This week’s Lost in Transmission series features Valerie June, Michael Kiwanuka, Curtis Harding, Leyla McCalla, Allison Russell, Tasha, Bettye Swann, Sabine McCalla, Angeline Morrison, Sunny War, Rhiannon Giddens & Francesco Turrisi, Buffalo Nichols, Benjamin Clementine, Kaia Kater, The Ebony Hillbillies and Tré Burt.
Playlist
Valerie June – Twined & Twisted
Michael Kiwanuka – I’m Getting Ready
Curtis Harding – Hopeful
Leyla McCalla – You Don’t Know Me
Allison Russell – Nightflyer
Tasha – History
Bettye Swann – Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye
Sabine McCalla – Save My Soul
Angeline Morrison – The Well Below The Valley
Sunny War – With the Sun
Lady Nade – Heart of Mine (Acoustic)
Rhiannon Giddens & Francesco Turrisi – Gonna Write Me A Letter
Buffalo Nichols – Living Hell
Benjamin Clementine – London
Kaia Kater – Fine Times at Our House
The Ebony Hillbillies – Liza Jane
Tré Burt – What Good
Playlist Notes
We open with the unmistakable vocals of native Tennessean Valerie June with a track from her Concord debut, ‘Against a Stone’, which was released in 2013 and produced by Kevin Agunas and Dan Auerbach (Black Keys). The album is still groundbreakingly fresh and remarkable, incorporating a mass of influences spanning jazz to Appalachian folk and southern blues and gospel. She had quite a cast on board for this one, including Booker T. Jones on organ, the late Richard Swift on various instruments including drums, keyboard, Wurlitzer and Jimbo Mathus on mandolin and guitar, with them all contributing backing vocals.
A few years before, the soulful sounding Michael Kiwanuka Mercury Prize-nominated debut Home Again was released. Like June, he drew on a range of influences both from his Ugandan heritage and folk and R&B, which saw him compared to Curtis Mayfield and even Van Morrison.
Also channelling classic soul and R&B are the passionate vocals of Curtis Harding. Hopeful is taken from his more psych-informed If Words Were Flowers (2021), a boundary-pushing album that leans as much to the funk and soul of the past as it does to the present.
You Don’t Know Me is from Leyla McCalla‘s latest album ‘Breaking the Thermometer’, which we reviewed here. The track is one of the album’s few English-language songs and is a cover of a song by Brazilian singer and composer Caetano Veloso.
Nightflyer is from Montreal native Allison Russell‘s (Our Native Daughters, Birds of Chicago) solo debut Outside Child (2021). You can read a live review of her gig at the Listening Room in Grand Rapids, Michigan here. It’s a powerful and candid album that takes the listener on a journey that covers her “persistent physical, sexual, and emotional abuse at the hands of her stepfather from early childhood through the age of 15 when, understanding that, one way or another, staying would kill her, she left her family’s Canadian home and struck out on her own.”
Tasha is a Chicago-based artist I came across this week, and ‘History’ is taken from her recent second album, Tell Me What You Miss The Most. The album notes are spot on – Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Tasha is a musician who writes songs that take loving and longing seriously. Whether dwelling in the sad thrum of an impending break up or the dizzying, heart-thumping waltz of new infatuation, here is an album that traces one artist’s relationship to herself in love. Full of deep, invigorating inhales and relieved, joyful exhales, Tell Me What You Miss The Most is an exquisitely crafted breath of much-needed air.
The oldest track in the playlist comes from soul singer Bettye Swann who had a hit song in 1967 with Make Me Yours. The track here, Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye, is taken from an eponymous compilation album which is taken from her 1969 album The Soul View Now!
In case you are wondering, Sabine McCalla, who is from New Orleans, is the younger sister of Leyla McCalla (also featured in the playlist). This is from her debut EP ‘folk’ released in 2018 and available on Bandcamp here.
Angeline Morrison provides the freshest track in the playlist, taken from The Brown Girls and Other Folk Songs, released this month and available via Bandcamp here. On this track, The Well Below The Valley, she says:
The famous Planxty version was my first experience of this intriguing ballad, and it has stayed with me. This ballad is very ancient, with early Scandinavian versions where the woman does penance in the wilderness for many years. Apparently, it was not collected orally in the UK or Ireland until Tom Munnelly heard it sung by John Reilly in Boyle, Co. Roscommon. In this version, the woman seems to hold her hands up to the accusation of infanticide – but where incest is concerned, she is clear about her innocence.
