Hard Times – Turning of the Year 2010

Xmas 2010 Compilation Liner notes

Here’s the liner notes for the traditional Rolston Yuletide compilation CD.

And since you’ve gotten this far, you may also want to know that this is our very-occasional blog for archiving and sharing music and travel and other odd bits.

http://perfect.krolston.com/
A Dog’s Breakfast: A Desultory Journal & Shrine to Friends and Songs

But before you even think of trying to wander around in the blog, here’s the 2010 CD liner notes…

1. Hard Times Come Again No More – Eclipse
I discovered this lush arrangement while researching on YouTube for our Headlong Retreat ‘Hard Times’ program. The CD contains the original performance by the arranging group, Eclipse. But I particularly like this video of a bunch of young men in a men’s room singing.

2. Requiem by Eliza Gilkyson – Peace Lutheran Church
This is a powerful song in Gilkyson’s original performance on her album, Paradise Hotel. [I also love the title track on this album.]

The choral arrangement is by Craig Hella Johnson. There are other fine performances on YouTube, but I was particularly touched by this version.

3. Windy Ridge – Northern Harmony 2008
Pat and I and Karyn Grunwald sang this glorious song of impending doom at the Village Harmony camp in Oregon this year. This is one of the recent Sacred Harp songs composed by young folks inspired by the Sacred Harp revival. What a blast to sing this vigorous marching song, ‘… the law proclaims / destruction nigh / and vengeance at the door’.

When I review my ways,
I dread impending doom;
But sure a friendly whisper says,
“Flee from the wrath to come.”

4. Don’t Stand Between a Man and His Tools – Spooky Men’s Chorale
In particular I have Anna-Christine to thank for discovering this group. AC was a most charming colleague on the Village Harmony Corsica trip. She knew instinctively that I would like the Spooky Men’s Chorale. John Mina, his son, roman, Pat, and I performed this at the Fall Festival, and had a ball with it. I append here a wonderful video of the track from the CD, and a couple other fine spooky entertainments on YouTube.


Spooky Men’s Chorale – Don’t Stand Between a Man and his Tools


Spooky Men’s Chorale – Mraval Jamier


Spooky Men’s Chorale – Dancing Queen – Radio studio performance

5. Falling In – Red Molly
Easy on the eyes and the ears. Three women with strong, expressive voices, lovely harmonies, and fine arrangements and instrumentation. We’ve seen them several times are the Minstrel, and they are great live performers.


Falling In – Red Molly


Susan Werner and Red Molly in an a cappella version of Susan’s beautiful “May I Suggest. ”

6. Why Must We Die? – Kate and Anna McGarrigle
Bill Bly shared this wonderful song with us during our research for the Hard Times Headlong Retreat project.


Kate and Anna McGarrigle: Why Must We Die? – TV Ontario’s “Studio 2” (July 23, 1997)

7. Kinetsa – Throw Down Your Heart – Bela Fleck
This beautiful piece is from an album of Bela Fleck’s music travels in Africa. Every cut is a dlight, and the documentary film is wonderful… great stories, and great songs and voices… and available to ‘Watch Instantly on Netflix.

http://www.netflix.com/Search?v1=Bela%20Fleck:%20Throw%20Down%20Your%20Heart&oq=throw%20down&ac_posn=2

… and here’s the excellent website for the album and film.
http://www.throwdownyourheart.com/

8. Nongqawuse (South Africa) – Northern Harmony 2010
This song was arranged by Matlakala Bopape, of Polokwane, South Africa, the director of Polokwane Choral Society, and one of our song leaders on my upcoming Village Harmony trip to South Africa.

The song is about Nongqawuse (c. 1840s – 1898) the teenaged Xhosa prophetess whose prophecies led to a millennialist movement that culminated in the Xhosa cattle-killing crisis of 1856–1857, in what is now the Eastern Cape Province of the Republic of South Africa. An amazing story, and a truly wonderful piece of music, beautifully arranged.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nongqawuse
Historical background from wikipedia


Theatre with actors and puppets about the false prophetess Nongqawuse and the Xhosa Cattle killing movement. A tragic episode in the history of South Africa. Produced by Speeltheater Holland and Sisonke Arts. More info: www.speeltheater.nl

http://www.disa.ukzn.ac.za:8080/DC/asjul59.22/asjul59.22.pdf
An account written by the historian-poet, William W. Gqoba, who was living at the time of the incident.

9. Tonada de la Luna Llena (Colombia) – Veronica Condomi
Juan Saldarriaga, a double Colombian [a native of Columbia living in BRITISH Columbia] sang this song solo, a cappella, for us at the Village Harmony Oregon Camp this year. I was fascinated… and Juan graciously helped me track it down, bless his soul. Pat and I are delighed by the tight, mercurial parallel harmonies in the version on the CD… but we have not begun to scratch the surface of the complex rhythms suggested by this Columbia song in the ‘cumbia’ style.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxagTf9xGnI&feature=related
Here’s a completely different arrangement that suggests the rhythmic complexity of Caetano Veloso’s composition.

