News & Updates — folk

One of my very favorite wordsmiths, Leonard Cohen delivered some lyrics of the deepest and most imaginative variety, a man who could articulate any emotion in the heaviest and clearest poetic sense. No topic was off limits and no emotion was irrelevant. A Montreal native, Leonard began his career strictly as a poet (first published in '54) and novelist before delivering his debut album Songs of Leonard Cohen in '67. The album shook the expectations of lyricists with its uninhibited display of pain, joy, sexuality, sadness and mysticism. Every serious singer/songwriter had to up their game after this monumental set...

British singer/songwriter John Martyn was my favorite kind of folkie: a guy who took in a lot of different influences (jazz, folk, rock, Caribbean, Middle Eastern, blues) and tried new things with them. From his funky rock-inspired stuff to the dub-washed material from his time hanging at Lee Perry's Black Ark to the later trip-hop material, you could always count on Martyn for some of the most experimental ideas of the Brit-folkers. Born to opera singing parents, his birth name was Iain David McGeachy. He was part of the fertile Brit-folk scene of the mid-'60s, along with Nick Drake, Bert Jansch,...

One of the great left-field albums came from former Buffalo Springfield bassist Bruce Palmer, with his seemingly unmarketable (at the time) Eastern-tinged folk-jazz oddity The Cycle Is Complete, released in 1970 on Verve to little fanfare and nearly no promotion. Palmer's only album as a leader, he was given complete artistic control only for him to come up with an unexpected psychedelic improvisational (almost in the realm of "spiritual-jazz" a la Pharoah Sanders) spacey folk record with members of Kaleidoscope, Caribbean percussionist Big Black and young Rick James (billed as "Rick Matthews"). Verve had no idea what to do with...

Kentucky singer and banjo/guitar player Roscoe Holcomb recorded some deeply felt, almost disturbing, "moaning" folk music. Bluegrass, old-timey, blues and spiritual songs and a variety of traditional Appalachian folk songs passed down through the generations. Some of his vocalizing comes straight from the church, and some of the songs seem to be improvised. He lived a grueling life of pain, a farmer and coal miner, a tough motherfucker who broke his back several times, they say. He could also handle the fiddle and harmonica. He was recorded in 1958 and subsequently toured to some success during the folk revival, but pain and...

Happy birthday to the Gray Panther Party's inspired folkie, Malvina Reynolds. She was a Socialist/activist singer-songwriter who, along with her husband, was involved in left-wing causes and labor organizing for decades. She was also a writer, guitarist, social worker, feminist, civil & gay rights activist and mother. Born into a Jewish family in San Francisco, Malvina Milder was denied a high school diploma by her school due to her parents opposition to WW1. In the '20s she played violin in a dance band before marrying labor activist Bud Reynolds in '34 and giving birth to future musician Nancy Schimmel. Being...