Fine-grained songs from a craftsman’s hands.
“Folk songs transmit history and stories, serve as a means of personal and collective expression and entertainment. Through their narrative, they connect generations.”
AI proved useful when asked for the purpose of folk songs. Are appropriate italics and punctuation needed when quoting AI? Without artificial intelligence, you’d still have the consummate Tim Grimm to supply meaning. “Bones of Trees” is Grimm’s 13th album, and it is a beautifully crafted collection of personal, historical and political songs.
The album’s title is taken from the mysterious imagery, the song setting out the album’s underlying themes of wood and how the past influences the present. ‘Getting Older’ relates the lives of three men and the way we spend our limited time on earth. The Celtic-fused ‘Mists of Enninstymon’ touches on past emigration, Grimm joined by Glasgow’s Paul McKenna on vocals and the pipes of Dougie Pincock. ‘Hunting Shack’ is built on a great Johnny Cash rhythm, and Sergio Webb’s dobro helps him cover Susan Werner’s ‘Barbed Wire Boys’. Both tracks reflect on a distant rural Midwest. There’s a good-natured, rosy retrospection on ‘Bow and Arrow’. Grimm also covers John McCutcheon’s ‘Christmas in the Trenches’. Beautifully interpreted, but feels out of alignment with the other tracks on the album.
The first of the folk protest songs is ‘In the USA’. It is written in the voice of a child questioning the country’s endemic gun violence. Grimm is a seasoned songwriting-pugilist, unafraid to spar again with old adversaries. In 2016, Grimm released the track ‘Woody’s Landlord’. Nine years later, Grimm, yet again, humiliates the incumbent president and his like, updated now with a delicious swipe at JD Vance, hopefully inspirational to a new generation. Unfortunately, some things come back around. There’s a poignant reworking of ‘Broken Truth’ with two new verses. You almost fear for Grimm at US immigration when he returns from one of his regular musical tours of Ireland and Scotland.
Adhering to AUK values and the purpose behind the music we all collectively admire, Tim Grimm deserves to score highly. ‘Hadley’s Banjo’ is an apt track to finish. “The strings and frets can be replaced, but the bones are rich and fine/ It’s got another thousand songs to sing as you walk the line.” There is nothing artificial about Tim Grimm.