10. Terzina (Corsica) – Village Harmony Oregon 2010
This and the following are recorded from our Village Harmony oregon camp concert. Pat, I, and Karyn Grunwald are singing here, along with our other Village Harmony singing companions.

This is a Corsican ‘terzina’, normally performed only by a trio, but here performed en masse. Notice the delayed, layered entries of the different harmony lines, distinctive of this community harmony style.

11. Manana (Georgia) – Village Harmony Oregon 2010
Pat, I, and Karyn taught this song in a workshop for the Folk Project Fall Festival, and we then performed it with the workshoppers on the Sunday stage to great effect.

A rough translation of this sort-of romantic Georgian song follows…

If I love, will I feel bad?
Love makes me feel bad.
I hate her.
I break her heart.
What can I do?
Maybe I can love her again… and love will make me feel bad again.

12. Ladybird Polska (Sweden) – Blue Moose and the Unbuttoned Zippers
This amazing instrumental and vocal group performed at the Minstrel Coffeehouse and the Fall Festival. Wow. Great progressive arrangements in the ‘old-timey’ dance style, and celestial versions of Scandanavian folk music forms on the Hardanger fiddle and nyckelharpa.


Blue moose performs ‘Moose Schottis’, a dacne tune in the Swedish style. Here you can see the bizarre nyckelharpa, which looks like a giant mutant fiddle with lots of fingering levers.

13. Body & Soul – WSAG – Henry – Hunterdon NJ
This was a very long time ago. Eddie Jefferson put words to ‘Body and Soul’ as a tribute to Coleman Hawkins, and here Henry Nerenberg performs it to perfection.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvr8R31G2Fw
Here’s the private link to Henry’s performance on video.

14. House Where Nobody Lives – Brian Reynolds & Ken Rolston
This Tom Waits song is usually the next-to-the-last number that Brian and I sing on one of our evenings of musical raptures. I am so fortunate that Brian and I share the same comfortable immersion in songs of unrelenting sentimentality. And it’s great playing with such a fine piano player.

So if you find someone
Someone to have, someone to hold
Don’t trade it for silver
Don’t trade it for gold
I have all of life’s treasures
And they are fine and they are good
They remind me that houses
Are just made of wood
What makes a house grand
Ain’t the roof or the doors
If there’s love in a house
It’s a palace for sure
Without love…
It ain’t nothin but a house
A house where nobody lives

15. That Stephen Foster Song – Huxtable, Christensen, & Hood
This is another of our sentimental favorites, written by our old pal, Terri Huxtable, and sung by the delightful trio of Huxtable, Christensen, & Hood. A classic for the ages.

Roads and paths come overgrown
Lose the time and lose the way
Gather those around me now
I set a table of my own

Is someone left to know the way
Protect us, bring us home again
Sit at table one more time
Sing that Stephen Foster Song

16. Reconciliation – Headlong Retreat – Tabor Bethel
I learned this song from Tracey Gummow, a choir leader and fellow member of the Village Harmony Corsica chorus. A great song about the wonderful and scarcely believable possibility of reconciliation between the two halves of Ireland. A song of hope.

Now there’s a time to fight and there’s a time for healing
As the sun will melt the snow on clear bright April mornings
Our fight has run its course, now’s the time for healing
So let us both embrace sweet reconciliation

Toura loura lour, toura loura laddy
Toura loura lour, toura lay

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=932QW_Fsars
A private link to a video of the Headlong Retreat performance at the Mount Tabor Bethel.

17. Stars – Herdman, Hills, & Mangsen
A beautiful three-part a cappella arrangement of a song Pat and I have always loved, and which at last finds its way to this compilation.

18. While Roving on a Winter’s Night – Dar Williams & John Gorka
Pat and I have longed loved the great singing, great arrangement of this traditional song.

19. We Have Fed Our Sea – Poor Old Horse
Words by Rudyard Kipling, music by Peter Bellamy. Performed here by Poor Old Horse, the late and lamented Tom Gibney, singing with Heather Wood and David Jones.

We have fed our sea for a thousand years
And she calls still unfed
Tho’ there’s never a wave of all her waves
But marks our English dead
We have strawed our best to the weeds unrest
To the shark and the sheering gull

If blood be the price of admiralty
Lord God, we ha’ paid in full

20. The Goodnight Song – Blue Murder
Blue Murder is an occasional English folk “supergroup”, consisting at various times of various members of Swan Arcade, Coope Boyes and Simpson, Waterson:Carthy and The Watersons. And this is a wonderful song of farewell to friends… that we’ll meet further on down the road.

One thought on “Hard Times – Turning of the Year 2010”

  1. Weird – I could swear I had some Eliza Gilkyson CDs, but my iTunes library seems to disagree.

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