We’re proud to announce that starting in January 2015, Murder Ballad Monday will become part of the Sing Out! family of blogs.

About two years ago I did a sweep of Facebook, looking for every and any folk music related entity out there as a way to get Sing Out! updated into the digital era (an era in which a Facebook page is a necessity even if you’ve been around for over 65 years). Whilst networking, I found a handful of interesting groups, websites, blogs etc. that produce quality content on a regular basis. One blog, however, struck me as having an interesting concept, with a ton of great material to match. Its name is Murder Ballad Monday, and for the past two years I’ve been following this blog closely.

The Murder Ballad is a sub-genre of the traditional ballad form, the lyrics of which form a narrative describing the events of a murder, often including the lead-up and/or aftermath. Murder Ballad Monday wades in this murky, oft-overlooked segment of American music history. While not every song they cover is in traditional ballad form, and not every song they cover contains a killing; every song tells a story, reflections on the toughter side of “old, weird America.”

I’ve seen Ken Bigger, joined by Pat Blackman, Tom Britton, Alison Cuddy, Shaleane Gee, Maureen Loughnane and Becky Poole, produce an excellent array of essays on their intentionally abstract definition of the Murder Ballad – resulting in some of the highest quality music insight I’ve ever seen. You can read them all at mbmonday.blogspot.com. You can also read Ken’s description and vision for Murder Ballad Monday here.

As you may have noticed, as Sing Out! expands its wealth of online content, we’ve added regularly updated columns, including those by Matt Watroba, Ron Olesko and Roger Deitz. We’re incredibly happy to get this newest project on the road for 2015, and we hope you all enjoy the amazing content that’s coming our way. We’re currently in the process of migrating Murder Ballad Monday’s past content to our pages, and we’ll be seeing regular content from the team starting in January. Stay tuned! —Matt Hengeveld

From Ken Bigger:

Our faithful cadre of bloggers will continue to bring you periodic reflections on music, meaning, and mortality; and we’ll enrich the conversation with a broader group of readers…and perhaps a new writer or two. Our content will continue to move between the traditional and the contemporary, folk and popular, focusing on just how and why these songs do what they do for us. You may also start seeing our writers in other areas of Sing Out! online or in the print publication.

As always, our focus will continue to be on the music. We’re already developing content for the coming year, and look forward to continuing the conversation with you.

I didn’t imagine this particular path when we started this work almost three years ago. I’m grateful for how things have turned out so far, and especially grateful for my fellow contributors – Pat, Shaleane, Tom, Alison, Becky, and Maureen. Pat deserves special mention here not only for his excellent work in writing many, many posts over the years, but for sharing with me all along the management load and the vision of what we are and what we might be. Thanks also to the musicians and artists who have enriched our posts immensely.