ground is above you then you’re…underground…maybe six feet. Something to think on.
Mark Fry has many years of music behind him – his debut album, the acid-folk benchmark ‘Dreaming With Alice’, recorded in Rome in 1972. After a hiatus of almost four decades, in which Fry focused primarily on painting, he began recording again, with a critically acclaimed 2011 collaboration with The A. Lords, ‘I Lived In Trees‘, and a further album inspired by the life of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, ‘South Wind, Clear Sky‘, both released on Second Language. In 2025 he has released ‘Not On The Radar‘ from which the slow and intimate ‘Daybreak‘ – a meditation on hgeartbreak and sorrow – is taken.
One thing that is a great thing to do in any genre music is to create something which remains timeless, and can be revisited endlessly without losing meaning. The classic example in (relatively) modern times would be Slade’s ‘Mama Weer All Crazee Now‘…no, sorry, we meant ‘Merry Xmas Everybody‘, although, you know, maybe either. Which is by way of introducing Joe Wilkes‘ version of ‘Hard Times Of Old England‘ with that opening refrain “Come working people who travel along / And pray come tell me where the work it has gone / Long time have I travelled and never found none” sounds as true today as it did in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars which is where the song can be traced back to.
This recording comes from the upcoming new album from Joe Wilkes which, umm, we don’t yet know the title of.
And as ever there’s just room for a classic song. Noting that later this year (September 20th to be exact) there’s a celebration of the music of the Incredible String Band at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, how about something memorable by the ISB? Although, since Robin won’t be taking part maybe we should go instead for something from the memorable solo career of Robin Williamson? ‘The Dancing of the Lord of Weir‘ is from one of his finest solo releases, ‘Myrhh‘, and manages to convincingly convey a non-human viewpoint, as the Faerie folk show their contempt for a transgressing human.
