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Sisyphus Rolls Review
A guide to currently featured music and artists
Feb 11 - 17, 2002

Dave Van Ronk: In Memorium

Featured Albums: New/Recent Releases
Mike Marshall and Darol Anger's brand-spankin' new The Duo Live and at Home on the Range, and Doug Hoekstra's late-year 2001 opus, The Past is Never Past

In Memorium: Dave Van Ronk, 1936-2002
In the 50s and very early 60s, urban folkie Dave Van Ronk - who passed away Sunday, Feb 10 at age 65 - helped lay the groundwork for the explosion of interest in roots music that came a few years later. Nicknamed ``the mayor of Greenwich Village'' on account of his authoritative knowledge of jazz and blues, Van Ronk never achieved commercial success on his own, but he remained an influential performer in the folk community. He toured and recorded -- and taught guitar -- until November of 2001, when he underwent colon cancer surgery.

In the early days, kids like Bob Dylan crashed on Van Ronk's couch when they came into town, and he helped teach a new generation the songs and guitar styles he had picked up from the recordings of Mississippi John Hurt, the Rev. Gary Davis, and many others.

In tribute to him, we've added his gravelly growl of a voice and fine picking via a dozen or so classic tracks, to start - including "Don't You Leave Me Here," "Hesitation Blues," "That Will Never Happen No More," "St James Infirmary," "Motherless Children" and "Statesboro Blues," all of which were further recorded and popularized later by artists like Hot Tuna (with Jorma Kaukonen), Rory Block, and others. Van Ronk's version of "Baby Let Me Lay It On You" is also included; Dylan recorded it on his eponymous first album as "Baby Let Me Follow You Down," which he claims was taught to him by his contemporary in Cambridge, Mass, Eric Von Schmidt. I'd guess, however, that they both heard it first from Dave in his living room.

Dave will be sorely missed as a teacher, performer and character (he could be rather funny, and several of the included recordings document this quality), but we will do our best to keep him and his music very much alive here.

featured albums: new/recent releases
Mike Marshall and Darol Anger, The Duo Live At Home and on the Range (Compass Records, Feb12, 2002). The virtuoso fiddler and guitarist/mandolinist - who once were members of the David Grisman Quartet over 20 years ago - play a newgrassy blend of folk-world-jazz (and even classical) that often soars. From the Amazon review by Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers : Constitutionally eclectic, they travel from Bill Monroe tunes to Ireland (the ever-popular "Shebag, Shemor") and Sweden ("Väsen Your Seat Belt") to Marshall's unclassifiable originals (mandocello funk on "Gator Strut"). The fiddle, mandolin, and guitar work is state of the art, effortlessly swinging and telepathically in sync from nearly a quarter century of making music together. Liner notes by surrealist songwriter Patrick Brayer complete a fine portrait of two musicians at the top of their game.

Doug Hoekstra, The Past Is Never Past (Inbetweens, Oct 2001). Doug Hoekstra's often brilliant (and always quirky and challenging) Around the Margins - which was released at the beginning of the year - made our Best of 2001 list. At the end of the year, Hoekstra also released, in a limited run in Europe and the US, The Past Is Never Past, which he calls "sort of an official bootleg, I guess." Parts of the album are relatively straight-up compared to Margins, but there is more here to challenge you, as well, like the avant-gardish arrangement of the Brecht-Weill "Ballad of a Soldier's Wife." Here's the scoop in Doug's own words: "The Past is Never Past is a collection of songs that, like memory and experience, could not lay fallow. Some are selections that didn’t quite fit stylistically on Around the Margins. Others were cut as songwriting demos; and still others were released on special compilations, magazines, and websites. As I compiled them for my own archives, I saw an alternate look into aspects of my journey of the past year take shape. Jos Starmans at Inbetweens Records suggested we prepare a special limited edition release of this work, with a couple of new pieces added for good measure. So, much like memory and experience, this collection took on a life of its own, and the songs now belong to the present and future, proving that the past is indeed, never past."

featured albums: other
Dave Carter and Tracey Grammer, Tanglewood Tree (Signature, 2000). Well, we always miss something from the previous year or year before that (usually a bunch of things, actually), but generally it's not nearly as good as this offering from Carter and Grammer. Poetic contemporary folk music replete with characters on the move who are continually caught between contradictions, beautifully sung and played on fiddle and guitar with a deceiving subtlety that only enhances the bittersweet irony of these songs.

riffs:
We almost forgot about Valentine's Day, but what the hey. We'll acknowledge the holiday by airing, on February 14, only love or love-related songs. Of course, don't expect any sentiment overrun - Valentine's Day Sisyphus Tracks-style encompasses dark with the light, so we'll mix it all up pretty good.

The two homegrown tracks from the previous week have been held over - Michael Smith's "Gamble's Guitar" as played by Floridian Doug Bowman and "Raining on the Mountain" by fellow Floridian Marty Thomas. There are some fine unknown performing songwriters outside of Florida too, of course - and sometimes they even live in . . . Nashville. Thus, we've added a number of tracks by Ann Tiley, who we know very little about except we're enjoying the homegrown CDs she sent us - among them Annthology and Things In the Attic. We also know she's got a wonderful sense of humor, and you'll hear some rather whimsical and downright funny tunes among the more serious ones. Hey, Ann - use the Message Board to tell us something about yerself, will ya?

Finally - just to remind us that Michael Smith is alive and well and still records his own songs, as well - we've added a few from his album Michael Margaret Pat & Kate, which is available on the Wind River label.

Riffs Addendum, Feb 13 - Ann Tiley and Current Van Ronk Selections:
More on the delightfully refreshing and whimsical Ann Tiley, a Nashville-based folkie and painter whose homegrown recordings we began playing this week. We want to point you to a terrific feature written about her by Jim Ridley of the Nashville Scene (click to read) from December 1997. We also copped the pic (apologies, Scene) of her at left. This is must-reading re Ann, who among other things is an old friend of Townes Van Zandt, Tom House, and others who used to play back in the late 70s at the tiny club on 27th Ave in Nashville that ultimately turned into the Springwater.) As a tease, we'll give you just the tail end (excuse the pun) of the the Scene story: 

Until recently, she performed regularly with Ricky Lee, a fellow West Virginia native. But they're not playing together live for a little while. "He tells me I have no rhythm, and I tell him he drags my songs," Tiley explains bemusedly. "He blames me, and I blame him." That won't stop the Lee Family from making tapes. As when she paints, she says, her goal is "to communicate and to entertain," and the risks and rewards are just as great. "It's like riding horses--every jump is a thrill, and you can still fall," Ann Tiley observes. She sips her tea. "Except if you fall on your ass riding a horse, you end up in the hospital."

Dave Van Ronk addendum:
As of today, the following Van Ronk tracks are on our playlist:

Death Letter Blues, Candy Man, Cocaine Blues, Bed Bug Blues, Careless Love, Hesitation Blues, That Will Never Happen No More, Motherless Children, Baby Let Me Lay It On You, Don't You Leave Me Here, St James Infirmary, Statesboro Blues, and Teddy Bears' Picnic.

Also, we are playing the following tracks that Dave appears on, compliments of of our parispal Herve Oudet:

Dave-Eric Taylor, He Was a Friend of Mine (from Barbican 1)
Geoff Muldaur with Dave - Aberdeen Mississippi Blues and Sleepy Man Blues (Prestige Folklore Years, early 60s)
Nanci Griffith (with Dave, others) - He Was a Friend of Mine, on Nanci's Other Voices Too

Notes by Michael Westerfield unless otherwise indicated.

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