Below you’ll find some recent additions to the WPSU Folk Library.  As always, please don’t hesitate to let us know what you want to hear from these artists or any others!  Adam from The Folk Show

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ARTIST: Art Thieme
ALBUM: The Older I Get the Better I Was
LABEL:  Waterbug 045
DESCRIPTION: Collection of live songs from a 30 year span.  An often-overlooked folk veteran.

ARTIST: Geoff Muldaur
ALBUM: Password
LABEL:  Hightone 8125
DESCRIPTION: Diverse offering from folk legend.  Gospel to blues to jug band.

ARTIST: Pride of New York (Joanie Madden, Brian Conway, Billy McComiskey, Brendan Dolan)
ALBUM: Pride of New York
LABEL: Compass 7 4522 2
DESCRIPTION: Celtic supergroup delivers solid offering.

ARTIST: Beyond the Pale
ALBUM: Postcards
LABEL: Borealis
DESCRIPTION: Great stuff from French/Canadian group!  Klezmer / Eastern European influence abounds.

ARTIST: Van Wagner
ALBUM: Woolrich Coat
LABEL: Self
DESCRIPTION: One of PA’s finest singer/songwriters turns out another great album.

ARTIST: Laurie Lewis
ALBUM: Blossoms
LABEL: Spruce and Maple
DESCRIPTION: Diverse offering from normally traditional artist.  Some very cool moments on this disk.

ARTIST: Paul Geremia
ALBUM: Hard Life Rockin’ Chair
LABEL: Adelphi
DESCRIPTION: Folk to country blues - great stuff from ace guitar player.

ARTIST: Dave Alvin
ALBUM: Public Domain: Songs From the Wild Land
LABEL: Hightone
DESCRIPTION: CA singer/songwriter re-works public/traditional tunes.  Great stuff.

Adam, Thanks for the reviews! Makes DJing a bit better.

I was always a big Art Thieme fan, ever since taking a chance on somebody whose record sounded interesting years ago when doing a mail order for vinyl records. While this isn’t my favorite AT record… sadly, that’s an old Kicking Mule one that’s never made it to digital… this is a nice collection that shows the mixed bag of humor, storytelling and fine picking, with a gentle, understated delivery that made Art a legend in Illinois. My first “real” press quote was one from Art, who graciously listened to a bunch of my songs and had some nice things to say. My favorite AT song is either his take on Jerry Rasmussen’s Handful of Songs, or Don Lange’s Here’s to your Rounders. The first times Sons of the Never Wrong played here, about 2005, when we went to dinner at Viet Thai, Sue Demel and I had a toast to Art, one of their favorite folks, too.

The Cottage Cheese Story and The Great Turtle Drive from Out Right Bold Faced Lies, an LP we had years back at the station were favorites of mine, illustrating Art’s great sense of story telling and humor.

“Turd of hurtles!” I remember that quite well! That might have been on one of those Kicking Mule records. Man, that was a neat company. If you bought a few records from them during the year, they sent you a gift certificate at Christmas for a free record; if you called them half the time you got the owner on the phone who would offer advice like “well, if you like so and so, you’re going to like so and so… tell you what, I’ll send that along and if you like it, send me a check for it and if you don’t send it back.”

Oh, yeah, cottage cheese, I remember that one, too. “So I got up and ate the rest of the cottage cheese.” Okay, I’m obviously going to be digging out some of this out tonight! Art has a lot of posts on Mudcat, btw, and some great photos online… I don’t know the link offhand, but a quick Google should find it.

If this cottage cheese song and others are not on CD can you all make/leave a copy to share? Since I’m over 50 I might like them too. (Not that one needs to be 50+)

Paul, the station’s LP is long gone, probably when they sold off all the vinyl in the yard sale before we moved to the Outreach Building (and unfortunately I was out of town that weekend!)

These two songs rank right up there with U Utah Philips “Moose Turd Pie”.... but its good!

I can do that, Paul. Just give me some time, I have this stuff on vinyl. Fun stuff.