Forest Mountain Hymnal

We were honored to receive a shout-out recently from Dear Balladeer, a blog run by the folk duo Forest Mountain Hymnal. FMH is the family business of Jonathan and Rebecca Moody, two teachers and artists based in Nashville. The Dear Balladeer project is a year-long musical and literary exploration of The Ballad Book of John Jacob Niles, developing and recording some of the more obscure songs from the folklore fieldwork Niles conducted early in the 20th century.

As Dear Balladeer anticipated the first two murder ballad posts in its series, Rebecca Moody penned this post, capturing some of her thoughts about the genre. The first two murder ballads recorded by Forest Mountain Hymnal for this collection are “The Little Drownded Girl,” a variant of “Twa Sisters,” and “Tiranti, My Love,” a variant of “Lord Randall.”

MBM: How did the Dear Balladeer project get started?

Jonathan: My brother works at a used book store as a book buyer. People come in with big sets of books that they’re giving away. He sifts through them for ones the store will be able to sell. The book that we’re working through [The Ballad Book of John Jacob Niles] was in one of these collections. The copy he had was an old, discarded library book, and selling those is against store policy. He knew I was interested in John Jacob Niles, and he gave it to me. I took it home and shared it with Rebecca.

The descriptions of people Niles talks about in the book are unique. It’s a very interesting read. The songs themselves, we were really taken in by. The melodies were unique, but still simple. They had an interesting mix of songs, murder ballads, hunting songs, and simple old folk songs.

Rebecca and Jonathan Moody of Forest Mountain Hymnal (photo by Christopher Moody)

Rebecca: The whole book is really well written and colorful.

A couple of years ago we released a Halloween EP [Fitcher’s Bird and Other Tales of the Macabre] which was a mix of original and old songs. Last fall we decided to add a song or two to the collection, and so we looked through The Ballad Book and found “Willie McGee McGaw,” which is a version of “Two Crows.”  We tried to find more about it online, to see if it had been done before and also just to listen to it, and the only version out there was by a punk band, a really obscure release. It almost borders on the hokey. So we recorded our own version of that ballad. After we did that, we had a moment of realization: a lot these songs haven’t been done, or done well, before.

Jonathan: For the most part, we can’t find other sources of the songs we’re doing. We kept looking for information and coming up short. This project is a really amazing opportunity to share a piece of our cultural history that would otherwise be lost.

How did you get access to the Ballad Book and permission to work with this material?

Rebecca: We wrote Ron Pen, John Jacob Niles’s personal biographer. He had written the introduction to The Ballad Book. He’s a professor at the University of Kentucky and Director of the John Jacob Niles Center. When we started, we were unsure where the copyright really belongs. At the end of each song, Niles will say who he collected the ballad from, but it’s still rather uncertain.

Jonathan: These are really old folk ballads, and you’d think they should be in public domain. But in his introduction to The Ballad Book, Niles talks about his experience of people singing his songs, expressing frustration with people not taking time to research, claiming they’re in public domain. He even released an album called My Precarious Life in the Public Domain.

Rebecca: Through Ron Pen, we also connected with John Ed Niles, John Jacob’s son. We put together a rough contract and permission for these 24 songs.

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