Can Someone Explain Why?

Subject: RE: Can Someone Explain Why?
From: Marje
Date: 26 Jan 07 - 11:45 AM

Richard Thomson and Joni Mitchell are both great singers - both of them have a way of producing a natural yet unique and individual sound, a voice you'd always recognise (a valued attribute in folk song), while giving plenty of attention to what they're actually doing with the voice and making sure it sounds as good as it can be. And of course they are both capable of writing great songs - they have the skill of taking the individual experience and giving it universality. If "they feel as if they're from the tradition", it's because they draw on some of the strongest aspects of traditional melodies and singing styles and use them in their own way. But they're still modern singers and don't pretend to be anything else.

Keith Marsden and Dave Webber are in a different category because they consciously try to create songs that sound as if they've been around for decades or centuries, and do it very well too.

As someone up there said, they all work hard at their material and don't offer us any rubbish - I don't recall any of them claiming ot have written a song while on the bus or fast asleep, or that the song just came to them with no effort on their part.

And I suppose the answer to why singers like this stand out is that an awful lot of singer-songwriters fail to do what either of the above pairs of examples do so well. Maybe it just has to happen as a sort of natural selection process, with the Thomsons/Mitchells/Marsdens/Webbers being the successful ones who survive and whose work will live on, whereas the rest just get quickly forgotten.

Marje

Subject: RE: Can Someone Explain Why?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 26 Jan 07 - 11:15 AM

The music dictionaries make sweeping statements as to the modes and intervals found in folk music. I suppose the same can be said of language. My guess is that the songwriters who pass for traditional use those intervals and language.

Subject: RE: Can Someone Explain Why?
From: alanabit
Date: 25 Jan 07 - 01:56 PM

I was pretty obsessed with Joni Mitchell at one time too. Probably the reason I listen to her less now, is that a lot of the early stuff was part of the self-revelation stuff, which was so overpraised in the early seventies. To be fair to her, she has gone a bit beyond that. She always was very original in both her words and her melodies.
I like the old quote, "Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours." The way I adopt it for performing, is that I try to talk about the audience, or people like themselves. The main problem with a lot of that "personal song" trend of the seventies, was that it was a lot of precious people talking about themselves. Tell a good story to an audience and they are usually interested. If you let your characters onto the stage, instead of just your own ego, the audience is likely to keep listening. Richard Thompson has always known that the audience's main concern is not to know how good or bad he feels today. They go to the gig to forget about their own problems - not to hear about his.

Subject: RE: Can Someone Explain Why?
From: bubblyrat
Date: 25 Jan 07 - 01:54 PM

I don"t actually like listening to EITHER of them singing their own songs----But they wrote some marvellous stuff !!

Subject: RE: Can Someone Explain Why?
From: Schantieman
Date: 25 Jan 07 - 01:51 PM

Yes indeed. Also the late and very much lamented Keith Marsden

Steve

Subject: RE: Can Someone Explain Why?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Jan 07 - 01:48 PM

Cliff, of the ones listed so far, I think Dave Webber should be at the very top of the list. Gee, he's good.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Can Someone Explain Why?
From: GUEST,cliff
Date: 25 Jan 07 - 12:56 PM

Dave Webber. I thought his stuff was trad for sure.

Subject: RE: Can Someone Explain Why?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Jan 07 - 12:51 PM

Hi, Tim - andother name to add to your list is Tom Russell - follow the link to see some of his wonderful stuff. My favorites of his are "El Gallo del Cielo" and "Angel of Lyon." I think their secret is that it's about the song for them, and not about themselves. They write songs to share with their audiences, not primarily to "express their inner selves."
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Can Someone Explain Why?
From: John Hardly
Date: 25 Jan 07 - 11:25 AM

Because some performers convey integrity above style?

Subject: RE: Can Someone Explain Why?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 25 Jan 07 - 11:24 AM

Lucky Ebbie!

~S~

Subject: RE: Can Someone Explain Why?
From: Scoville
Date: 25 Jan 07 - 11:23 AM

Matter of taste, too. I always thought Joni Mitchell was much more pop (good pop, but still pop) and new-agey than folk. Even her older stuff.

Subject: RE: Can Someone Explain Why?
From: Ebbie
Date: 24 Jan 07 - 09:27 PM

Susan, I just made a new musician friend who is longtime friends with both Robin and Linda Williams. He is Alan Michael, originally from North Carolina. It is great fun to sing with him.

Subject: RE: Can Someone Explain Why?
From: Don Firth
Date: 24 Jan 07 - 08:54 PM

I think Gordon Bok has become so steeped in traditional music that the songs he writes are hard to distiguish from traditional ones.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Can Someone Explain Why?
From: Bernard
Date: 24 Jan 07 - 07:47 PM

I'd say the reason is because they are better songwriters!!

We've all cringed at the 'I wrote this on the bus on the way here' singer/songwriters!

Richard, Joni and others have crafted their songwriting skills, and understand the value of editing. We don't get to hear the stuff that doesn't work - though many lesser writers use their entire output instead of binning the garbage!

Subject: RE: Can Someone Explain Why?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 24 Jan 07 - 07:17 PM

I'll venture a guess based on my own parallel enjoyment of others...

...and that is, a copycat always sounds worse than the original, and the artists you're talking about and I'm thinking about are, themselves, NEW originators and not copycats. These artists stand on the shoulders of those who've gone before, and would certainly acknowledge that; but if the orginators had never been there, these are the artists who could and would have started the tradition, themselves.

Their music is not dead music, either. I'll take Seamus Kennedy as a case in point. It isn't part of the tradition as most people think of it, to use a wailing country steel guitar in a Gaelic song. But the way he does it-- it fits and it does NOT sound like country any more than the song where he uses a digeridoo sounds Aussie or aboriginal. He is capable of contributing to the originality of the tradtiion, far beyond artists who only know to study and reproduce what they have heard as they heard it.

Another case in point-- Robin and Linda Williams. Carter tradition, sure, especially in their role in the Hopeful Gospel Quartet. Carter copiers, NO.

~Susan

Subject: RE: Can Someone Explain Why?
From: Peace
Date: 24 Jan 07 - 07:09 PM

Tim, within what tradition?

Subject: Can Someone Explain Why?
From: RTim
Date: 24 Jan 07 - 07:07 PM

Can someone please explain WHY listening to Richard Thompson and other like performers (eg. Joni Mitchell) sound so GOOD and FEEL as though they are from within the tradition - when so many other singer/songwriters are a poor excuse for bad pop music?

Tim Radford - I am prepared to get flamed!