Under the Earth I go,
On the oak leaf I stand.
I ride on the filly
That was never foaled,
And I carry the dead in my handScots trad
If Reynard didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent him. Or so I said while enjoying a rather spectacular Two Ravens Stout. He went to say that ‘He’s a singular force, and we’ve lucky to have him. He showed up here about a decade after I did with a travelling bag and pulled a concertina from that bag and started playing. Bloody good he was.
What endeared him was not his music but that he noticed we were decidedly short-handed behind the bar and said he had more than a bit of experience tending bar. So the staff there said ‘Sure, come help us.’ He worked ten hours from early evening to the wee hours. Smiling, not looking harried and pleasant as well. Made sure everyone was treated right too, a neat ability as we were slammed by having a wedding that afternoon.
Our Pub Manager was from the Border area that Reynard was from and they had friends in common, so she hired him on the spot: he’s worked his way up over the past twenty so years to Pub Manager. Now in his Fifties, he’s been married to Ingrid, our Estonian born Estate Steward for a decade now.
Cat, our Editor in Chief, found a lot to like in Seanan McGuire’s Indexing books: ‘I’m re-listening right now to one of those things that Seanan McGuire does so ever well: she takes a familiar story and make it fresh. … I first read it as novels when they came out some six years ago and then listened to it a few years later. Now being home confined due to three knee surgeries, I’m doing a lot of audiobooks and this was a series I wanted to revisit while working on other things.’
Cat also looked at the urban legend (retold yet again) of a ghost girl asking for a ride home on the anniversary of her death: ‘Seanan McGuire decided to tell her own ghost story in Sparrow Hill Road which, like her novel Indexing, was originally a series of short stories published through The Edge of Propinquity, starting in January of 2010 and ending in December of that year. It appears they’ve been somewhat revised for this telling of her ghostly narrator’s tale but I can’t say how much as I’ve not read the original versions.’
Gary greatly enjoyed Alison Bechdel’s latest comic novel Spent, in which a fictionalized Bechdel lives on a goat rescue farm financed by the proceeds of a streaming TV show based on her debut graphic memoir. ‘Lots of little plot strands keep you turning the pages. But mostly it’s Bechdel’s wry but humane observations about humans and human nature that keep you with her. This version of Alison Bechdel really does live in a Fun House.’
A version of the Tam Lin story is reviewed by Richard as he looks at a Pamela Dean novel: ‘An early part of Terri Windling’s Fairy Tale series, Tam Lin is by far the most ambitious project on the line. The story of Tam Lin is one of the better known ones to escape folklore for the fringes of the mainstream; you’ll find references scuttling about everywhere from old Fairport Convention discs to Christopher Stasheff novels.
There’s danger inherent in mucking about with a story that a great many people know and love in its original form; a single misstep and the hard-core devotees of the classic start howling for blood. Moreover, Dean is not content simply to take the ballad of Tam Lin and transplant it bodily into another setting.’
Gary here. In new music, let’s look at a new release from the Norwegian jazz and improvised music label Hubro. ‘Two of the leading players of alternative pedal steel from Norway and the UK, Geir Sundstøl and Joe Harvey-Whyte, have teamed up to create Langeleik, which flows in a mood-shifting sonic groove largely inspired by Joe Harvey-Whyte’s favorite rivers but also incorporating noirish urban landscapes, field recordings, spoken word and vintage synths.’
I also reviewed a new release of old time music from Olympia, Washington’s Alex Sturbaum, a multi-instrumentalist who is playing button accordion on this album, Windjammer. ‘It all has the down-home feeling of a front porch jam session or a Pacific Northwest contra dance night. Which sometimes is just what you need to hear.’
From the Archives, here’s a review I did for Sleeping Hedgehog. ‘Hook & Anchor is a Portland roots music supergroup of sorts. Claborn, who plays banjo and guitar, is a member of Portland alt-folkers Blind Pilot, Clampitt (electric guitar and pedal steel) has played under a number of nameplates including Clampitt, Power of County and Gaddis & Buck.’
Since I reviewed the new Eric Brace/Thomm Jutz album last time, I dug way back into the archives for a review of Brace’s band Last Train Home’s first record following their move to Nashville. ‘Last Train Home has taken ll major steps forward with its eighth release Last Good Kiss. Not least among the positive changes are a relocation from Washington, D.C., to Nashville, and some lineup adjustments. And for the first time, all the tracks on this release were written by band members.’
If I had a nickel for every singer who’s moved to Austin (or Nashville), made a record or two, then quietly faded away, I’d probably have more money than any of those folks made from their music, unfortunately. One of those who I had high hopes for was Seattle’s Zoe Muth, when I reviewed what seems to have been her last album, World of Strangers.
And finally, Brendan gave an enthusiastic review to the debut self-titled disc from the Tex-Mex super group Los Super Seven. ‘With its regimen of Mexican songs, Los Super Seven evokes the respect and continuation of a certain musical tradition; with its inclusion of Anglo-Americans — both as musicians and as songwriters — it demonstrates a healthy fascination of artistic influence and cross-pollination.’
All songs are stories and Steve Goodman’s ‘City of New Orleans’ is certainly one of the better told ones. As recorded by Arlo Guthrie at a Stanhope, NJ performance on the eighth of August, twenty nine years ago, it tells the melancholy story of a train as it’s headed to New Orleans one night. Arlo, son of Woody as you most likely know, is in particularly fine voice here.
