Category: Wayfaring Strangers


Single Song Sunday: Wayfaring Stranger (On White Spirituals and The Religious Origins of Folk)

September 7th, 2008 — 12:45 am

It is absolutely trivial to note that certain songs crop up over and over again in the folk collector’s travels; after all, as our blog subtitle reminds us, when we talk about folk, we’re talking about a form that by its very nature treats older songs and tunes as part of the communication which makes us community, available to all who lay claim to culture.

But just as true hitmaking is hardly formulaic, it’s not often obvious what keeps a song in the stream. Our Single Song Sunday series explores the various facets of heavy coverage, as a lens into folk music as culture. Today, a short treatment of the oft-covered folk tune Wayfaring Stranger — a song which the popular groupmind claims is “often classified as a “white spiritual” — helps us examine the religious origins of folk.


Throughout much of recorded history, religion has served communities as both as a community locus and as a carrier of song; as such, it is perhaps unsurprising to find a relationship of sorts between folk music and the church itself. As with any folk form, of course, context matters; to note that several songs commonly associated with Cat Stevens can be found in the Universalist Unitarian hymnal says something very different about both artist and religious community than pointing out that a move to the heavily Jewish neighborhoods of New York’s Coney Island in the 1940s led to the recent release of a wonderful album of Woody Guthrie-penned Klezmer music.

To note that the folk song Wayfaring Stranger (or sometimes Poor Wayfaring Stranger) was first published in 1816 in the shape note tunebook Kentucky Harmony, which in turn was primarily an expansion of the work of John Wyeth and his two Repositories of Sacred Music, then, is to locate that song in the white spiritual canon — which, in turn, calls us to the American white revivalist movements of the last few centuries, to consider the common threads of a form of folk product which includes The Sacred Shakers, the work of Doc Watson, and many other works and performers with roots in New England, Appalachia, and other American church-based communities.

Though it echoes similar terminology — bluegrass gospel, most obviously — the term white spiritual is striking and vivid; to be honest, I’m surprised to find that Google lists only a few uses of the term, most of which seem to be part of classical choral scholarship. The conceit that white audiences had their own spriritual song, which derived its rhythm and subject from their European ancestry, illuminates folk’s origins in a way that is both new and suddenly fitting, creating a parallel path to modernity in stark contrast to the gospel folk which comes to us through african american blues music. Further, such a conceit says much about the context in which music evolved, and traveled, and spoke to and for the “folk”; exploring the term is a fine way to help reshuffle and rethink the origin of many songs which remain at the core of folk music today.

The semiotic implications of the term “white spiritual” do seem apt, when you think about it; so much of the folk which has its roots in the appalachian mountains and stark New England Shakers, after all, is about redemption, framing man’s connection to man in the context of God. And Wayfaring Stranger is an especially interesting example of the white spiritual. Though other white spirituals may be more central to the form — for example, our first Single Song Sunday subject, Amazing Grace — Wayfaring Stranger is notable for being a song which does not as obviously call to its spiritual nature. Which is to say: though both songs ultimately play out the relationship between the internal sinner-self and the spiritual Father, the former is a hymn of the post-redemptive self, less about the more modern folk-as-call-to-complexity and more about morality-play.

But the humble determination of the pre-redemptive self which characterizes the narrative voice of Wayfaring Stranger is not uncommon to the narrative stance of many an old British folk ballad, from the pining lass of Fair William to the besworn folkmaiden and lusty, easily swayed folklad who so often stray, only to regret it, and come back to their God. Meanwhile, the plight of the poor wayfarer remains open and non-specific, an everyman’s resolve pulling us in to folk communion. No wonder the song remains enticing; no wonder we find so many versions to pluck our fruit from.

In practice, whether or not you accept the label of “white spiritual” as applied to a song whose most famous version is in the voice of as haunted and searching a man as Johnny Cash, it is true that there is a certain emotional reverence common to all versions of the song. In fact, circularly, though there are as many ways to worship as there are men, and thus high diversity in the way different folk musicians choose to make Wayfaring Stranger their own, the question of what makes this particular song a white spiritual may be best answered by the consistent care with which all comers take on the song. To explore that commonality, and the variance in sound and tone and tempo that it nonetheless allows, here’s some interesting takes on the song, a vast array of approaches to traditional material from the very big tent that is modern folk.

Cover Lay Down will return Wednesday for a preview of this year’s Irish Connections festival, featuring Alison Brown, Luka Bloom, Crooked Still, Solas, and more!

828 comments » | Blanche, Chris Scruggs, Emmylou Harris, Estil C. Ball, Eva Cassidy, Giant Sand, John Stirratt, Kristin Hersh, Natalie Merchant, Neko Case, Papa M, Single Song Sunday, Wayfaring Strangers

Martha Scanlan: The West Was Burning (Covers of Bob Dylan and Tradfolk)

July 8th, 2008 — 11:01 pm

I was going to write about something else tonight. But sifting through some older downloads looking for inspiration, I got stuck in the rich, lush americana sound of singer-songwriter Martha Scanlan‘s 2007 debut The West Was Burning, and I just couldn’t move on. It’s been a while since we featured a single release here on Cover Lay Down, but it’s also been a while since music struck me as powerfully as this. And so a post is born.

