Samatha Crain
A candidate from the Chocteau nation in the inde folk rock category. Samantha Crain is here to enlarge that phenomena! She appears to have welcomed and inhabited her own voice, shrugging off whatever available stereotypes might incringe. Perhaps a vocal and visual resemblance to the Icelandic chanteuse, Bjork. A steady songwriter edge right into artiface.
“Samantha Crain
Long Division
Oh ghost of reason
Oh fool of love
From where come your division, if not from above?
If not from above
If not from below
If not from within then not even so
Oh elder of vain good
Oh child of woe
From where come your division, if not from below?
If not from above
If not from below
If not from within then not even so
Oh band of strangers
Oh men of sin
From where come your division, if not from before?
If not from above
If not from below
If not from within then not even so
”
Ms. Crain’s record cover “Songs in the Night,” 2009 on which “Long Division” appears.
Guitar comic philosopher Slim Gaillard
“At the age of twelve, he accompanied his father on a world voyage and was accidentally left behind on the island of Crete. On a television documentary in 1989, he said, “When I was stranded in Crete, I was only twelve years old. I stayed there for four years. I traveled on the boats to Beirut and Syria and I learned to speak the language and the people’s way of life.” After learning a few words of Greek, he worked on the island “making shoes and hats”. He then joined a ship working the eastern Mediterranean ports, mainly Beirut, where he picked up some knowledge of Arabic. When he was about 15, he re-crossed the Atlantic, hoping the ship would take him home to Cuba, but it was bound for the U.S. and he ended up in Detroit. He never saw either of his parents again.
Alone and unable to speak English, he tried to get a job at Ford Motor Company but was rejected because of his age. He worked at a general store owned by an Armenian family, with whom he lived for some time, then tried to become a boxer. During Prohibition in 1931 or 1932, he drove a hearse with a coffin that was packed with whiskey for the Purple Gang. He attended evening classes in music and taught himself to play guitar and piano. When Duke Ellington came to Detroit, he went backstage and met his hero. Determined to become a musical entertainer, he moved to New York City and entered the world of show business as a “professional amateur”.”
“Slim picks the pragmatic moral high ground as always”
A beautific anthropomorphic song about the death of a record store in Lancaster, PA.
“Best Medicine
Nothing my friend is harder to leave
than the sound of a town with ambition up it’s sleeve
But this is my ministry, my red neon sign
I’m just another record shop hanging on the vine
I walk like I’ve been kneeling on these rolling stones
The doctor tells me he can heal the beetles in my bones
You never known the gold you can find out there
until you put the needle down and do some digging in the air
Well well well all I see is all I tell
I never met a stranger to the bottom of the
Well if the body is a temple, the soul is a bell
and that’s why music is the best medicine I sell
Now I’m slowing down, but time just flies
And the crows have come to land on the corners of my eyes
But I have seen beauty that has no name
Like where the moon meets the river and the river meets the rain
Well well well all I see is all I tell
I never met a stranger to the bottom of the
Well if the body is a temple, the soul is a bell
and that’s why music is the best medicine I sell
”
Scottish guitarist, singer songwriter, Dick Gaughan
“
Scottish musician and political activist Dick Gaughan released his fifth solo studio recording in 1981, A Handful of Earth. This was his first after two years of not playing music while regaining his health. It was named Folk Album of the Year by Melody Maker and at the end of the decade; Folk Roots readers and critics named it the greatest album of the 1980s.
”After I made it I felt, well that’s it, I’m not going to do anything better. It was the best I could do, the best blend of songs I could find. I was fresh again after coming out of the whole Five Hand Reel band period, I’d done a record with Andy Irvine, I had a whole load of ideas to juggle about and the years and years of frustration all went into Handful of Earth. After that I had to do something different, there was absolutely no point in trying to remake Handful of Earth.” Dick Gaughan
In 1982, Brian O’Donovan, well known now for his weekly program A Celtic Sojourn on WGBH as well as his Celtic Christmas productions, recorded the event. In 2019 he discovered the tape and sent a copy to Dick and his record label, Greentrax and an album was produced to benefit Dick, who had suffered a stroke in 2016 and was unable to perform.
I attended that 1982 show and the performance featured a number of songs from A Handful of Earth: Eric Go Bragh, Now Westlin Winds, Song for Ireland, World Turned Upside Down and The Workers’ Song. The live performances were the equal of the recorded ones and while it was often a challenge to understand his rich Scottish brogue, he related well to the audience in between songs.
Should you wish to explore his music in more depth, I recommend, Parallel Lines, Sail On, Redwood Cathedral and A Handful of Earth.”
A selection from Gaughan’s “Handful of Earth.”
This remarkable 4x9 inch tome is about the resuscitation of a garage at a revamped, original hotel in North Adams, MA. as part of the Mass MOCA art museum complex. It is available at the museum store and I would hightly recommend it to you. One of the best minute pictorial records of the design process I have come across if you like that kind of thing.
