Written before sunrise

I wake up early by habit and by nature, using no alarm. In part this is because I turn in early as well, but in truth I've just never had much aptitude for sleep, tossing and turning and waking up multiple times, and the quiet early morning hours are my most productive time of day. I also have a prejudice against using artificial light in the morning, which means, by this time of year, that I'm generally waking up during the period of what is called astronomical twilight and that I get out of bed during the phase known as nautical twilight, with an hour or so still to go before the sun actually rises. If I put up the window shades a bit there's enough moonlight and ambient light to find my clothes in, and I press the on button on my phone to give me enough light to make my way downstairs without falling over the dog, who is mostly black, or the cat (in the night all cats are black). The refrigerator light, when I reach in for cream, is a bit blinding at this hour, and when I open the laptop I realize that I have no idea how the keyboard lights up, but it does. By 6:30 AM I can see the changing colors of the trees outside, and grazing deer if there are any (there aren't).

The temperature has dipped into the thirties overnight, although a frost isn't expected for at least a couple of weeks, even here in southern Maine. I also have a prejudice against turning the heat on in the morning, for as long as I can stand it, so in the coming months the temptation to stay in bed in the dark will be greater. But now the sun is about to rise and it's time to stop.

Fatherland (trailer)

I greatly enjoyed Paweł Pawlikowski's Ida and (with some reservations) Cold War, so I'm looking forward to his new film, which is about a visit made by Thomas Mann (and his daughter Erika) to his native Germany in 1949. It's in theatres October 23rd.

Folk Tradition

Andy Irvine's Devoted, just released, is the culmination of his nearly lifelong passion for the songs of Woody Guthrie, a musical and personal hero since the late 1950s. It includes renditions of eleven Guthrie songs with support from longtime Irvine collaborators John Doyle, Dónal Lunny, Mike McGoldrick, Bruce Molsky, Nikola Parov, and Rens van der Zalm. The twelfth cut is a remastering of Andy's tribute to Woody, "Never Tire of the Road," which appeared on his 1996 album Rain on the Roof and sports a new fiddle track.

The most interesting selection may be the one here entitled "Wallace-Taylor Train / Bet on Wallace," which is actually a mash-up of two Guthrie songs with roots in both "The Wabash Cannonball" and the old horse-racing song "Stewball." "Wallace" is Henry A. Wallace, former vice-president and Secretary of Agriculture under FDR, whose 1948 run for president on the Progressive ticket energized the American left but garnered less than three percent of the popular vote; "Taylor" is his running mate, former senator Glen H. Taylor.

Guthrie had earlier (in 1942) adapted the melody of "The Wabash Cannonball" into a song called "The Farmer-Labor Train," alluding to Minnesota's Farmer-Labor Party; he updated the lyrics for the Wallace campaign. Andy's spirited bouzouki-based recording draws on a separate Guthrie lyric, "Bet on Wallace," which borrowed the phrase "He might win, win, win" from Leadbelly's version of "Stewball."

As for "Stewball," though the song has a long tradition in the US, it commemorates a famous horse race in Ireland in the eighteenth century. A version of the song, in a radically different version with a Balkan arrangement, appears on the eponymous 1976 Andy Irvine and Paul Brady album under the title "The Plains of Kildare."

Devoted is available from The Last Music Company, Ltd.

Update: I've just learned that Andy will be doing a brief tour of the US Midwest, September 16-20, 2026. Details here.

August Almanac

Are there ticks in Ireland? If so, Seamus Heaney doesn't mention them in his poem about foraging for wild blackberries. Here in Maine there are banner crops of both this summer. I walk along the disused gravel road just around the corner and pick the fruit that has "inked up," careful to avoid the thorns and not to wander too far into the brush lest I bring home unwanted hitchhikers concealed in my clothes. But the "rat-grey fungus" that spoiled Heaney's harvest isn't a problem for me, because every berry I can reach goes straight into my mouth.

The spring peeper above that I spotted nestling on a blackberry leaf is likewise a far cry from the "great slime kings" of another Heaney poem, "Death of a Naturalist." Below, a dapper grasshopper and a green darner dragonfly from the same stretch of road, both invertebrates substantially larger than the tiny frog.

Falling Slowly

Farewell, Glen Hansard, much too soon. (I've just watched Once again. It's even more heartbreaking, now.)

More at the Guardian.

Live Music (Gillian Welch and David Rawlings)

I first saw Gillian Welch (and David Rawlings) perform in 1998 at the Towne Crier Café, which was then located in Pawling, NY. The capacity there couldn't have been more than 150 or so, and as I remember I was seated with some friends at a table right next to the stage. I had heard at least one of the two records Welch had out at the time, and had liked it well enough to buy a copy, but even so I wasn't prepared for what I heard. Her singing and songwriting were brilliant enough on record, but seeing the two performers up-close, with David chiming in with tight harmonies and the extraordinary sounds he got out of a little Epiphone archtop acoustic guitar, was nothing short of a revelation. (Rawlings doesn't simply play brilliantly; he plays inventively, with wit.)

In time, the couple became too popular for tiny clubs like the Towne Crier, and though I bought most of their subsequent records I didn't have a chance to see them alive again until this week, in a sold-out show at the Portsmouth Music Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a venue that seats almost 900. In the ensuing twenty-eight years their repertoire has grown and broadened (a bit), but they still perform in basically the same manner, with the same or similar instruments and no additional musicians. The only major difference is that Rawlings, who has released a few records under his own name, now takes lead vocals on roughly half the songs, and the couple are billed, as they should be, as a two-person collaboration.

As far as I could tell, the lone song they performed from their first two records, the only one that would have been in the 1998 set, was "One More Dollar." Other than that they performed a mix of new material and songs from their 2001 album Time (The Revelator) through last year's Woodland. There were several songs from the David Rawlings Machine album entitled A Friend of a Friend, and I have to say I enjoyed those a lot more live than I did on that record. There were several encores, notably a rousing sing-along version of "Look at Miss Ohio" from Soul Journey, and, at the very end, a lovely cover of "Long Black Veil" for which the sound system was switched off and Welch and Rawlings stood at the edge of the stage and performed without a mic to a hushed and delighted house. From what I understand they play Portsmouth regularly, and I'll make every effort to catch them next time around.

Digging in Orkney

The producers of Time Team have released a 75-minute video covering the excavations at Orkney's Ness of Brodgar, which were conducted over a twenty-year period ending in summer 2024. Rather than the typical Time Team episode, in which a team of archaeologists swoop in and excavate a site in real time over a limited period, this is more of a straight documentary, and a very good one at that. The only recognizable Time Team regulars here are Tony Robinson, who contributes some voice-over, and the geophysicist John Gater, who has longstanding connections to the site. The other archaeologists seen on camera, including the site's director, Nick Card, are veterans of the dig at the Ness.

Orkney prehistory is fascinating. The Ness complex, dating to roughly 3000BC, is one of the most important Neolithic sites in Britain. Despite Orkney's isolation, it was no cultural backwater. In addition to the Ness, the islands are home to important stone circles, the chambered tomb at Maes Howe, and the settlement of Skara Brae. Whoever the ancient Orcadians were, they had sufficient time and energy to devote to craftsmanship and public architecture; the impressive fine stonework at the Ness is featured in the documentary.

When the excavation concluded, the site was reinterred to protect it, but during the final stages of that work a geophysical survey revealed an intriguing circular feature outside the limits of the original excavation, and the investigation of that feature (rumored to be a large Neolithic hearth) will be the subject of a future Time Team episode. The analysis and publication of the finds at the Ness is expected to go on for many years.