Gord’s Gold 1: Welcome My Gentle Listeners. Don’t ever let anyone get away with saying that there’s no good music being made or how much better things used to be. On today’s show four of the artists are new to me. This first set has two such artists followed by classics that their song reminds me of. We’ll start with Beth Snapp of Johnson City Tennessee. She’s a healthcare worker and in 2020 had to put all her efforts into her job in the COVID unit. Now she’s back with a new single, I Thought of You. It immediately made me think of a song from my youth in the 1960s. We’re not going to hear the hit version but the original by the songwriter.
Beth Snapp – I Thought of You
John Hartford – Gentle On My Mind
Sherry Cothran – Ain’t Gonna Lay
Sister Rosetta Tharpe – Cain’t No Grave Hold My Body Down
Gord’s Gold 2: Did I Thought of You invoke Gentle On My Mind? That’s how it affected my mind, though it did it gently. We heard John Hartford’s original rendition. Then we heard Sherry Cothran’s Ain’t Gonna Lay. Sherry went from founding member of the Evinrudes, who had a number one hit with Drive Me Home, to Divinity School, to being a preacher, and now she’s back making music, good music. Did that song remind you of anything? How about Cain’t No Grave Hold My Body Down by Sister Rosetta Tharpe?
Now on to the first of three couples that sent me new music, the transatlantic The Whispering Tree, El Kleiner and Elie Brangbour. Elie is from France but now they live in Beacon New York. Kleiner just recently started calling themselves El, thus revealing their Kryptonian origin. I always knew they were super. Their new album is Bones of Better Days. Let’s hear the song that sets the theme for this set, Born Again.
The Whispering Tree – Born Again
Slaid Cleaves – This Morning I Am Born Again
We’re About 9 – Born Again
Bela Fleck & Abigail Washburn – And Am I Born to Die
Gord’s Gold 3: After The Whispering Tree’s Born again we heard Slaid Cleaves sing This Morning I Am Born Again. Slaid put music to a Woody Guthrie’s unrecorded lyrics. Nora Guthrie, Woody’s daughter let contemporary songwriters put his unpublished lyrics to music. Then we heard the unmistakable We’re About 9 sing Born Again. Who but Brian Gundersdorf would write about coming back as a parking spot. We finished with married banjo virtuosi Bela Fleck & Abigail Washburn playing And Am I Born to Die.
Now on to the other couple with a new album, The Young Novelists, Graydon James and Laura Spink. They have a band on the record, but they tour as a duo when they come to the US, they are Canadian. Let’s listen to I Don’t Want You to Go Away from their new album, These Dark Canyons.
The Young Novelists – I Don’t Want You to Go Away
Caroline Cotter – Gone Away
Oliver the Crow – One Night Standing
Meghan Clarisse – The Ghost of California
Gord’s Gold 4: After I Don’t Want You to Go Away, we heard Gone Away by Caroline Cotter. She gets to live just a stone’s throw from the beautiful Acadia National Park in Maine. Next, we heard the third romantic and second international couple on the show, Oliver the Crow, cellist Kaitlyn Raitz and fiddler Ben Plotnick. Kaitlyn is from Long Island and Ben from Calgary Alberta, they now live in Nashville. One Night Standing is an advance single from their upcoming album A Feather in a Hurricane. It’s produced by Anthony da Costa who I met when he was a 16-year-old singer/songwriter from Pleasantville NY. He still writes but he’s also one of the most in demand guitarists in Nashville and of course a producer. I met him 17 or 18 years ago and I still think of him as a kid. I can’t believe he’s an old married man now. We finished with The Ghost of California by Meghan Clarisse, a singer/songwriter from Colorado.
Not long after I met Anthony da Costa, he introduced me to John Elliott who immediately blew me away. John has a new album out and we’re going to hear the title track, I’m John Meyer. That’s all you need to know, the song explains the rest.
John Elliott – I Am John Mayer
George Mann & Mick Coates – For the West
Cole Quest and the City Pickers – Pastures of Plenty
Gord’s Gold 5: After John Elliott, or is that John Meyer? we heard George Mann & Mick Coates sing For the West. Mann is a former union organizer from Ithaca New York and Coates is from Maldon Victoria, Australia. That’s about as far flung as a duo can be. They met at the Maldon Folk Festival and recorded the album in the states. After listening to the song, I found myself singing Woody Guthrie’s Pastures of Plenty, so we finished with the just released version by Woody’s grandson’s band, Cole Quest and the City Pickers. I knew Cole for months before I discovered he was Woody’s Grandson. He doesn’t try and ride his coattails.
Wise Madness 