As we’ve noted all along, our “mission” at Murder Ballad Monday is to explore both the interior and the periphery of the murder ballad.  We discuss how music helps interpret intense, often violent and/or deadly experience.  


Having started out the week with “Harris and the Mare,” a song that tells a story of a man forced into violence by his need to defend a loved one, we then took a look at how that song was subsequently framed within a conversation about violence and courage, masculinity and pacifism.   We conclude the week in this post, with a few songs that reflect on the experience of being forced into violence; not by the need to defend a loved one, but by war.  These songs reflect not on murder, but on killing; and if not on killing, at least the peril and trauma faced by those drawn into a deadly fight.  A tangent, perhaps, but I think a worthwhile one.


There are quite a few songs I could include here, and I’ll pass over, for the time being, an extended discussion of a number of obvious choices, for instance Eric Bogle’s anti-war anthem, “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda,” in the hope of pulling out some material that may be a little more obscure.  With one exception, perhaps, I would say that most of these songs reflect more on the personal consequences of violence, and are less directly polemical about war than Bogle’s song.  


Richard Shindell


First up, a couple excellent songs by singer-songwriter, and (we hope) occasional Murder Ballad Monday reader, Richard Shindell.  We last explored Shindell’s work in our discussion of Jesus and the murder ballad.  


We’ll start off innocently enough with Shindell’s “Arrowhead,” the story of a Civil War mascot, a noncombatant boy soldier who all too quickly discovers the reality of war and a few surprises about the nature of courage.





In the clip above, Shindell makes reference to a verse added to the song by G.E. Smith (of Saturday Night Live fame).  I’ve heard that verse on another clip.  Mercifully, it is left off here.


“Arrowhead,” by Richard Shindell (Spotify)  (Lyrics)


“Arrowhead” appears on Shindell’s 1995 release Blue Divide, which also brought us “The Ballad of Mary Magdalen,” which we featured in our week on Jesus and the murder ballad.  More relevantly for this week’s themes, the album also includes “The Things that I Have Seen,” a song presumably told from the perspective of a veteran of the first Gulf War, or perhaps an earlier Reagan-era conflict.  No YouTube clip on this one–apparently it’s not a common part of Shindell’s concert performances these days.  Nevertheless, a haunting song of a haunted warrior.

Richard Shindell

“The Things that I Have Seen,” by Richard Shindell (Spotify)  (Lyrics)


Mike Morningstar

Mike Morningstar

A Vietnam vet song here from West Virginia’s Mike Morningstar.  This tune was a treasure unearthed from a compilation cd of West Virginia artists that I picked up at the University of Chicago Folk Festival back in the early ’90s.  Morningstar is a Vietnam combat veteran, who served in the 1st Air Cavalry.


Morningstar’s song, on my reading, is less about the personal toll than about a fundamental reorganization of categories of heroism and patriotism brought about by the things witnessed in that war.  I’d say that it’s political without being polemical.


The lyrics can be found here.  The YouTube clip below is the only post-able recording I can find.   





Bill Mallonee


Athens, Georgia based Bill Mallonee, formerly of The Vigilantes of Love, has been making his way across America on a sort of non-stop tour–a troubadour in the true sense.  Incredibly prolific, he has released dozens of albums in a relatively short period of time.  I had never heard of him before invited to go to a house concert a few months ago.  If you ever receive such an invitation, I recommend you take it.

Bill Mallonee

That show closely resembled the track listing for Mallonee’s Songs of Heartland and Grieving, so I’ll post the performance of “Friendly Fire” from that album below.  Before that, though, here’s a clip of Mallonee performing the song at a house concert a few years back.  The introduction he gives in it is very important.  There’s probably no way to derive the backstory from just listening to the song, but it’s remarkable how much compassion and beauty Mallonee crafts out of so much brutality and trauma. Perhaps after hearing stories like the one he relates, an artistic response is the only viable option.  The sound quality is a little iffy, but I very much recommend you listen to Mallonee introduce the song before proceeding to the Bandcamp link below the YouTube link..











You can find the lyrics and a link to the studio version here.  


And, we return to where we began


From the sublime to the raucous.  It would seem odd, somehow, in a week that began with Stan Rogers’s “Harris and the Mare,” to leave this particular post without his own version of a veteran’s reflections on the costs and misadventures brought about by war.  In this case, a sea shanty of Rogers’s own devising, “Barrett’s Privateers.”


An abbreviated version of the song can be found in the clip below, from the short biopic “One Warm Line.”  It includes Rogers’s explanation of the song’s origin.





The song appears on three of Rogers’s commercially-produced albums.  Here is the performance from Home in Halifax.


“Barrett’s Privateers,” by Stan Rogers (Spotify)  (Lyrics)


There are numerous cover versions of this song.  One of the marks of its genius, perhaps, is that Rogers manages to fool a number of its interpreters as to the song’s origin and age–for instance, the Corries, who are either fooled or eager to fool their audience:


“Here’s a song from the 18th Century…”  “Barrett’s Privateers,” by the Corries (Spotify)


Rogers’s son, Nathan Rogers, also performs the song:






(Yes, that is an uncanny family vocal resemblance.)


Incidentally, the song was also spoofed, at the expense of Stan’s brother, Garnet Rogers, with the morning-after lament “Garnet’s Homemade Beer.”


Wrapping Up


Excepting “Garnet’s Homemade Beer,” of course, my hope in constructing a bit of a call and response between “Harris and the Mare,” on the one hand, and these songs, on the other, is to explore the inner consequences of violence, but separated from crime (although you could make a fair argument that “Nielson” in “Harris and the Mare,” may not have been acting truly in self-defense).  That “Harris and the Mare” took a more significant turn to themes of war and pacifism in its dramatic elaboration opened the door to thinking about military violence.  I hope you’ll pardon me for taking such license.  If there’s a parallel with the murder ballad, strictly considered, I suppose it’s that these songs also present us with characters engaged in a hard reckoning with the truths of their lives and how those truths do or do not always map onto what they are asked to do or driven to do; or how new, unexpected truths emerge from these violent confrontations.  Principle, courage, manhood, heroism, patriotism, and other brave categories of youth all become decisively altered–and compassion and understanding emerge.


Looking Ahead


Next week, Pat returns with some more traditional fare, and after that Shaleane will again take the lead.  Having strayed so far this week, I expect I’ll return to something more traditional in three weeks.  Thanks for reading.