A few years ago I managed to make it to the upper Hudson Valley for Clearwater, a folk and enviro-political action festival which leans towards the old-school stringfolk music of festival founder Pete Seeger and his modern inheritors. I saw plenty of great acts that year, from Natalie Merchant and Jeff Lang to Donna The Buffalo and Toshi Reagon, and loved them all. But my favorite act was a string band, a small group of very young old-timey performers I discovered quite by accident as I rounded a corner past the workshop stage. They were called the Reeltime Travelers, and they were new on the scene; their music was pretty traditional, but done so well and with such high energy, I walked away from the festival with their album.

Since I last saw her in the early days of the Reeltime Travelers, Martha Scanlan has undergone a transformation. Her work with the Travelers and as a songwriter on the Cold Mountain soundtrack was marvelous; subsequently, she won both first and second prizes in the bluegrass and country division of the Chris Austin Songwriting Competition at Merlefest in 2003 for two songs on the Reeltime Travelers’ second and final album Livin’ Reeltime. That success gave her the strength and credibility to leave Reeltime Travelers behind and make a solid name for herself as a solo artist. And though I’m a little late to the table in finding it, her debut release The West Was Burning, released last February on Sugar Hill, is absolutely stunning.

Scanlan’s sound is wonderful, delicate folk in the pure americana vein, a stripped-down version of Lucinda Williams or Kathleen Edwards, light where it should be but with great, lush production in turn, full of fiddles and mandolin and slow country bass. The old-timey sound is still there, but it’s been slowed down and fleshed out into something much richer, and eminently more powerful. Martha writes Montana so well, its as if someone came down out of the hills with a dozen newly-discovered, fully-fleshed traditional songs, pre-boiled down to their essential elements, with every lick and lyric perfect after years of evolution. Her voice is endearing, and suits the music well: delicate and pure, innocent and wise all at once. Add Levon Helm and his daughter Amy on drums, and the stellar production of americana master Dirk Powell, and you can’t help but have a success on your hands.

You’ll have to buy The West Is Burning for transformative originals like the delicate Seeds of the Pine, and the driving americana rock beat and full-band jangle and twang of Isabella – though you can hear a few more tracks, including a great live version of tradsong Old Rocking Chair, at Martha’s Myspace page, and if you’re in Manitoba this weekend, you can catch her at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. But don’t miss this sweet No Depression-flavored piano-tinged Dylan slowdance, and a perfect mountain ballad transformation of one of my favorite old hymns. I’ve even included a parallel set of covertunes from that self-titled Reeltime Travelers debut album, for comparison’s sake, so you can hear the evolution of Martha’s sound and sensibility.

Just for fun, today’s bonus coversongs provide an exercise in comparative listening:

688 comments » | Martha Scanlan, Reeltime Travelers, Sam Amidon, Sufjan Stevens, Wayfaring Strangers

Lucy Kaplansky Covers: Just About Everybody (Nick Lowe, Sting, Roxy Music, Steve Earle, Buddy Miller, Dylan…)

October 14th, 2007 — 10:14 pm

You almost never got to hear of Lucy Kaplansky: An 18 year old member of the early 80s new folk movement, she made it as far as plans for a recording venture with Shawn Colvin, only to change her mind at the last moment. For the next decade, Kaplansky continued to do light session work, most notably as a backup singer on early Suzanne Vega albums, but spent most of her time plying her newly minted PhD in Psychology as a therapist in New York. It was a hard loss for the folk community: her voice had been a sweet standout in the crowd even then, as evidenced by Fast Folk recordings from the era.

Thankfully, in the mid 90s Lucy came back to the folk fold. Since then, though she still supposedly sees patients, she’s produced six absolutely incredible albums, chock-full of masterful songwriting. It’s tempting to see her therapist’s eye in her lyrical tendency towards storysongs of family, the lifestruggle of generational difference and the passage of time, the closing of distances metaphoric and real. But regardless of the source, there’s nothing like her ability to find the right pace for a song, the right tone for a line, the right note of etherial melody for a story.

Kaplansky remains in high demand as a backup vocalist for fellow folkies on the road or in the studios; her pure voice and New York accent can be heard on almost every Colvin, Shindell, Nancy Griffith, and John Gorka album. Her ear is incredible — I’ve seen her on stage with a good half dozen performers, and she seems to be arranging her harmonies on the spot, making good songs great with a subtle yet powerful touch.

But though in concert she tends to focus on her own stunning songwriting, Dr. Kaplansky’s cheerful delight at singing and arranging the tunes of others translates to her own recordings, too: her albums tend to come in at about one-third covers, and her taste is impeccable. Over the last thirteen years, she has come to be known as much for her sterling interpretations of the songs of others as she is for her own material.

In fact, Lucy Kaplansky is such a prolific and powerful cover artist, I had real trouble narrowing down the choices, so today we’re offering one cover from each of her six major albums, presented in chronological order:

Lucy Kaplansky covers…

You can hear more Lucy tracks at her website, but every single Lucy Kaplansky album from 1994 release The Tide to this year’s Over The Hills belongs in your collection, and you can buy them all direct from her label Red House Records. So do it. Period.

Today’s bonus coversongs:

545 comments » | Bob Dylan, Buddy Miller, cry cry cry, Louvin Brothers, Lucy Kaplansky, Nick Lowe, Olabelle Reed, Ron Sexsmith, Roxy Music, Steve Earle, The Police, Wayfaring Strangers