New Dangerfield “Put No Walls Around Your Garden” – set no limits

New Dangerfield are a string band consisting of Jake Blount, Tray Wellington, Nelson Williams and Kaia Kater, who co-wrote ‘Put No Walls Around Your Garden‘ with Billy Keane.  It a song that mixes elements of “old timey” string band with folk and more modern Americana elements to produce a song that seems like a centuries old composition which has sprung magically from the ground.  It’s good.

It’s a song with a timeless theme – wealth inequality and the greedy guarding of scarce resources, themes that are as relevant now as in any time of inflation, food insecurity, and profiteering.  Says Kaia Kater: “I wrote ‘Put No Walls Around Your Garden’ with Billy Keane, a wonderful songwriter from the Berkshires, during a 2023 retreat at The House of Songs in the Ozark Mountains. We used the allegory of a farmer and their seasonal crop yield as a commentary on resource hoarding and climate change. I brought the song to the band and we arranged it for a stringband context, while also inserting a bridge/breakdown meant to illustrate the urgency of the message. Playing and singing the twin banjo and vocal melody makes this song so fitting for stringband music in a new context, and I find it’s a bit of an earworm!

 

About Jonathan Aird 2857 Articles
Sure, I could climb high in a tree, or go to Skye on my holiday. I could be happy. All I really want is the excitement of first hearing The Byrds, the amazement of decades of Dylan's music, or the thrill of seeing a band like The Long Ryders live. That's not much to ask, is it?
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

1 Comment
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Alistair

Very nice!