What’s New for the 10th of May: books reviewed by Jennifer Stevenson, music by Teddy Thompson, Americana music from all over, and some live music from John Fogerty

When I was young and in my prime (in my prime)
I left my home in Caroline
Now all I do is sit and pine, for all those folks I left behind

I got the Blue Ridge mountain blues, and I sat right here to say
‘My grip is packed to travel, and I’m back to ramble
to my Blue Ridge far away’

John Fogerty’s Blue Ridge Mountain Blues

Cat here. I’ve spent the last several months in wheelchair after breaking my left hip in late February. I’ve spent a lot of time listening to audiobooks with V.H. Schwab’s The Fragile Threads of Power,  the latest in her Dark Shades of Magic series, while working on websites, talking to friends on the web and generally not being terribly fond of the fact that I can’t get out at all other than briefly going to medical appointments.

Oh and eating a sugar free strawberry cream that I found. A most  delicious ice cream! Food is a nice obsession when you’re home more than you want to be.

So I was talking to Jennifer who had sent me a really great salt chocolate brownie about a month ago that I had warmed up with vanilla ice cream on the top.  I must say it was quite delicious. See more food.

She told me she’d put up a review of a book, The Death and Birth of Iliana Mare, and I realised that more likely we had not done in awhile where book reviews that were not about a single author, but were reviews written by a single individual as the last time was Gary. And of course, these would be the ones done by Jennifer. So read her reviews to see what she likes to read. I think you’ll find it interesting.

When you get done there, head down to the music to see what Gary dug out for you this week, including something new from one of the Thompsons, and some Americana of all kinds including some from Catalonia and some that draws on African and South Asian folk songs.

So do you remember Creedence Clearwater Revival and its local vocalist John Fogerty? Well, we finish off this edition with a tasty piece of live music from him and if you read the lyrics leading off this edition, you know what it is. So when you get done with the reviews go listen to it.

Jennifer, aided by guest reviewer Rich Bynum, looks at the two latest collections of short fiction, Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions and Falling in Love in Hominids, by Nalo Hopkinson from Tachyon Publications. She regrets that a review of every story–even of just her favorites–would run almost as long as a Hopkinson story, but by damn these are all good.

Now she talks about the things she loves in Nalo Hopkinson’s The New Moon’s Arms, which is less a fantasy novel than women’s fiction with magical realism.

So next she took a chance on a gritty thriller by David Liss and read it at a sitting. The Death and Birth of Iliana Marek flips the genders on the fainting maid and her deadly protector and drops them into a small Florida town full of bad cops and bullies.

I wonder how she got her greedy little paws on Barbara Monajem’s third Rosie & McBrae Regency mystery, Lady Rosamund and the Plague of Suitors, and got to watch Rosie wallow in wads of wicked mothers, wealthy would-be wooers, and the wit of that hot Scot, McBrae.

Finally she loves a Daniel Pinkwater novel, Jules, Penny & the Rooster, another goofy and comforting middle-grade chapter book about the enchanted forest in Jules’ back yard. And yes, there is a magic turtle!

Gary here with some new music, much of which can be loosely slotted into Americana. Beginning with an album by the startlingly creative Annick Odom. ‘Annick Odom is an artist of multiple talents from West Virginia. On Linen Of Words she combines composition, storytelling, singing and playing (double bass, clarinet, fiddle, acoustic guitar), and has enlisted the talents of more than 20 musicians from jazz, classical, old-time string band, and Sacred Harp communities on a program of traditional and experimental music and spoken word.’

‘Well, it looks like Teddy Thompson is still sad, and that’s good news for those who love his sad songs,’ I note in the next review. ‘I should say “Teddy Thompson” is still sad, as in the persona; I can’t attest one way or the other to the emotional state of Teddy himself. Either way, the unlucky in love guy, and the just plain bad at love guy, are still much in evidence on his eighth solo studio album Never Be The Same.’

Next up is an omnibus review with five new offerings, starting with an album that was dreamed up over some very large drinks — thus the title of Sweet Megg’s Massive Negroni. ‘Sweet Megg grew up as Megg Farrell in New York City, came up singing folk music in the bars and coffee houses of the East Village and Brooklyn, studied jazz singing in Paris, did a stint in Cirque du Soleil, and is now based in Nashville, where she’s currently singing a jazz-flavored version of Americana, or possibly an Americana-tinged type of jazz. Either way, it’s mixed with a dash of classic country and a bit of the blues, and boy does it swing.’

The Milk Carton Kids’ Lost Cause Lover Fool is their seventh studio album of sad Americana folk songs. ‘Two voices, sometimes in unison but mostly in harmony, two guitars, with one sometimes swapped out for a banjo; an occasional double bass or drums.’

The Catalonian group Foresta’s Esclat de Maig (“burst of May”) presents folk songs ‘in the tradition of their home region in the form of Irish and American folk songs. The result is an appealing blend of the familiar guitar and fiddle based tunes of Appalachia and Ireland with lyrics in the Catalan tongue.’

Finally in this omni is the self titled debut of the Appalachian group Tanasi. ‘Similar to the way Foresta sets Catalonian folk songs to Appalachian and Irish music, the U.S.A. based worldgrass band Tanasi translates African and South Asian tunes and songs to an American stringband setting. As their press release says, not so much shoehorning one style of music into another, but finding “the natural meeting points where rhythm, melody, and human connection overlap.” ‘

Cat found a concert recording, John Fogerty’s The Long Road Home which he really liked: ‘Though Creedence Clearwater Revival was one of the best bands of the Sixties, I’m more fond of the recordings of the post-CCR career of vocalist John Fogerty. And his best recordings are by far the concert recordings, both the legit ones like this release and of course the many bootlegs done as soundboard recordings.’

Of course we can’t leave you without music from him, so here is ‘Blue Ridge Mountain Blues’ from his concert at the Air Canada Centre, Toronto seventeen years ago.