The Sunny War track is not from her latest album, Simple Syrup but from her 2018 release With the Sun, which saw her broadening her sound from her more folk-blues earlier releases. We premiered a track from this album here, and her unique voice stayed with me long after. This was part of the Bio we included for that premiere:
As a young black girl growing up in Nashville, she searched for her own roots, looking first to the blues she heard from her mother’s boyfriend, and learning from a local guitarist. Moving to Los Angeles in her teens, she searched for herself in the LA punk scene, playing house shows with FIDLAR, and shoplifting DVDs from big box stores to trade at Amoeba Records for 80s punk albums. But here too she found herself on the outside, working to bridge her foundation in country blues and American roots guitar traditions with the punk scene she called home. She first made her name with this work, bringing a wickedly virtuosic touch on the fingerstyle guitar that sprang from her own self-discoveries on the instrument. But her restless spirit, a byproduct of growing up semi-nomadic with a single mother, led her to Venice Beach, California, where she’s been grinding the pavement for some years now, making a name for her prodigious guitar work and incisive songwriting, which touches on everything from police violence to alcoholism to love found and lost.
Bristol-based artist Lady Nade is another Folk Radio favourite. This is one of my favourite singles that she released in 2019. She has one of the most unique voices, stacked with emotion and beautifully warm and tender. Her latest album, Willing, reviewed here, knocked the ball out of the park.
Together, Rhiannon Giddens & Francesco Turrisi are a fascinating duo that sounds both contemporary and ancient, thanks to the banjo and frame drum combo. Gonna Write Me A Letter is taken from their 2019 album There is No Other. In his review, Matt McGinn says, “Gonna Write me a Letter is an old tune of Ola Belle Reed, someone that Giddens must respect enormously. Both exceptional banjoists, storytellers and owners of incredibly strong and pure vocals. The sound opens up here with the help of Kate Ellis on cello. An exceptional musician, and with fans ranging from Bobby McFerrin to Steve Reich, she fortifies certain songs throughout the album.” He concludes the review: “This is music at its most honest and primal, you can almost feel the walls of the studio shaking. Producer Joe Henry’s touch is invisible, which is why he’s one of the greats. Giddens must be a sponge, able to soak up music and song from all over the world but what is beyond me is how she still delivers in a way that is pure and true to her roots. Rhiannon Giddens is the absolute real deal and so is this album.”
Buffalo Nichols is a new name to these pages. Hailing from Houston, Texas. his Bio opens: Since his earliest infatuations with guitar, Buffalo Nichols has asked himself the same question: How can I bring the blues of the past into the future? After cutting his teeth between a Baptist church and bars in Milwaukee, it was a globetrotting trip through West Africa and Europe during a creative down period that began to reveal the answer.
“Part of my intent, making myself more comfortable with this release, is putting more Black stories into the genres of folk and blues,” guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist Carl “Buffalo” Nichols explains. “Listening to this record, I want more Black people to hear themselves in this music that is truly theirs.” That desire is embodied in his self-titled debut album—Fat Possum’s first solo blues signing in nearly 20 years—composed largely of demos and studio sessions recorded between Wisconsin and Texas. This is a name I will continue to return to – definitely a name to watch for. Find out more here.
Another new name to these pages is pianist and dramatic singer Benjamin Clementine who moved from London to Paris on his 20th birthday, where he supported himself through busking and developed a unique style which saw him compared to Nina Simone. He soon caught the attention of an agent, and the rest is history. The track here is from his 2015 debut album, At least For Now.
Again, I found myself going back to earlier records on some of the artists in this list, and Kaia Kater was no exception. Her Nine Pin album was my first introduction to her music in 2016 and was Featured Album of the Month, which we reviewed here. As Helen said in her review of ‘Fine Times at Our House: “The instrumental arrangement of the traditional ‘Fine Times at Our House’ is entirely in keeping with the album’s themes; attributed to the West Virginia fiddler Edwin ‘Edden’ Hammons, whose family, collectively, exerted a huge influence on what’s now termed old-time music. It spotlights not only Chris Bartos’ mastery of the 5-string fiddle but also Kaia’s own skills as a banjo player.”
The Ebony Hillbillies are an Old Time Stringband from NYC where they leapt from street corner performers to the TV and Carnegie Hall. They call themselves the last African-American String Band in America and were founded by Henrique Prince in the 1980s – he wanted to make “music African Americans used to perform and dance to before they found the blues and jazz and the other stuff became associated with grizzled mountain white guys”.
The playlist closes out on Sacramento singer-songwriter Tré Burt‘s ‘What Good’ from his 2020 album ‘Caught it in the Rye’. Burt made a big impression on John Prine, who signed him to his Oh Boy Records label. We reviewed his 2021 album You, Yeah, You here. “Burt’s album possesses a raw, heart-rending sound, one that will thoroughly absorb you. Prine would be proud.”