Folk Roots Radio Episode 194: feat. JD Edwards

Episode 194 of Folk Roots Radio featured another interview recorded at the Folk Music Ontario conference this past October. Winnipeg’s JD Edwards joined us for an impromptu session and an opportunity to chat about his music with both The JD Edwards Band and his new project with former Wailin’ Jenny Cara Luft – The Small Glories. You can listen to the full interview here. As usual, we made room for some new music, alongside our mystery theme and guilty pleasure.

This week’s mystery theme featured six songs that all name-checked the exclamation or religious exortation Hallelujah! – an exclamation I use each week when I finally put this show to bed. It gave us an opportunity to play music by Red Wanting Blue, who we saw on the Cayamo Roots Cruise this past January – pretty good live, Saskatoon’s The Deep Dark Woods, Anne Lindsay from great new album Soloworks, Ryan Adams, Katherine Wheatley and finally a cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah – performed by k.d. lang, who, for my money makes the best job of it outside the late great Jeff Buckley, and, of course, Leonard himself.

This week’s guilty pleasure went back to 1972, for Argent with ‘Hold Your Head Up’ – a song that was suggested to us by Jacko, after we played The Zombies “Time of the Season” on last week’s show. Argent was the band, keyboard maestro Rod Argent put together after The Zombies and also featured great UK songwriter Russ Ballard on guitar and vocals. We chose to play the album version which clocks in at over six minutes and features an amazing Hammond B3 organ solo that former Yes keyboard player Rick Wakeman has called the best ever. That’s high praise indeed! “Hold Your Head up” made it into the Top 5 in both the US and the UK.

Thanks again to Jacko for suggesting we get a little proggy on today’s show. If you have a guilty pleasure you’d like to share – that song you still love though you think other people would find it unfashionable (believe me, they won’t), get in touch. We’d love to play it for you! And, if you have a good story about why you love that song, so much the better.

Folk Roots Radio has a whole raft of shows coming up at Silence, Guelph’s great listening venue. Our next show features a welcome return to Guelph for BC native and current Toronto resident Sarah Jane Scouten on May 23 at 8 p.m. Sarah puts on an amazing show. Her last album, “The Cape” was nominated for two Canadian Folk Music Awards. She’s rumoured to be bringing some new songs to Guelph with her this time round. The opening act for the evening will be Guelph’s own bluegrass band The Chesterfield Trio, the abbreviated version of Chester Field and The Sofa Kings. It promises to be a great night so get your tickets early! Buy tickets here.

Another show that I must mention features Jennis, the ‘difficult to categorize but sounds great’ roots combo featuring Dennis Gaumond on dobro and Jen Gillmor on cello are coming back to Guelph for a show at Silence on May 29 with support from Hamilton-based singer-songwriter Sarah Beatty. They’re also playing together in Hamilton at the Artword Artbar on May 16. Jennis are a great band live, who create the most amazingly full sound despite having just two people on stage, and Sarah Beatty is also well worth checking out. For more details, check out this website post.

This week’s special mention for new music features “Home for the Weekend”, the great new single from The Lifers – Guelph’s singing sister duo Elivia and Anita Cazzola. The Lifers will be joining me in the studio for an in-depth conversation and session on  Folk Roots Radio Overtime on CFRU 93.3fm on May 30. Stay tuned for that. And finally, Dan Weber has a great new album out, “What I’m Lookin’ For” – an album that arrived this week. This week we played “Oh Woody” a song that conjures up the spirit of Woody Guthrie in a new call for change. I’ve been very impressed by the strength of the songs on the album – we’ll definitely be playing more from it on future shows. Well, that’s all we have time for today.

Check out the full playlist with artist links below and share your love for all the great folk and roots music out there. Thanks to all the artists who share their music with us, and thank you for listening. We’ll see you next week!

Mystery Theme: “Hallelujah!”

Nicolas & The Iceni (Theme)
Lucy She Rises (Demo)
Roll Right (expected 2015)

Red Wanting Blue
Hallelujah
Little America (2014, Fanatic Records)

The Deep Dark Woods
Glory, Hallelujah
Hang Me Oh Hang Me (2008, Six Shooter Records) CDN

Anne Lindsay
Sing Hallelujah
Soloworks (2014, Self) CDN

Ryan Adams
Hallelujah
Demolition (2002, Lost Highway)

Katherine Wheatley
Hallelujah
Landed (2009, The Hoot Music Company) CDN

k.d. lang
Hallelujah [New Version] Recollection (2009, Nonesuch) CDN

Oliver Schroer
Flowers
Hymns and Hers (2007, Borealis Records) CDN

Jennis
Closer To Me
The Current (2014, Self) CDN

Sarah Beatty
Close To Me
Black Gramophone (2012, Self) CDN

Sarah Jane Scouten
Our Small Town
The Cape (2014, Self) CDN

The Lifers
Home for the Weekend
(Single) (2015, Self) CDN

Argent
Hold Your Head Up (1972)
The Argent Anthology: A Collection of Greatest Hits (1987, Epic)

Rosi Lalor
Camino
Flowers for the Living (2012, Self)

Steeltown Pilgrim (Matthew Mutch)
Song For Angel
Walkin’ The Way of St. James (2015, Americanada Records) CDN

JD Edwards Band
This House Will Stand
Roads & Roads (2011, Self) CDN

Interview: An interview and impromptu session recorded with JD Edwards at the Folk Music Ontario conference this past October.

JD Edwards
The Stranger (Live)

JD Edwards
Had I Paid (Live)

JD Edwards
Spirit Dog (Live)

JD Edwards Band
Singing All The Way
Home Roads & Roads (2011, Self)

Dan Weber
Oh Woody
What I’m Lookin’ For (2015, Highway 142 Music)

Pete Seeger & Lorre Wyatt
This Old Man Revisited (feat. Steve Earle, Dar Williams)
A More Perfect Union (2012, Appleseed)

Gordie Tentrees
Broken Hero
Less Is More (2015, Self) CDN

Elaine Romanelli
Afterward
The Hour Before (2015, Self)