THE SONGS

1. 6:03 Nogies Creek © 1979 Howard L. Kaplan (SOCAN)
2. 0:56 Sorry For Old Adam *
3. 2:00 Figure It Out © 1978 Jinni Clemmens (BMI?)
4. 4:42 Wax Museum © 1984 Kathleen Tucker (BMI)
5. 2:39 Walking Boss *
6. 1:26 Little Do You People Know *
7. 3:56 The Furze Field *
8. 3:35 Hamlet (Oor Hamlet) © Adam McNaughtan (MCPS)
9. 3:52 A Pair of Geese © Peter & Lou Berryman 1995 (BMI)
10. 4:13 Squalor © Peter & Lou Berryman 1980 (BMI)
11. 3:30 Angline the Baker *
12. 2:34 High Tone Dance *
13. 2:09 Millicent *
14. 4:00 TB Blues *
15. 2:27 The Thing That Makes You Beautiful © 1988 Jane Voss, Obscure Origins Music (BMI)
16. 3:53 Lord Franklin *
17. 0:48 Old Beer Bottle *
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53:49

* Adapted from traditional/P.D. sources by Michael B. Cooney © 2001 Michael B. Cooney (BMI)
I have copyrighted my arrangements of the folk songs (if you know who wrote it, it’s not a folk song) on this recording in order to donate the "authors’ royalties" to the Friends of the Folk Archive Fund at the Library of Congress. The Archive of Folk Culture is an invaluable source of songs and information for those of us who love the real stuff. Personally, I believe that nobody owns or should be able to claim rights to traditional songs, or versions thereof. (Tirade on that coming soon.) I think "authors’" royalties from folk songs should go to help with the collection, preservation and dissemination of more folk songs.

This work is dedicated to my wife, Margot, for her inspiration, encouragement and help, with this recording and almost everything else.

Recorded 2001-2002 at Messy Office Studios, Friendship, Maine
Photographs by Margot Bridgett and Paddy O’Furniture
Graphic Design by Peter Berryman


This is my first CD and my first recording since 1979. Shortly after finishing the last recording (Pure Unsweetened — Live Family Concert), I was in an automobile accident (drunk driver, head-on), which put me out of commission for a year. (And while it’s true that I had two brain operations, it’s not true that they removed 3/4 of my brain and now all I can play is New Age/Celtic music.) I thought back then that my next recording should be called "Together Again"; had no idea that it would take so long.

I wish to thank many people who helped me through those hard times and lately; just for starters, in no particular order: Rich Warren, Lou & Peter Berryman, Linda, Dave & Anya Siglin, Carter Newell, Doug Protsik, Jeff Mckeen, Andy & Bill Spence, Peter & Gail Gallo, Jack & Estelle Klein, Clyde Appleton, Hoyle Osborne & Jane Voss, Ed Sweeney, Randall & Bill Craven, Margaret & John MacArthur, Sam & Leslie Hinton, Larry Hanks, Joe Hickerson, Len MacEachron, Benny & Denise Reehl, Hugh Hanley & Irene Thomas, Michael & Edith Allison, Harry Tuft, Jennifer Browne, Rochelle Goldstein, John Roberts, Tony Barrand, Bob & Karen Blackman, Clyde Tyndale, Bruce & Connie Taylor, Lynn Vandergriff, Art Thieme, Lita & Howard Eskin, Sharon Burton, John & Ginny Dildine, Dick & Marlene Levine, John & Ellen Gawler, Al & Jill Blixt, Lee Jennings, Howard Kaplan, Leon Redbone & Beryl Handler, Emily Morrison, Stephanie Beck, Barbara Elfbrandt, Bob Kimmel, Carmen & Dick Gilman, Dan Berggren, Terry & Donna Mutchler, John Splettstoesser, Christopher Gately, Tam Kearney, Louis Killen, Barry O'Neill, Ann Lynch, Barbara Dane, Tony Saletan, Irene Saletan, Art & Margo Rosenbaum, Jules Schneider, Cathy & Jerry Supple, Vito Arste, Helene and Alan Korolenko, Mary Katherine Aldin, Al & Ruth Rudis. Also to the memory of Bill Domler, Bob Block, George & Gerry Armstrong, Armen Kachaturian, Steve Goodman, Al Saunders and Bob Lurtsema.