What’s New for the 1st of February: Kage Baker retrospective; new Americana, Buddhist chants and Finnish songs, new and reissued jazz, and more
I was thinking about Kage Baker, who has been gone 15 years the end of last month, so I decided give a selection of the reviews we have done. Of course she was much more than a writer of great speculation fiction, as she was the companion to a space pirate named Harry, a baker of barm brack, very fond of Terry Gilliam and perhaps smitten by Bruce Campbell. English cooking with slabs of meats and desserts made with lots of butter by two fat ladies on a motorcycle with a sidecar cruising the countryside? Oh yes! And finally I must mention that she had a deep love for the early years of Hollywood and the film industry in general.
Cat has a neat work for us: ‘At a mere one hundred and three pages, this is one of the best Robert Heinlein works I’ve ever read. Oops, I meant Kage Baker works. Or did I? Ok, let me reconcile the contradiction I just created (somewhat). The Empress of Mars reads like the best of Heinlein’s short fiction from the golden period of the 1940s and 1950s. It is so good that I’ve no doubt John W. Campbell would’ve published it! It would sit very nicely alongside much of his short fiction such as ‘Blowups Happen’, ‘The Long Watch’, and ‘The Green Hills of Earth’, to name but three classic Heinlein tales. It’s that well-crafted. It’s that entertaining. And it’s that rarest of short works — one that is just the right length.’
Matthew looks at a Kage Baker venture into children’s fiction: ‘In comparison to her other works,’ says he, ‘I would consider The Hotel under the Sand to be one of Kage Baker’s lesser works, but it is still highly enjoyable.’
Matthew also reviews Kage Baker’s Not Less Than Gods, her last Company novel which Kathleen, her sister, told Cat that apparently only she and Kage liked. (Cat says he liked it too.) Matthew says of this novel that ‘Ultimately, this is not going to be considered one of Kage’s strongest works. For someone who is a Company junkie, it is a nice installment, but the newcomer would not understand the novel’s position in the entire series. A lot of “inside” knowledge is required to more fully appreciate the novel.’
Robert brings us a look at two interconnected books by Kage Baker, beginning with Dark Mondays: ‘Baker is an extraordinary storyteller who refuses to let herself be bound by the expectations of genre, as the stories here show. In fact, on the basis of this collection, I think I would just call Baker a slipstream writer and not try to get any closer to a categorization of her work (“slipstream” being the genre that wasn’t, according to some people).’
The second is — well, it’s like this: ‘Kage Baker’s short novel, Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key, is not a sequel so much as a continuation of the adventures of John James, fugitive, sometime pirate, and free-lance muscle, who was introduced in her novella “The Maid on the Shore” in Dark Mondays.’ Robert explains that. Truly.
‘If you know the music of Värttinä you have some idea of what Tuuletar sounds like,’ I note in my review of Tuuletar’s third album Maammo. ‘All four of the women of Tuuletar — Venla Ilona Blom, Sini Koskelainen, Johanna Kyykoski and Piia Säilynoja — sing and do vocal effects and percussion, and Blom does some beatboxing as well.’
I also wrote about Tibet: The Voice Of The Tantra, a new two CD set of an old recording of the Monastery Of Gyütö’s monks. ‘The discs preserve a 1975 recording at the monastery and university of Gyütö performed by the first generation of Tibetan monks who went into exile from Lhasa to India with the current Dalai Lama. It’s an astonishing and utterly tranfixing auditory experience, of very high quality for 50-year-old field recordings.’
Lastly for me this time, I wrote an omnibus review of three new jazz releases, Martin Wind’s Stars, Dave Pietro’s The Butterfly Effect, and John McNeil & Tom Harrell’s Look To The Sky. The latter is a reissue: ‘These days I’m all about the trumpet, so I’m totally delighted by this classic reissue from SteepleChase. John McNeil and Tom Harrell are legendary horn players who rose to prominence in the New York scene of the 1970s, and this recording is the only one they made together.’
From the archives, Rebecca enjoyed the Christian Celtic folk pop of Ceili Rain’s Say ‘KAY-Lee’. ‘It is cheerful, enthusiastic, and well-crafted. Those people who are more comfortable with a bleak, cynical view of life will not like it, nor will those who are mistrustful of Christianity. However, those looking for a positive alternative will enjoy it. I think the warmth and optimism expressed here are as valid as any of the darker emotions expressed by musicians today.’
Finally, Richard was highly impressed by Jennifer and Hazel Wrigley’s Mither o’the Sea, one of the earliest recordings by the Wrigley Twins. ‘Most of the pieces played on this all-instrumental CD are composed by the sisters themselves (nearly always by Jennifer) or by other Orkney musicians, and respect local traditional forms. A couple come from mainland Scotland (not to be confused with Mainland in Orkney). To my surprise, a perusal of the booklet revealed that only the very last of the 23 tunes spread over 12 tracks is a traditional piece, a jig from Holm (a Nordic word that simply means “island”).’
I’m going to leave you with the Kage‘s reading one of her own works, that being her Empress of Mars which Cat reviewed anove. It was supposed to be included on a CD in the limited edition version of the story that was going to be published by Nightshade Books but that never happened, so she gave us permission to have it here. So find a quiet place to listen and settle in to hear a most excellent sf story told by a master storyteller!
Kathleen, her sister, notes that ‘she was an old-fashioned storyteller. She loved adding dimensions, and felt that all her stories should be either copiously illustrated or read out to an audience.’