Harris and the Mare
With Pancho having met his match in the deserts down in Mexico, this week we turn to the north country, and an Ontario mill town, and a song inspired by a story overheard in a bar. Stan Rogers, penned “Harris … Continue reading →
I’m looking for my fortune and it ain’t in Illinois
Pancho’s Stepchildren“Pancho and Lefty” has been a foray into a more Western genre of murder ballad, building on Pat’s discussion of “Jack Straw,” I suppose. The Wikipedia entry on murder ballads cites Olive Burt’s 1958 article, “The Minstrelsy of Murder,” which … Continue reading →
English Folk Dance & Song Society receives funding to digitize material
The English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS) received £585,400 in funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to archive, conserve, and digitize material from six different archives containing some of the country’s most important folk music collections. The project … Continue reading →
Outlaws, Bandits, and Troubadours
Steve Earle and Townes Van Zandt After such a long post last time, I plan for this one to be long on music and short on text. If there’s a narrative to capture here, it’s that I think “Pancho and … Continue reading →
Pancho and Lefty
Walking Man, by Alberto Giacometti A Work of Betrayal I’m about to spill a good bit of ink, figuratively speaking, on a song that is only around 270 words long (including repeated words). I want to (re)introduce you to “Pancho … Continue reading →
Murder at the Dead Show – Encore
Big Brother and the Holding Company and the Grateful Dead – by Irving Penn, 1967 Janis Joplin – James Gurley – Ron McKernan – Jerry Garcia (This week’s first set.) (This week’s second set.) When I look at portraits from the … Continue reading →
Murder at the Dead Show – Second Set
Concert Poster, Oakland Coliseum – Peter Barsotti, 12/31/91 I recently wrote about “Jack Straw” as the Grateful Dead’s only true murder ballad. That effort spurred me to begin this week with a broader look at the act of murder in the Dead’s … Continue reading →
VanHoy Revives Union Grove Fiddler’s Convention
The Union Grove Old Time Fiddler’s Convention was started by H.P. VanHoy as a way to help raise funds to support North Carolina’s Union Grove School in 1924. This charity fiddle contest grew exponentially, attracting some of the top bluegrass … Continue reading →
Murder at the Dead Show – First Set
“Listening for the secret, searching for the sound…” I am one of those people who early in life, somewhere around age four, started grappling with the existential ‘problem’ of death. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because my grandmother … Continue reading →
I started making plans to kill my own kind…
As I mentioned in my first post, “Ballad of Hollis Brown” was presented and received as a sad story about something that happened to a man, not about what that man did to six other people. The song brings us … Continue reading →