I have a confession to make, although it might not be much of a revelation. Most have you probably guessed it a while back, but I'm a folkie. Oh sure I shaved my head in the late seventies and early eighties, listened to The Clash, and called myself a punk. But I must have been one of the only shaved heads in attendance at the Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie concert at the Ontario Place Forum in the summer of 1980.
The only relief I had from classical music being shoved down my throat at home as a kid was to listen to my parent's collection of The Weavers, Pete Seeger, and Talking Union albums. Pride of place was of course given to Songs of the Lincoln Brigade, a collection of songs from the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.
Maybe it was because the majority of the songs were in English and sung so they could be comprehended, or the fact they were played on instruments no more complicated than a guitar made them appealing. But the fact remains that I've listened to folk music through all the different fads popular music and I have gone through. It was like a constant friend who I could be sure of when everyone else was just a little too screwed up to make sense or offer any comfort.
So it goes without saying when I saw there was a third generation of Guthries striking out on her own, following in Arlo and Woody's footsteps, I was intrigued and wanted to hear some of her music. Sarah Lee Guthrie performs in a duo comprised of herself and her husband Johnny Irion. Their most recent release was 2005's Exploration. The good folks over at New West Records were kind enough to send me along a copy of the CD so I could give it a listen and tell you about it.
I'm having a hard time staying focused on the disc, I keep wanting to circle away from it whenever I get close, and talk about things like folk music, blah de blah etc. etc. Every time I walk up and approach mentioning it I feel like a career single "A" player stepping up to home plate, with Roger Clemons on the mound, totally unprepared for the task at hand.
Just jumping out over the plate and saying holy shit their great before losing consciousness from having my brains being splattered all over the backstop by a 100mph fastball doesn't really constitute an effort. So I'm going to go down swinging trying to tell you why you're life will be so much better if you own this CD.
I could tell you how incredible their voices work together in harmony; that they are so seamless on occasion you can't tell which voice belongs to which person as they twine in around each other like a closely knit vine wrapping itself around the trunk of a tree. Or that her voice soars in the stratosphere, it makes you think of the wind in the treetops that doesn't come down to earth but you know it's there by the way the trees bend before it. But it can also plummet back down to earth in the blink of an eye and leave you guessing at where she's been and what she's seen only to have her tell you all about it in the next line.
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