v/a "American Murder Ballads" (2009)

This is a compilation of old-timey American murder ballads that I picked up in Edinburgh back in January (only to discover that it is available in Tower here in Dublin). You know murder ballads? They are this sub-category of American folk song, where the song is about homicide, with the singer either singing in the persona of a murderer or describing some other occasion of lethal violence. I first became aware of these things when Nick Cave released his 1996 album Murder Ballads, a collection of new songs nestled in among reworked old-timey tunes. I think that set was considered controversial by some people, though the precise grounds for this are not clear to me. Maybe they thought that Nick Cave's middle-class and increasingly middle-aged audience would start committing murders everywhere after listening to their master's voice. Some people may also have thought there was a misogynist strain to the whole murder ballad concept, and, who knows, they may be right on that one.

This compilation does not have the modern production and complicated arrangements of the Nick Cave record. Instead it boasts some very old recordings, often just a voice and an accompaniment on guitar or similar. I would not be surprised if many of them are out of copyright. They range from recordings by well-known people (Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Johnny Cash, Lead Belly) to ones less familiar, to me at least. Some of the songs are quite famous, even if I was hearing them for the first time - 'Where did you sleep last night?', 'Folsom Prison Blues', 'Stackalee', 'Tom Joad'. They also run the gamut from telling stories of fictional killing to describing real-life murder cases, sometimes in rather outlandish terms. The overall effect is to give open a window into a dark corner of the human experience. But the record is not without humour - Woody Guthrie's 'Bad Lee Brown' ends with the wonderful couplet from a jailed killer: "I'll be here for the rest of my life / all I done was kill my wife", surely a classic of "And now I'm the cunt" discourse.

Amazingly, this is my first direct exposure to the music of Woody Guthrie. I love how jauntily he can sail through songs telling a rather fanciful version of the death of Jesse James, or part 1 and part 2 of 'Tom Joad', where John Stenbeck's Grapes of Wrath is cheerily summarised in just under seven minutes. Where further should I go with him, readers? Or is he one of those "All the songs sound the same" artists where the first few you hear are enough? I also think this record may have given my first hearing of anything by Lead Belly, though the tune of 'Where did you sleep last night?' sounds pretty familiar.

So anyway, if you like old-timey music and are not afraid of songs about people killing other people then seek out this readily available record.

image source (to a website from which you can buy this record)

Andy Irvine Salutes The Magic Of Woody Guthrie

This was not what this concert in Whelan's was actually called. Rather, it was an event where Andy Irvine paid tribute to Woody Guthrie and his music at a fund-raising event for the Simon Community and a support group for people with Huntington's Disease (and their families). This was quite some time ago, naturally. One useful thing about the concert is that I now know all about Huntington's Disease. It basically makes you go mad* and then lose control of your body, and it is hereditary and has no cure. Guthrie eventually died of the disease, after being progressively more invalided by it. His mother also suffered from the ailment, leading to some grimly gothic moments in his childhood.

Irvine probably did more talking than singing in this show, telling us all about the life of Woody Guthrie, which was handy for me as I knew next to nothing about him. Guthrie was one of those American folky types who stick up for The Working Man and the plain people of America against the interests of Big Capital and the like. He is meant to have been heavily influential on the Bob Dylan, before he went electric. Guthrie's songs seemed to exist in a world of people whose lives had been destroyed by the Depression, apart from some later ones where he sings about killing Nazis and the like (these were written during World War 2). He also had it in for dodgy crypto-Nazi Charles Lindbergh, star of that The Plot Against America novel by Phillip Roth.

All but one of the songs tonight were by Guthrie, and to be honest they did sound a bit like they were just different words to the same tune, but you could see how they would work as vehicles for the social commentary of the lyrics. The one song not by Guthrie was the encore, 'Never Tire of the Open Road', Irvine's own song about Woody. By now this has become one of my favourite songs ever, to the extent that maybe I would prefer it rather than 'Ouija Board, Ouija Board' to be played at my funeral. You have to love a song that name-checks the IWW, and where the audience are required to join in with the refrain "All you Fascists bound to lose / All you Fascists bound to lose/ You're bound to lose / You Fascists bound to lose".

One thing I am a bit curious about, though, is Woody Guthrie's politics. Irvine's description of his life made him out to be a Communist fellow traveller, for all that he never actually joined the party. However, Irvine's song about Guthrie implies strongly that he was a supporter of the International Workers of the World (better known to some as The Wobblies), an anarcho-syndicalist organisation. I am curious as to how this contradiction can be resolved, and may write a letter of enquiry on the matter to Mr Irvine.

*I have been unable to come up with a less offensive term that does not lack explanatory power or sound like a euphemism.