Dave Arthur – Someone to Love You
Rattle On The Stovepipe – Through the Woods
Both Available via Wildgoose Now
“These two albums belong together like bookends” – the intention being that they’re reviewed together too. Fair comment, as it happens, for they are truly complementary.
Taking the title by Dave Arthur first: it’s a compilation of sorts, spanning the 15+ years of Dave’s tenure with the band he himself founded back in the early noughties, Rattle On The Stovepipe. The original idea was to put together a compilation just for Dave’s family and friends as a Christmas present, but when Wildgoose label boss Doug Bailey revisited the master tapes he was struck anew by their quality and he and Dave decided the compilation would benefit from a wider audience who might hitherto not have heard the tracks, particularly some of them from the early band CDs which were no longer available.
The history goes that Dave (whom many will remember as half of the well-regarded folk duo with his then-wife Toni) became, maybe shortly after meeting Jeff Davis in the 70s, increasingly interested in the crossover of songs and tunes between Britain and the Appalachians; this eventually led, via the making of his nominally-solo Return Journey album, to his founding the old-timey string-band Rattle On The Stovepipe with fellow old-time enthusiasts Pete Cooper (fiddle) and Chris Morton (banjo). (After their 2006 album Eight More Miles, Chris left due to logistical problems associated with long-distance rehearsing, and his place was taken by banjoist Dan Stewart.)
Dave’s enthusiastic and authentic recreations of old-timey repertoire (with the occasional excursion into English traditional song) often uniquely incorporate rewrites of the original lyrics, to good effect. Most of all, though, they’re characterised by the winning combination of genuine empathy for the idiom and keen musicianship, but also by the sense of true good-time music-making that spills over into and back from his fellow-musicians. Listening again to the tracks assembled here, I too was struck by these qualities – as I feel sure you also will be.
The 16 tracks gathered together on this compilation represent a (necessarily personal) selection of Dave’s own favourite songs that he’s sung with the band – and obviously cannot tire of! They’re sourced fairly evenly from five of the six original album releases: with two apiece from Return Journey (2003), Eight More Miles (2006) and Old Virginia (2014), four from No Use In Cryin’ (2009) and six from the penultimate-most recent, 2017’s Poor Ellen Smith (which as it happens is probably also my favourite Rattle collection). Memorable cuts include Dick Connette’s song Dillard Chandler (which is based on the words of the North Carolina ballad singer), the murder ballad of Poor Ellen Smith, the Cecil Sharp-collected cautionary tale The Devil’s In The Girl and the strange and enigmatic but driving, storming Dead Heads And Suckers. Dave’s intriguing narrative restyling of the whaling shanty Blood Red Roses is also of considerable interest. The whole collection hangs together most credibly, and I can well appreciate why these particular songs ride high in Dave’s own affections to this day.
Actually, to my mind, the band’s very latest offering Through The Woods is possibly even finer than their previous albums – but then I’m biased, having followed the threesome’s recordings avidly through the years. Whereas Dave’s compilation tends to emphasise the consistency and continuity of vision of the outfit, Through The Woods both maintains that enviable freshness and consolidates the portrait of three musicians completely at home with their music and intent on taking it forward with ongoing relevance for our troubled times while at all times retaining that all-important authenticity of expression. It contains a generous mix of familiar and unfamiliar titles, not all necessarily from the acknowledged old-timey corpus. Social activist Si Kahn’s iconic composition Gone, Gonna Rise Again (with lead vocal by Pete) is especially well-turned here and proves a disc highlight, while Dave’s personal take on the impressionistic paddle-steamer-race tale Boat’s Up The River (learnt from Jerry Epstein) is very persuasive, as is his own excellent composition Hungry Cotton Mill Blues. The ocean-crossing minstrel-song Old Bob Ridley, we discover from the comprehensive liner notes, has a particularly complex lineage which embraces Alfred Williams, Bert Lloyd and Sam Larner (and even Turpin Hero), while the jauntier album closer Old Hannah has been put together by Dave from versions of two slave/prison songs.
I’m glad too that room has been found to include Mama Went To Arkansas, a powerful song that works on different levels, which Dave first learnt from singer-songwriter Tom Ovans and then added three verses of his own. The whole threesome rattles that ol’ stovepipe suitably fiercely on the old Skillet Lickers classic Hell Broke Loose In Georgia, complete with some wild and wilful percussion from Dave; the disc’s other three instrumental cuts are equally spirited, ranging from a “raggy” tripartite medley and a delicious pair of Kentucky fiddle tunes to the altogether gentler dance tune Cora Dye. And even Lakes Of Ponchartrain (very likely the most familiar song on the album) emerges from Pete’s new Rattle rendition sounding surprisingly fresh even in its illustrious company.
Presentation of both albums is well up to the usual high WildGoose standard, with wonderfully informative booklet notes throughout. One point that puzzled me initially, though, was the statement that Through The Woods is the band’s seventh album. Then I remembered that Return Journey, though credited to Dave himself, was in effect the band’s debut recording and that there’d also been a further CD (So Far So Good) which had compiled the best tracks from the two earliest albums Return Journey and Eight More Miles (both of which are now out of print anyway)… so, mystery solved (to my relief)!
Anyone who for whatever reason hasn’t yet experienced the delights of Rattle On The Stovepipe is really missing out – so needs to purchase both of the above albums for sure.
http://www.petecooper.com/rattle.htm
Photo Credit: Wildgoose