In the Le Tigre song Hot Topic, Alice Gerrard’s name appears between trans pioneer and jazz bandleader Billy Tipton and Vaginal Davis, an intersex performance artist and activist. This alone is enough to cement her legacy as a pillar of American countercultural history, but a quick glance through her back catalogue reveals an artist of fierce conviction, political relevance and impressive longevity.
She is perhaps best known for her work with Hazel Dickens (also namechecked in that Le Tigre song), a musical partnership that began in the mid-sixties and was characterised by its strikingly feminist, pro-union, anti-racist outlook, a brave stance in an America still in the long shadow of McCarthy and Jim Crow. There have been other collaborations, notably with Mike Seeger and Matokie Slaughter, as well as a handful of excellent solo albums. The most recent of these, the Grammy-nominated Follow the Music, was released by Tompkins Square in 2014 and contained some of her best work. It’s a career path that mirrors that of English folk icon Shirley Collins, whose resurgence has produced some of the most remarkable music of the last few years, and, like Collins, Gerrard is an artist who works entirely on her own terms and to her own timescale.
The nine-year gap between albums has given Gerrard time to collate a set of highly original, delightfully idiosyncratic songs. Most of Sun To Sun was written during and after the Covid pandemic, and there is a palpable sense of release in these songs, a sense of joy at being able to make music with friends after a long period of isolation. Her voice is still powerful and sounds much sprightlier than her eighty-nine years. More importantly, her political ire remains undimmed. The title track is a scathing indictment of America’s obsession with guns. Musically, Gerrard remains close to her old-time roots: the banjo playing of Reed Stutz and Gail Gillespie is prevalent, alongside Tatiana Hargreaves’ fiddle, but there is a fullness to the sound that rests on Gerrard’s own softly-strummed acoustic guitar and the upright bass of Hasee Ciacco.
Gerrard has earned the right to look back at her long life in her lyrics, and she does so with a keen eye that keeps her just the right side of nostalgia. In My Young Days is a gentle, personal and admirably clear-eyed evocation of youth and If I Could See Your Face Once More – written about a beloved cousin who died in the pandemic – is bathed in a kind of golden-age glow which Gerrard’s voice cuts through: she is seemingly able to bring a no-nonsense, unsentimental presence to any song.
The a cappella How Can I Keep From Fishing (a parody of the Quaker hymn How Can I Keep From Singing) is a succinct, hearty celebration of a peaceful existence, while Keep It Off The Seat is a raucous, righteous and genuinely funny takedown of North Carolina’s trans-exclusionary ‘bathroom bill’. Winding Road showcases fiddle, banjo and DeShawn Hickman’s wonderful pedal steel; You And Me is a tender, generous-spirited love song that doesn’t shy away from the difficult side of relationships, and Old Jim Crow provides a stark warning about repeating the mistakes of the past.
Despite the seriousness of its subjects, wit and warmth pervade every minute of Sun To Sun, from the lighthearted How Now Brown Cow and the brisk, banjo and fiddle-led instrumental December Daisy to the heart-stirring harmonies of Remember Us. It’s an album that acts both as a tonic and a kick in the pants: it reminds us of the enduring place of protest in folk music but also of the importance of humour and heart in life as well as in art. Sun To Sun is a career-high from a musician who has helped shape the landscape of American folk music.
Order Sun to Sun: https://alicegerrard.bandcamp.com/album/sun-to-sun