Dolly Parton: Daddy's Working Boots
[purchase]
A perfect example of a good old Christian country song: an affectionate celebration of the working man, told through a focus on the trappings of the blue-collar life and the ways in which work itself can be a kind of love, complete with a confident plea for Daddy's heavenly reward. First released way back in '73, Dolly's young voice is sweet and clear, and the choir of angels that joins her for the final verse is a perfect touch.
Michael Smith: I Brought My Father with Me
[purchase] on the Time CD
Catie Curtis: Dad's Yard
[purchase]
Todd Snider: Missing You
[purchase]
I am still in the small town of Flowery Branch, Georgia - what was to be a two-week visit (from my home in Florida) with my mom has turned indefinite. We have begun home hospice, and I have chosen to be the primary caregiver - we are taking this One Day At a Time... the process could be days/weeks/months... and I am exactly where I need to be...
I am reminded of how different this is from my father's passing, almost 14 years ago... on my 19th wedding anniversary – I had not spoken to him in the 3 years before his death because he had chosen to take his life in a direction I did not wish to follow. I felt no guilt about our diverging paths, only regret that there was a finality to whatever possibilities I may have envisioned for our future - on the day after his memorial service, as my mother, brother, sister and I drove up to Anna Ruby Falls to scatter his ashes, we took turns telling stories of our interactions with him over the years... and it was like putting together the pieces of a puzzle, as we all had such different, and sometimes conflicting, memories to share.
My father is so much in me: my love of music, my affinity for the written word and my appreciation of humor, especially a good pun - on the dark side, I have also inherited his qualities of perfectionism which leads to procrastination which leads to paralysis.
My time, energy and music collection are limited these days... but my memories are boundless and my legacy is dear - thanks to Michael, Catie and Todd for sharing theirs with us...
Kristina Olsen: My Father‘s Piano
[purchase]
Sometimes you don’t learn to appreciate a father until after he is gone. The narrator of My Father’s Piano has that piano to remember her father by. And it represents all of his best qualities in her memory of him. I put this song in a mix of songs I made for me and my wife, which I called Bittersweet. These are songs of warm nostalgia, tinged with regret for those which are gone forever. There are many songs like this, but it is the mark of a great songwriter to capture these conflicting emotions well. Kristina Olsen has done that here.
My first acquaintance with Kristina Olsen was at a small folk and folk dance festival held outside of Boston. (Hey, Boyhowdy, ever heard of NEFFA?) She presented a workshop on unusual musical instruments from Victorian England. Olsen had several of these with her, and could play all of them.
Andy M Stewart and Manus Lunny: Take Her in Your Arms
[purchase]
Songwriters as a group seem to have uneasy relationships with their fathers. To start with, there simply are far more songs about mothers. But, beyond that, do you want to give your father a mix for Father’s Day that includes a classic about how he never had enough time for his son, (Cat’s in the Cradle)? Or how he wasn’t there at all, (Papa Was a Rolling Stone)? You see the difficulty.
Even Take Her in Your Arms is not a thank you for a father’s good advice. Rather it is a comic portrait of a lovesick young man who should have asked his father’s advice, but never did.
When you hear about Celtic folk music, you usually hear about how wonderful Irish music is. And it is. But the Scots more than hold their own. Andy M Stewart and Manus Lunny were in the “Scottish Supergroup” Silly Wizard. Since then, they have continued to produce fine work, both as solo artists and as a duo.
Paul Simon: Father and Daughter
[purchase]
This one triggers a specific memory for me.
First, let me say that I am one of those people who hates sing-alongs. I always feel that I’m going to get it wrong. So I don’t sing.
But when my wife and I took my daughter to see The Wild Thornberry Movie in the theater, something came over me. When the story is over, a song plays while the end titles roll. In The Wild Thornberry Movie, that song is Paul Simon’s Father and Daughter. In the theater, I was hearing it for the first time. By the time the chorus repeated for the first time, I had turned to my daughter, and was singing it to her. The magic carried through to the end of the song and a little beyond. That moment is now my reminder, if I ever need it, of just how much I love my daughter. The years that have passed since then have not changed that.
