Last year, John Cohen passed away. While some remember him best as a musician and founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers he was also a musicologist, photographer and filmmaker. Published before he passed, Speed Bumps on a Dirt Road subtitled When Old Time Music Met Bluegrass focussed on a period when musicians, in response to commercialisation and pop, began to look to the music of the past for inspiration. It’s arguable that we may now be in a similar movement of response, as artists turn to the past for inspiration and reinterpretation, shaped by their perception of the world of today and offering more than just surface music.
A lot of those artists, possibly shaped by my own musical bias, seem to hail from the US and Ireland. One such singer, an American now living in Ireland, is Cinder Well, the brainchild of singer and multi-instrumentalist Amelia Baker. We recently shared the news of her new album ‘No Summer’ set for release on Free Dirt Records on July 24th.
Taken from the album, Baker, looks to the past with ‘Wandering Boy’ which you can hear below. A song that came to her via Cohen’s work. One of his most remarkable photobooks was The High & Lonesome Sound: The Legacy of Roscoe Holcomb. This weighty tome documents the time he spent with the American singer, banjo and guitar player Holcomb. He not only captured Holcomb touring and appearing in public but also with his family and friends. Throughout the book, he also documents the East Kentucky community around them, from miners to church-goers. The book came with two discs containing audio recordings and a film which clearly left an impression on Baker.
She tells us “I first heard this song from Roscoe Holcomb, in a documentary by John Cohen called “The High Lonesome Sound: Kentucky Mountain Music”. It’s all shot in 16mm film, and the last scene has Roscoe Holcomb singing this song, sitting with his iconic hat and glasses, with a Baptist Hymnbook in his weathered hands. I amended the last verse of Roscoe’s version and wrote my own — to be a little less god-like.”
Yesterday evening she also shared: “Back in the olden days when touring existed, myself and my bandmates (Mae Kessler and Marit Schmidt) sang this in unison as the opening of our set. It still feels relevant and grounding as I am, like in the lyrics, “far from home” – in this strange lockdown time.”
This is the new high lonesome for a modern era…
As I travel this wide world over
friends I find, wherever I roam
still to me there’s none like mother
none like mother dear at home
they may treat me very kindly
bid me welcome everywhere
but it just only reminds me
of a loving mother’s care
I remember well how mother
used to slew the slightest pain
with her tender words and kisses
she’d soon make me well again
Mother would thou have me though I roam
protect me when I am far from home
“Wandering Boy” from Cinder Well’s upcoming record ‘No Summer’ to be released July 24th on Free Dirt Records. Video by Dan MacDonald Studios. Pre-order: https://lnk.to/nosummer
Photo Credit: Jim Ghedi