ABOUT THE SONGS:

The only thing that ties these songs together is that I think each is a wonderful song. Most, but not all, of them are folk songs. (If you know who wrote it, it’s not a folk song.) I play them on guitar, banjo, fretless banjo and concertina. More information on keys and tunings, lyrics and sources, coming Real Soon Now (RSN).

1. Nogies Creek
It used to be that miners took canaries into the mines with them; if the canaries stopped singing, or died, it signaled that their environment was becoming dangerously poor, or fatal. Perhaps frogs are canaries for our times — it’s fairly well-known by now that frog populations around the world are declining at an alarming rate, as well as increasingly exhibiting birth defects. Howard Kaplan (www.thrinberry-frog.com/), of Toronto, Ontario, wrote this song, "…after attending a lecture given by Dr. Edwin Crossman of the Royal Ontario Museum, at the 1979 annual meeting of the Federation of Ontario Naturalists. Nogies Creek is located about 130 miles northeast of Toronto."

2. Sorry For Old Adam
Maybe our troubles all started here. I learned this from Larry Hanks of Berkeley, CA, one of my all-time favorite singers. I think the original source was Carl Sandburg’s American Songbag, published in 1927. Mr. Sandburg wrote, "College girls sing it…from the State Teachers College at Harrisonburg, Virginia."

3. Figure It Out
What are the Answers to Life, the Universe and Everything? How, and why, does the world work? This song by Ginni Clemmens has one answer. Another (in addition to "42") is the old gospel song, "(We’ll Understand It Better) Bye and Bye"… (I sincerely regret that Ginni's name got spelled Jinni in the printed notes with the CD; it was missed by our baygull-eyed proof-readers.)

4. Wax Museum
More questions and an answer. Once upon a time I sang in a club in Minneapolis, MN, after which a woman, Kathleen Tucker, came up, thrust an envelope into my hands and rushed out. The envelope contained a tape which had many terrific songs of which this is one.

5. Walking Boss
When I imagine someone "playing the banjo on the front porch", this is a song I imagine them playing. To me it’s a perfect song, and there’s something hypnotic about the tune. I heard Jeff Davis, a wonderful singer and musician, sing this at Pinewoods Camp in Massachusetts, back in the early Mesozoic. It stuck with me for years until one day I couldn’t rest until I had learned it. That happens with quite a few songs: suddenly one day, BOOM – gotta learn it Right Now. I still love this; could sit and play it for a long time.

6. Little Do You People Know
Another perfect gem is this is little song from Civil War; the tune wonderfully suits the monotony of walking back and forth while on guard duty. I learned this from my old friend Barry O’Neill. Joe Hickerson at the Library of Congress Archive of Folk Culture found a printed version for me.

7. The Furze Field
I first heard this in a pub in London, in 1970, sung by Ewan MacColl, accompanied on the dulcimer by Peggy Seeger. It took me quite a while to work it out on the concertina.

8. Hamlet ("Oor Hamlet"*)
In the words of the author, Adam McNaughtan, of Glasgow, Scotland, "The first act of ‘Oor Hamlet’ was written when I was reading the play with a class at Cathkin High School. [Adam was the teacher.] It then lay untouched for a year, until I saw a letter in ‘Sandy Bell’s Broadsheet’ which I felt overstated the case for singing more ballads in folk clubs. The writer, Sheila Douglas, had made a comparison between the plots of the ballads and the plot of ‘Hamlet’. This proved to be the stimulus I needed and I finished the ‘poem’ very quickly. Even before I sent it off, however, I realised that with slight amendments and additions it could be sung to the tune of ‘The Mason’s Apron’."

I first heard Mike Agranoff sing this to me at the Philadelphia Folk Festival one year. I said to myself, "I gotta get that song." The next day I said to myself, "Mike Agranoff sang a great song to me yesterday; gotta get it." The next day I said to myself, "Someone sang a great song to me a couple of days ago; I wonder what and who?" It was months later that someone played me a tape of Martin Carthy singing it. Then I remembered. Moral: get it while you still remember.