Bonus trivia fact: Nigel Thornberry was voiced, in the movie and on television, by Tim Curry.
K's Choice: Dad
[Purchase]
It seems like every other week we get a theme that a song by K's Choice would be good for. I have decided to choose other selections for some of those since I don't want it to be a glut of them, or to make it sound like I'm obsessed with them. Simply put, it's been very coincidental that the themes match up with their songs.
But I have held back long enough, this song is too good a fit not to post. "Dad" is a simple piano ballad sung as if written as a present to their own father (the group's songwriters are a brother and sister duo). But what is great about it is that though it's mostly a very sweet and sappy ballad, it's got enough realness to keep it sounding intimate and personal. It's really beautiful and touching, and a must-have for any Father's Day mix if you ask me.
Utah Phillips: Daddy, What‘s a Train?
[purchase]
I wasn’t expecting to get to post the transitional tune this week, but here it is.
I am 43 years older than my son, (now 5). So I grew up on another planet. This was a world where TV signals came through the air, and were caught by something called an antenna. After a storm or a windy day, my father would go up on the roof, and turn the antenna back to its optimal position. A computer was a machine that took up an entire room, and only institutional users had them.
And, in the next town over, there was a railroad track. I always felt lucky when we happened to go through that town as one of those impossibly long freight trains came through.
A few years ago. they shut down that line. They pulled up the tracks, they even took out all of the railroad trestles. Now, if you didn’t know where the tracks used to be, you could never tell. Going back before my time, I imagine this happened a lot. Air freight came in, and it must have seemed like all freight shipping by train would become a thing of the past. And that would be around the time that Utah Phillips wrote this song.
These three songs have three things in common: the titles, of course, are all questions; the artists all happen to be female; and these are songs that I would have posted over the course of the week, if this had been a normal week. It wasn’t. I have been putting the finishing touches on the restoration of Oliver di Place, and my glitches have glitches. But I do have my new file host. In fact, this post is a test of that host, so if anyone has any problem listening to or downloading the tracks, please let me know in the comments.
Cheryl Wheeler: Is it Peace or Is It Prozac
[purchase]
Cheryl Wheeler is one of those artists who is often labeled folk or singer-songwriter. Neither label really describes her art. Wheeler writes most of her material, and she plays acoustic guitar, but she plays with a full band, and uses whatever instruments suit her material. For Is It Peace or Is It Prozac?, Wheeler chose an arrangement which begins and ends with a snatch of elevator music, to help make her point about the overmedicating of America. As always, Wheeler makes her case with warmth and good humor.
Devon Sproule: Does the Day Feel Long?
[purchase]
You’ve probably heard of those hippie communes that were all the rage in the sixties. And it’s easy to believe that these were nothing more than an expression of the misplaced optimism of youth, and that the communes all died out when the sixties gave way to the disillusionment of the seventies. But Devon Sproule can tell you that some of these communes still exist; she grew up on one. Perhaps it is this lifestyle that left Sproule open to a variety of musical influences. Her interests in folk, country, and jazz can be clearly heard here.
Mia Doi Todd: What If We Do?
[purchase]
As I write this, I realize that something else unites these artists. None of them can be easily pinned down to a single musical genre. And Mia Doi Todd is perhaps the most baffling of all in this respect. Her first musical training was as a classical singer. She had a major label deal at on time on Columbia Jazz. And her early recordings, featuring just her and an acoustic guitar, might have been considered folk. Don’t even try to add her talent as a painter, or her study of avant garde dance to the puzzle. All of this might make it sound like her music would be “difficult”. But this is not the case at all. Original, yes, but accessible as well. The best way to get a handle on it is to just listen.
Dar Williams: Are You Out There?
Dar Williams: What Do You Hear in These Sounds?
[purchase]
Dar Williams: What Do You Love More Than Love?
