Able Baker Charlie and Dog

I have been listening to Joe Crookston's CD Able Baker Charlie and Dog. I also have his first CD, Fall Down as the Rain. When I ordered Able Baker Charlie and Dog online a few months ago, I got an e-mail from Joe Crookston thanking me for my order. And when the CD came in the mail, it had a handwritten note from him thanking me for the order. It was nice. It's nice to think that a musician appreciates his listeners, and it's kind of a thrill to have a note from a musician I admire.

Fall Down as the Rain had mostly songs that were personal and universal, songs about things like living, loving, dying, being happy, being sad, being young, and being old. I like these songs because I can relate to them.

Able Baker Charlie and Dog has some songs of this type. The two cover songs, "The Logical Song" and "Wandering Shepherd," fall into this category and are among my favorites on the album. When I was a teenager listening to the Supertramp version of "The Logical Song," I wasn't sure I liked it because it seemed anti-intellectual. Now as a middle aged person listening to Joe Crookston's version, it seems like a completely different song. Now it's about the way that now that I'm a grownup, I have to earn a living, and in order to do that, I have to behave properly, in contrast to the freedom I felt as a child playing in my yard. It's a song that I can play when I get home from work and it soothes me because it expresses some of the stress I'm feeling. And then the song that I want to hear immediately after it is "Wandering Shepherd," because that's a comforting song. It's a song that says to me yes, work was stressful, but you're home now so you can relax and feel soothed. I played them that way on my radio show today: "The Logical Song" followed by "Wandering Shepherd." Before I did it, I explained about why I was playing them that way. A listener called in and said he appreciates my playing songs that respond to each other.

Another song on Able Baker Charlie and Dog that is in the category of personal and universal songs is "Mending Walls." It didn't make a strong impression on me at first, but it later grew on me. I realized that it's not as relevant to the things I've been feeling lately, but it would hit the spot at a different time in my life. Thematicall, it reminds a bit of Neal and Leandra's, "Don't Walk Away," because I interpret both as being about how even when you are trying to be close to someone, sometimes there are parts of you that you keep closed off, but in order to be close to someone, you have to stop closing off those parts. The reason it didn't hit the spot for me right now is because I'm not really close to anyone like that right now.

Another type of song that appears on Able Baker Charlie and Dog is stories of people's lives. These are typically stories of how historical or social contexts have an impact on a person's life that is not what the person would have chosen. In "Freddy the Falcon," "Brooklyn in July," and "Able Baker Charlie and Dog," a person ends up doing something they would not have chosen to do as a result of being swept up by things larger than themselves. In "John Jones" and "Coal Tattoo," someone makes an escape from a bad situation, but is not unscathed. One thing I like in "Freddy the Falcon" is how the words "flying like this gets me out of here" change meaning from verse to verse as Freddy flies in a different way to get out of a different place. I usually think it's clever when the same words take on different means at different points in a song.

The songs in this category are about people in circumstances which I have not lived with and don't expect to live with. For this reason, they did not immediately resonate with me as much as the songs that are more personal and universal. However, I do find them interesting, and continue to think more about them as I listen more. We often hear about issues, and we hear about the activists addressing the issues, but sometimes we don't hear so much about how an ordinary person who isn't necessarily thinking about issues gets caught up by them.

Finally, the last type of song on this CD is light-hearted, and there are two songs in this category: "Red Rooster in the Mash Pile" and "The Rutabaga Curl."

Mostly Folk Playlist, April 12, 2009

I Will Stand | Emma's Revolution | Roots, Rock, and Revolution
Get Together | Indigo Girls | Strange Fire
Stationary | Susan Werner | New Non-Fiction
The Innocent Years | Kathy Mattea | Innocent Years
The Logical Song | Joe Crookston | Able, Baker, Charlie, and Dog
Wandering Shepherd | Joe Crookston | Able, Baker, Charlie, and Dog
Come Home | Amy Fradon | Passion Angels
Geodes | Carrie Newcomer | The Geography of Light
Potter's Wheel | Freyda Epstein and Acoustic AttaTude | Midnight at Cabbell Hall
I Remember Loving You | Tom Paxton | Singing through the Hard Times - A Tribute to Utah Phillips
Pilgrim's Progress | Kris Kristofferson | This Old Road
Help Me Make it Through the Night | John Doe and the Sadies | Country Club
See the Way | The Flatlanders | Wheels of Fortune
Paperback Romance | Jefferson Pepper | American Evolution
Freight Train | Chet Atkins | The Essential Chet Atkins
Ambidextrous March | Sam Mitchell | Bottleneck/Slide Guitar
Never Tired | Luke Winslow-King | Old/New Baby
Why Did the Mouse Marry the Elephant | David Grisman Quartet | Dawgnation
The Sutra (Comma) Minnesota Polka | Bill and Kate Isles | Matching Baggage
Pushing Spring | Lou and Peter Berryman | Double Yodel
Get up Jack, John, Sit Down | Miss Thornton’s | Dan Milner | Irish Pirate Ballads
The Lowlands Low | Dan Milner | Irish Pirate Ballads
Coney Island Baby | Schooner Fare | The First Ten Years
Cape St. Mary's | Schooner Fare | The First Ten Years
The Moonshiner | Dave Rowe | Big Shoes
Drunken Sailor | Dave Rowe Trio | Three’s a Charm

Best CDs, March 2009

Of the CD's that came in to WRPI in March, 2009, my favorites were

Irish Pirate Ballads by Dan Milner and Friends
Matching Baggage by Bill and Kate Isles
Three's a Charm by the Dave Rowe Trio

We got the three Dave Rowe CDs because he played in the area in March, and of the three, I liked Three's a Charm best. The reasons I liked it best of the three were because it emphasizes seafaring songs more than the others, and because it's a live album. The spoken introductions to songs and the audience participation both enhanced the album. In the spoken introductions, I especially enjoyed hearing Dave Rowe's Maine accent, which is not ever-present, but rather, something which he slides in and out of.

In the vein of Three's a Charm, Irish Pirate Ballads had a lot of rousing seafaring songs.
Bill and Kate Isles are mellower than the others on the list. They have strong lyrics, strong voices, and strong instruments.