Quite a few people have recorded this song in the last few years. Usually that means I wouldn’t record it, but I got so many requests from people to put it on my next recording that here it is.

* Adam McNaughtan titled it "Oor Hamlet" which means "Our Hamlet" -- the British use the plural a lot when referring to themselves: "We are not amused"; "Give us a kiss."

"7:84" was then a Scottish socialist theatre group; their name came from the statistic that 7% of the British population own 84% of the wealth.

9. A Pair of Geese
Peter and Lou Berryman (www.louandpeter.com) are my favorite singer-songwriters. Their songs are consistently more interesting — words, music and topics, more clever, better crafted, more fun, than anyone else’s. I know almost as many of their songs as they do. Some day I’ll do a whole CD of ‘em. Many of their best songs cannot be sung by one person alone. Here are two which can.

10. Squalor
This is the first Berryman song I heard (on A Prairie Home Companion, long ago). More than being just a cute song about not eating enough vegetables, this song seems also to say something about those people (I call ‘em Pretend Christians) who dismiss the less fortunate by saying, "It’s because they didn’t do this, didn’t do that — it’s their own fault that they’re in such bad shape. Therefore, we don’t have to help them."

Charity sees the need, not the cause.
- German Proverb

11. Angeline the Baker
Here’s another sorry character. Around 1850 Stephen Foster wrote an awful song, "Angelina Baker", which entered the oral tradition and came out, among many other versions, like this. I rather like that Angeline became a baker. (Some people think her name should be changed to, perhaps, Sara — Sara Lee, the baker…) I think I first heard this from Sara Gray and added verses from other versions. (By the way, on the CD I accidently spelled it "Angline" and we all missed it in the proof-reading.)

12. The High Tone Dance
This real cowboy song is another which I learned from my old friend, Barry O’Neill, of Toronto, Ontario. I learned a whole lot of songs from Barry, and spent many a wonderful evening at the Ark coffeehouse in Ann Arbor, Michigan, swapping songs, sometimes until dawn, with him and Larry Hanks and Joe Hickerson and others.

13. Millicent
Nobody has ever been able to name this old Irish tune for me; all I ever got was guesses, even from Irish musicians. So I named it myself.

14. TB Blues
Pete Seeger is, of course, one of my biggest influences, along with Sam Hinton. Pete has made thousands of recordings (maybe hundreds!) including a series called American Favorite Ballads. I learned this song, and many others, from them. Pete almost certainly learned it from a 1931 recording by Jimmie Rogers, one the first "country" singers to sell millions of records. Jimmie learned it from someone named Ray Hall. A Rogers biographer, Nolan Porterfield, wrote, "Early in 1929 he had written to Ray Hall in the Texas State Penitentiary, asking for 'your version of T.B. Blues.'" Hall sent him what he had, and as Hall (still in the Pen in 1975!) said in an interview, "Jimmie changed words here and there and some of the phrases…" We don’t know where Hall got it.
By the way, it’s fun to substitute "TV" for "TB" (and "mind, it" for "body"):
TV, TV, TV, TV, you... robber
TV, TV, you stole my life away...

15. The Thing That Makes You Beautiful
Old friend Jane Voss, of Aztec, New Mexico sent me a tape of this in 1988. I thought it was a wonderful song and told her so, but it didn’t occur to me to learn it until a dozen years later, just as she finally put it on her own CD. I think it would be a big hit on the radio if someone did a big-time country-western recording of it. Jane lives with Hoyle Osborne, an ACE old-time piano player who has several CDs of his own including a new one of music which would have been heard in saloons in the Old West (unlike most of the rinky-tink you hear in movie saloon scenes); they're at: www.janevoss.net

16. Lord Franklin (or Lady Franklin’s Lament)
Sir John Franklin was an arctic explorer who tried three times to find a "Northwest Passage" — a way to get to the Orient by sailing around the top of North America. On his first two attempts he almost died. In 1845, nearing age 60, with two ships and 128 sailors, he tried again and on that trip he and all of his sailors perished. Many expeditions were sent to search for him, two of them financed by his wife, Lady Franklin.

17. Old Beer Bottle
I found this in an old book, "My Pious Friends and Drunken Companions". Bit of fun.