[purchase]
From Dar's song-by-song interpretation of the tracks from End of the Summer and The Green World:
Are You Out There?: "This is my ode to all the small radio stations and late night radio heroes who changed the lives of millions of kids out in the suburbs. I never knew about Vin Scelsa's show growing up, but I did discover New York's Pacifica station, WBAI, and from them I learned the "politics of love and music" and felt like a secret radical. Long live the Pacifica network! I took the names of our local deejays, Jim Olson and Johnny Memphis, because they are two of my present radio heroes."
What Do You Hear in These Sounds?: "Everyone says that therapy makes people "worse than they already are". This was not my experience. I think everyone was more happy after I went, and, as a nice perk, it saved my life. Thanks to all the women who sang on this, to Steve Miller for piecing it all together, and, of course, all my therapists."
What Do You Love More Than Love?: "As far as most of my songs go, this one is a happy one," says Williams, who wrote the tune as a result of a trip to the Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, east of Nepal. "As I was spinning the prayer wheels and visiting ancient temples, I asked myself a lot of questions about how to love without needing to be loved so much. The trip was an antidote to thinking about my touring life and career in general".
A Tribe Called Quest: Can I Kick It?
[purchase]
A sweet self-referential hip hop vibe from my younger days, built atop highly recognizable samples from Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side, Ian Dury and the Blockheads's What a Waste, and a tidbit of Prokofiev. The lyrics are a bit dated -- does anyone remember who David Dinkins is anymore? -- but Shaheed, Q-Tip, and the rest of the Tribe kick it up in such style on this debut album you'll still find yourself boppin' along. Like the song says: if you feel the need to freak do the jitterbug...this rhythm really fits like a snug glove.
Ben Lee: What Would Jay-Z Do?
[purchase]
Bruce Robison: What Would Willie Do?
[purchase]
We've all seen the bumper stickers, tee shirts, wrist bands, necklaces, license plates, bracelets, hats, billboards, etc... asking the simple question, "What Would Jesus Do?" This is not such a bad question to ask at times when faced with difficult decisions in life. The theory is that if you stop to ask yourself what Jesus would have done in placed in your situation, you will be guided to a moral and just answer that will lead you to the best possible conclusion.
But what about those times when Jesus just doesn't have the right answer? Aren't there some other spiritual guides we can turn to?
Travis: Why Does It Always Rain On Me?
[Purchase]
This was the first song I ever heard by the band Travis. It is from their 2000 album "The Man Who". At the time, I had just started doing a radio show on my college's station and we had to play a certain amount of designated songs from a list our first semester doing shows. I thought the name of this one was appealing, so I played it and really liked it, and then continued to play it every show I did the rest of the semester. Later that year, one of my apartment-mates arrived back from her study abroad adventure in London and said Travis was really popular over there and she had fallen for their music while over there. So it seems kismet that I was to discover them that year.
The song is a lovely melancholy pop song. The singer inquires where the sunny days have gone and why all this misfortune always seems to find him.
Deb Talan: How Will He Find Me?
[purchase]
Before she joined up with Steve Tannen to became half of indieblog darlings The Weepies, but after cutting her teeth on the music industry with an upbeat Oregon popband called Hummingfish, Deb Talan had a relatively low-key, small-scale career as a solo artist on the New England coffeehouse circuit.
Her final solo effort from this period, 2001 live release Sincerely, reveals an artist on the cusp of full-formed musicianship -- still a bit unrefined, still a little repetitive -- but the potential for greatness was there. It comes to a head in this simple, plaintive song of age and desirability, which Talan's fragile performance frames perfectly.
Bonus for Weepies watchers: this live bootleg version of How Will He Find Me?
Silver Jews: How Can I Love You If You Won't Lie Down?
[Purchase]
The Silver Jews are David Berman's band, though he started it along side Bob Nastanovich and Stephen Malkmus (of Pavement), he has remained it's only consistent member. This track is featured on the 2005 album "Tanglewood Numbers".
It's difficult not to get a smirk when you see the name of this song, and it certainly is a fun, spirited country-esque rock song. But clearly, the person asking the question has the wrong idea about love or at least is not very creative.
