SPOTLIGHT: Bound To Go

This Spotlight is on an album and not one individual artist or group. Andrew Calhoun is a singer/songwriter that was born in 1957. He founded Waterbug Records as artists' cooperative label specializing in great songwriters and traditional folk musicians who do original research in 1992.

Recently he released Bound To Go, an album of 35 songs from the African American folk tradition. This album includes spirituals, prison ballads, shout songs from the Sea Islands and rare folk songs. Calhoun says in the booklet accompanying the cd:

Folk songs carry the emotional truth of our history. People speak of the African American folk songs and spirituals as "roots of the blues" or "roots of gospel," but they are more than that. They are the roots and branches together, joined with the sound of the Maker's breath in the leaves of the Tree of Life.

This album finds songs that may have never been recorded, or has not been heard for years if not decades. The song "Run To Jesus" is the song that gave Frederick Douglass the idea of escaping from slavery.

He makes a case in the booklet that these spirituals were not simply songs about Heaven, but that the Heavenly Home may have been about the slave's home land of Africa. He gives the history of the songs as he can find. Did you know that "Michael, Row The Boat Ashore" was a rowing song from the Sea Islands sung as a prayer for safe passage addressed to the archangel.

This is a fascinating album of music and history. His research casts a new light on these songs. An added word has to be said about the packaging. This album is an amazing package as much for the looks as the music. The cover is a painting by the Gullah artist Jonathan Green called "White Scarf." For those who think that a cd's cover can't be art, they need to look at this cd and they'll discover they are wrong. Everything on this project is a class act from the cover to the packaging to the music.

Like the collection Song of America this album is an important historical document, highlighting parts of our history that are sometimes forgotten. But it doesn't mean that it isn't entertaining also, the songs on this album are full of life and sung from the heart.

"Run To Jesus"


"Bound To Go"

Song of America

This week’s Voices to Hear is going to be a bit different than pervious ones. Instead of one voice to highlight in this week’s column we’re going to talk about an entire album’s worth of voices. The album is Song of America and it features 50 artists different artists. (What? You didn’t think an album would have a MySpace page? Everyone and everything has a MySpace page nowdays.)

If you’ve heard of this album at all it’s due to the identity of the executive producer of the record, Janet Reno. Yes, that Janet Reno, the former Attorney General of the United States. Most of the press has focused on that point, which at least gives it a chance to get out there and maybe be heard.

The genesis of the album started ten years ago when Ed Petterson, a singer-songwriter from Brooklyn New York wrote a song about the American cowboy. He brought the song to his Aunt to listen to. His Aunt just happened to be Janet Reno. She liked the song, but suggested that he should go farther than just one song about one point in America’s history. She suggested that he record a collection of songs that would reflect American’s history.

What they ended up envisioning was a collection of songs that would trace the events that shaped our nation’s history. The album became a collection that could be used as a tool to help teach the youth of our country about their history through song. The album was divided into five broad themes from America’s history:

United We Stand, Divided We Fall
War and Peace
Work
Families at Home and on the Move
Faith and Ideals

The performers interpreted these songs in their own style for the listeners of today. In some ways it was the same idea that was behind Wilco and Billy Bragg’s updating of Woody Guthrie song’s from Mermaid Avenue. They took the words but made the music their own.

The performers came from all sorts of musical genres. The album opens with a Lakota Indian song and ends with a Woody Guthrie song. To list all the performers on this album would stretch this column out too long, but such performers as The Blind Boys of Alabama, John Wesley Harding, Freedy Johnston, Marah, Janis Ian, Elizabeth Cook, John Mellencamp, Old Crow Medicine Show and a host of others. In keeping with the theme of this column almost all of the performers were not well known. John Mellencamp is probably the biggest name on the album.

The album is divided into three cds: red, white and blue. The red disc starts with songs from the American Revolution and each disc moves the songs through the history of our country. Some of the songs on these two discs you’ve probably heard a million times and may not have thought of since you were in school. Harper Simon (Paul Simon’s son) does a version of Yankee Doodle, The Mavericks do Dixie, Joni Harms does Home On The Range. The blue disc brings us up to the modern era and has songs that most listeners will be more familiar with, at least from radio. This disc has Kim Richey doing the Rascals “Get Together,” Anthony David doing Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On?” Martha Wainwright doing Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman.” Only one artist is represented by two songs on the album, Bruce Springsteen: Matthew Ryan does “Youngstown” and Bettye LaVette does “Streets of Philadelphia.”

This is one of those albums that I was absolutely fascinated with, after listening to it it will make you proud to be an American. And it does it without resorting to the sort of jingo posturing you usually find in these type of projects.

As one final note, with the kind permission of Miss Heather, I’m going to include two songs with this column. There was so much great stuff to chose from it was a really tough decision, but I went with both ends of the timeline. The first song is Harper Simon’s “Yankee Doodle” and the second song is a heart breaking rendition of Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia” by Bettye LaVette. But I could have easily picked any of the other forty eight songs to showcase, they’re all that good.


Harper Simon "Yankee Doddle Dandy"


Bettye Lavette "Streets of Philadelphia"