Three performers explore riches of the Folkways song archive
It’s 70 years ago this year since Moses Asch founded Folkways Records in New York, and just over 30 years since the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., took over the amazing archive of folk and world music. Asch would be glad to know that many of the songs he travelled the world to record still live on, even if some of the artists singing them aren’t always so familiar with the label.
For West Virginia singer, fiddle and banjo player Rachel Eddy, it was more about absorbing the songs first hand.
“When I was contacted (to participate), I had only a peripheral knowledge of the Folkways collection. I’ve always learned music from other people versus recordings, but many of them have been inspired by the artists in the collection. As I looked through the music, I realized how much repertoire I was already familiar with just by being a musician in different folk circles.”
Minneapolis-based Rachel Ries — now using the stage name Her Crooked Heart — admits she didn’t know much about the label either
until recently. She only began to learn vintage material when she was invited to tour with Jayme Stone’s Lomax Project (which appeared at the Arden Theatre) in 2016. But some of those traditional folk songs resonated in her soul.
“When I started playing guitar, I was interested in making my own new songs, in expressing myself, but when I was asked to sub with Jamie Stone, I decided to challenge myself to learn some of these traditional tunes and I loved it. If you dive in deep enough, the song can inhabit you. It becomes part of you, and whenever there’s spirituality and harmony, that’s what I was raised on.”
Edmonton has enjoyed its own tie to the Folkways archive thanks to the recording collection that Michael Asch (Moses’ son) donated to the University of Alberta in the 1980s, and the subsequent archive, now the Sound Studies Initiative office, that was established at the UofA.
U.S. singers Eddy and Ries and Edmonton songwriter Dana Wylie gather Saturday when Sound Studies and Northern Lights Folk Club co-sponsor the ninth annual Women of Folkways concert.
The three singers will each perform favourites from the Folkways archive, along with a few original numbers, alternately leading or supporting each other.
Eddy is also featured in a conversation dubbed Appalachian Inspiration at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Sound Studies Initiative, Room 3-47 of the Old Arts Building on the U of A campus.
Eddy’s talk will explore her history and expertise with the folk tradition known as old-time (or sometimes old-tyme) music, centred around the Appalachian region, which is at the heart of bluegrass music. She credits Folkways recordings from Clark Kessinger, Roscoe Holcomb, Pete Seeger and Ola Belle Reed for playing an indirect influence on her career. After spending five years in Sweden, she’s back at home, much in demand for clinics, and working on what will be her third album.
Ries’ story began in a Mennonite colony in South Dakota, with a four-year detour during her toddler years to Zaire (now Congo) in Central Africa where her parents were missionaries. She recalls music and choir were important, especially with gospel and spirituals on Sundays.
“I think that upbringing instilled the sense of music as a powerful means of expressing all things, be that worship or a way to connect with others, or how you express your pain, fear and gratitude. I learned how much of that can be captured and shared in song, and how much of a unifying expression song and voices can be.”
Ries was 12 when she first started writing songs, but got serious during “the angst years” of her mid-teens after hearing the likes of Nick Drake and REM. After learning to fingerpick acoustic, classical and eventually play electric guitar, she was performing at open mic shows by senior high. She put out her first album For You Only in 2005, and has released three albums and three EPs, leaning as much to rock as folk music. Playing guitar and keyboards, she has recorded her next record, To Love To Leave To Live, for release later this year.
Ries says her songwriting has changed over the “hard winding path” of recent years, which included divorce and a bout with depression.
“I asked myself, what can I do with this well of emotion. I’m writing fewer love songs now, and more about the bigger picture of humanity.”
Wylie was featured in these pages last October for her latest release, The Earth That You’re Made Of. Since then the album has charted locally and nationally on folk-roots charts and the singer was shortlisted for the 2017 Edmonton Music Prize.