Alison Krauss and Union Station have a new album coming out that contains two songs I gave Alison over the years: Granite Mills and Richmond On The James.
Granite Mills was recently released as the second single, and the debut of AKUS’s new singer Russell Moore. Their version is very faithful to the Cordelia’s Dad recording that opens our album Spine, and I think it sounds really good. I like Russell’s singing a lot. He sticks to the story and doesn’t try to make us care how he feels about it. I wrote the music about thirty years ago, with lyrics I arranged from a Fall River newspaper poem that had some life as a song in that neck the woods. Yesterday the New York Times called it “ a public domain ballad.” Promotional narrative and fact aren’t always in sync, but I think it could lead to some interesting conversations (about music, narrative, creativity and the law- potentially all kinds of things).
Richmond On The James IS a “public domain ballad” which I’ve been singing very much under the influence of Jeff Davis since the early days of the Bush Sr. administration. I first heard it on a cassette tape of recordings made by Anne and Frank Warner that I got from British folklorist Peter Kennedy with whom I busked a bit in Gloucester, England in 1989. It’s one of the many great songs remembered and sung with gusto by Lena Bourne Fish of East Jaffrey, New Hampshire. It shouldn’t be surprising that a song’ about a Confederate soldier would be sung by an old Yankee woman a century later. I’ve been playing it on bajo sexto for a long time and have recorded it several times over the years but never released it for some reason. Alison sent me a demo of what they were working on in 2013, but as of today I haven’t heard what they ultimately did with it. I decided to just put a recording I made in 2007 out there now for general interest and maybe to help direct people to some of my other work. I hope you enjoy it! Feel free to share.