Old Folksinger's Pick
2025

A Note from Bob

January 2026

After putting to bed last year’s Old Folksinger’s Pick – the 40th edition – I considered calling it a day. Making these collections takes a while and now, at 80, what to do with the time I have left is a serious consideration.

And yet here we are again. The truth is, while I package OFP for you, I collect the songs for me. They cheer me up.

Today’s world is, I believe, the meanest it has been in my lifetime. The genocide in Gaza goes on and on. Millions of us around the world do what we can to oppose our countries’ complicity, but to little avail.

On another front, Canada continues to extract ever more oil and so-called natural gas – our grandchildren’s lives be damned. Mark Carney, who wrote thoughtfully about climate before entering politics, turned sharply to the right once in office. (“Decarbonized oil” indeed!) Here in British Columbia, the NDP Government promised desperately-needed forest reform but it has put off implementation year after year after year.

And yet. There’s Greta, Dogwood, Elizabeth May, Greenpeace, B’Tselem, The Narwhal, Palestine Action, Tzeporah Berman, Omar El Akkad. And so many more – people who deserve a Nobel Peace Prize more than the people who actually get them.

The world is full of horror, cruelty and inhumanity. But it is also full of courage, determination, awakening, and creativity. For me, these songs are a little piece of the latter. They help me keep going. They keep the little flame alive.

Free Palestine. Save the forest. Vote for Avi, maybe he will be different from the others.

bb

PS. Thanks once again to Skel Jopko for getting OFP on-line, and to Mike Norris, whose weekly folk music podcasts from Cecil Sharp House in London have introduced me to many a fine singer and song. https://www.efdss.org/about-us/folk-player/listen-classic-folk.

As always, I’m grateful to Elizabeth Shefrin, just because.

Stay in touch, eh. bob@bossin.com

Notes on the songs

To learn more about the singers or the songs, or to find lyrics, a short consultation with Rabbi Google will usually do the trick. Or try https://mudcat.org. That said, here are a few personal notes.

03. Tide Full In.The lyric is by Galway poet and songwriter Francis Fahey (1854 – 1935). The tune is trad.

05. Chickens in the Garden was a popular English music hall song, but the lyric was actually written in 1878 by American composer James A Bland. He wrote it as a minstrel-show song. Bland also wrote “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny”.

06. Proper Sort of Gardener. Mr. Harding is real and had a real garden in Hampshire, England in the 1950s. The song was written by Maggie Holland. She stole the flowers. Another of Holland’s songs, “A Place Called England”, won BBC Radio’s Folk-Song-of-the-Year Award. Also sung (brilliantly) by June Tabor, it is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dV6xiU4XyoM

07. There is a River. To my ear, Scott Cook is the best songwriter in Canada today. If you ever have the opportunity to hear him perform, particularly with partner Pamela Mae, don’t miss it.

08. I'd Rather Be Tending My Sheep. In her 1968 book, The Chime Child or Somerset Singers, Ruth Tongue claimed to have collected this song from an old shepherd. However no other collector has ever come across the song, and some suspect Tongue wrote it herself.

10. No Half Measures was written by Scottish/Australian folk singer and socialist Alistair Hulett.

13. Angels Do. My musical friend Rick Scott was one third of the legendary BC trio Pied Pumkin. He played the dulcimer like it was a barrel-house piano and was a terrific performer, clown and story-teller. Rick wrote “Angels Do” for his granddaughter with Down Syndrome. He died this summer. We were friends for 50 years.

14. Hush. I think JigJaw comes from Yorkshire. Otherwise they are a mystery to me.

15. Honco Monco. Taff Rapids hails from Cardiff, Wales. They call their music blŵgras. Honco Monco means “her over there”.

16 and 17. Get in the Car and Gingerbread were both written by Kim Barlow when she lived in the Yukon in the early 2000s. I recorded two of her songs, “Dance Hall” and “Gingerbread”, on “The Roses on Annie’s Table”. The Bossin Family version of “Gingerbread” was recorded on Ghabe Bossin’s 12th birthday. Davy Bossin, then six, plays Hansel.

19. My Own Christine. Bob Franke is another musical friend who died this year. Bob was a star in the New England folk scene. Though he was less known elsewhere, his songs, among them, “Hard Love”, “For Real” and “Thanksgiving Eve” were widely covered by others, including Kathy Mattea and Peter, Paul and Mary. “My Own Christine” is less well-known, in part because Bob stopped singing it when he and the eponymous Christine parted. “You take it,” he told me. “Gladly,” I said.

20. House in the Country was written by Maggie Stewart who was herself one of Scotland’s “travelling people”. She was also the aunt of revered Scottish singer Jeannie Robertson.

If the female voice on “House in the Country” sounds oddly familiar to Canadians, it is because it belongs to Kate McGarrigle of the McGarrigle sisters. Kate wrote “Talk to Me of Mendocino.” Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright are her children. How she came to sing lead on this song by the ultra-British Albion Band, I do not know. We lost Kate in 2010, far too soon.

21. Liza Jane. One day in 2004 I ran into Veda Hille on the street in Vancouver. She gave me a copy of her then-new album. When I heard her “Liza Jane”, in which Liza Jane is a victim of Robert Picton, I was stunned. I asked Veda if she would consider producing what would become my “Roses on Annie’s Table” album. Though Veda’s and my music are as different as chalk and cheese, we have the same mischievous spirit. We had a great time encouraging each other’s crazy ideas. One result is “Gingerbread”, #17 above.

23. Any Mick’ll Do, sung here by Graham Dunne, is written by Brian McNeill.

24. Joe Peel was a professional rugby player in the 1930s, but players were so poorly payed in those days, he returned home to Cumbria to work as a coal miner. Everything in this touching tribute by Peter Bond is factual.

25. Little Flame. Scott Cook introduced me to Carsie Blanton, American folk singer and activist. Blanton sailed with the Sumud flotilla carrying food and aid to Gaza. Her boat was seized by the Israeli Defence Forces in international waters. Carsie was arrested, held by Israel as a terrorist and eventually deported.