John Millard & Canada

Nice cover image. The boy's going to put a birdhouse up, but on stage, not in real life. Here's an email from John Millard, Canada's own latter day Uncle Dave Macon, i.e. the country's most innovative and celebratory banjo player (I tried once to pen a mock-epic ballad about the demise of his first band, the Polka Dogs - I only got about halfway through), this morning:

On Tuesday February 14 2006, come to THE RED GUITAR at Markham and Bloor and enjoy:

A PEOPLE'S FAME

John Millard's brand new renditions of Canadian folk songs. Performed by John Millard's trio featuring Tania Gill on piano, Jay Burr on Tuba and John Millard on banjo, cittern and vocals.

Sets at 9 pm and 10:30 pm

Students, Seniors, Artists at $6 and Everyone Else at $10.

While not an official release party, this should be considered a pre-release event and the new cd "A People's Fame" will be available.

Over the last three years, I have visited some of the biggest collections of folk songs in this country including The Canadian Museum of Civilization, The Edith Fowke Archive and the University of Calgary and The Phillip J. Thomas Collection of Popular Songs at the University of British Columbia. During this time, I have dug out what I think is a great collection of known and unknown Canadian songs and arranged them for this group of people.

These are the people who play on the cd:

Mark Duggan on Percussion
Don Kerr on Drums
Dragoslav Tanascovic on Accordion
Monica Federigo on Cello
Julia Hambleton on Clarinet
Pamela Bettger on Viola
Tania Gill on Piano
Jay Burr on Tuba
John Millard on Banjo, Cittern and Vocals

These are the songs:

The Raftsmen (Ontario),
Stormy Scenes of Winter (Nova Scotia),
All Smiles Tonight (ON)
Maid on the Shore (NS)
Klondike (BC)
Arise and Come Along! (ON)
Peter Amberley (NB)
Shining Birch Tree (QC)
Skidegate Love Song (BC)
Shanty Boy (ON)
Sunset (BC)
Mary Anne (BC)
False Knight on the Road (NS)
Louis Riel (MAN)
Rise Up, My Love and Come Away! (ON)
Young Monroe (Cape Breton)
Heave Away Johnny! (NS)

Look What's Coming

Out March 20th, with a launch at the Gladstone Hotel. Here's an email from Erynn Marshall and Chris Coole:

Music in the Air Somewhere is a study on conventions that many West Virginians hold dear: fiddle music and folk traditions. It is also a look into the broad influences that folk music has on fiddlers' compositions and their practices. By exploring the oral histories and music of seven celebrated, life-long West Virginian musicians, Erynn Marshall illuminates the diversity of these music traditions and the culmination of fiddle song genres.

Through the studies of these musicians' lives, oral transmission, social contexts, and analysis of various genres within the contexts, Marshall expresses how the instrumental and vocal tradition has merged and transformed over time, blurring the present boundaries and perceptions of the art.

Included with this intense survey of Appalachian tradition are seven musical transcriptions and a CD of Marshall's field and archival recordings of West Virginia musicians Warren Cronin, Rita Emerson, Lela Gerkins, Leland Hall, Phyllis Marks, Lester and Linda McCumbers, Woody and William Simmons, Melvin Wine, and the Sandy Valley Boys. (links are banjo banjar's)


In this excellent study designed for both the scholar of traditional music and the aficionado, Erynn Marshall has assembled a meticulous body of ethnographic information about West Virginia’s traditional musicians and their music. She also explores the place of “song-tunes,” a concept which she introduces here, thus opening up for the reader ways in which musical genres, folk artistry, and traditional repertoires work. Music in the Air Somewhere: The Shifting Borders of West Virginia’s Fiddle and Song Traditions is likely to become a classic in the field of roots and folk music.
Gerald Milnes
Folk Art Coordinator
Augusta Heritage Center


Music in the Air Somewhere: The Shifting Borders of West Virginia’s Fiddle and Song Traditions offers a happy combination of breadth and depth of vision, looking at a number of West Virginia fiddlers as it does finding broad themes, issues, and threads to highlight that might not have revealed themselves with a focus on just a single fiddler. Erynn Marshall is also right to highlight the importance of women fiddlers in the tradition and to explore ways in which women fiddlers differed in both repertory and performance preferences from men fiddlers, both historically and today.
Alan Jabbour, Founding Director
American Folklife Center
Library of Congress