Sign Up for our Email "NewsyLetter"PHIL AND CARRIE have issued their second CD!!!!! It's called The "You've Played Where?" Tour: Live. Like the first CD, "the American Folk Tradition -- LIVE", it is a live recording, which, not surprisingly, sounds exactly like Phil and Carrie....LIVE, since that's what it is... complete with lots of audience participation.
You can order either The "You've Played Where?" Tour: Live or "the American Folk Tradition -- LIVE" by mail. $15 per CD, plus $2 per ORDER postage and handling, to Phil's address, below.
PHIL SHAPIRO
979 HARFORD ROAD
DRYDEN, N.Y. 13053
607 844-4535
pds10@cornell.edu
Heres what you need to know about both CD's:
PHIL SHAPIRO AND CARRIE SHORE: The YOU’VE PLAYED WHERE? Tour: Live
Not the big cities, certainly. We disappear in the hoopla of the large places, where a stray pair of traditionally oriented folk singers is just an asterisk at some local coffeehouse. Ah, but the small towns are different. That’s where we shine. As of Winter 2008, we’ve done nearly 150 shows, most of them in little places, where people notice when live music comes to town, and where they move at a slower pace, and can sit down and sing with us without having to check the stock market, sports scores, and e-mail in the middle of the concert. Let’s hear it for the smaller towns. We think we see a lot more smiles there.
We knew that we wanted our second CD, like our first, to be a live concert recording. We love to do house concerts, and we love it when the audience sings with us. So we combined the two, and on December 30th, 2006, we invaded the home of our dear friends Terry and Diane Kelleher, with a crowd of great singers in tow. Terry recorded us, and then we spent many hours of his time and ours putting it all together into this CD. One song, Now is the Cool of the Day, was recorded by Terry in Debra Moree and Ken McKinney’s living room, they for whom Carrie wrote the waltz. Thanks to all of you for your love and support. We’re
glad you’re all still speaking to us.
1. WALKIN’ DOWN THE LINE (©1963 Warner Bros. Music) This is one of Bob Dylan’s earliest songs, back in the days when he tended to re-write traditional songs. This one feels a lot like Hand Me Down My Walkin’ Cane.
3. WATER FROM ANOTHER TIME (©1985 John McCutcheon/Appalsongs ASCAP) This is our favorite John McCutcheon song. Carrie learned it because it reminds her of her Grandmother’s house, just uphill from the house she grew up in, all full of the smell of fresh-baked cookies, and sporting an old hand water pump. She plays this on her Grandmother’s fiddle, German, from the 1860’s.
5. TWO DOLLAR BILL (trad.) This feels like an old song to us. Sometimes bluegrass bands will play it. The verses are the best that Google had to offer. It’s got a lot of emptiness and loneliness to it, but it’s so darn much fun to sing. Besides, it gives me an excuse to carry a two dollar bill in my wallet.
6. SENECA SQUARE DANCE (trad.) This tune has been around since Civil War times, at least. It’s great to dance to.
7. RAILROADING ON THE GREAT DIVIDE. (© Sara Carter, Peer International Corp.) One of the finest Carter Family songs. I have no idea whether the Carter Family ever visited Wyoming, but we surely know that they knew how to write a great chorus.
9. COME LOVE COME (trad.) Frank and Anne Warner collected this on the North Carolina Outer Banks from Eleazar Tillett (isn’t that a great name?), back in the 1940’s, when their portable recording rig filled up the entire trunk of their car. It’s a Minstrel Show song, so it was sung by traveling white musicians wearing black face. This seems very strange and hostile today, but I was in a minstrel show in fourth grade, and nobody thought it to be in the least unusual or wrong. A lot of black music, and a lot of black musical style, was preserved by the black face minstrels, though that might not have been what was on their minds at the time.
11. SONG FOR THE MIRA (©Allister McGillivray, Morning Music Inc. ASCAP) A wonderful evocation of summers gone bye. We hope that what happens in the last verse happens to each of you at some time in your life. Yes, you can go back home, sometimes.
12. THE GOOD IN LIVING / LITTLE BEGGARMAN (© Steven Sellors/ trad.) The song, by Newfoundland songwriter Steven Sellors, is a bit of deep philosophy that we all should learn to live by, and the tune is basically on the same subject. Little Beggarman is its Irish name. In this country it’s called the Red Haired Boy. Go figure.
14. SITTIN’ ON TOP OF THE WORLD (p.d.) This was most likely written by Walter Vinson, of the black string band The Mississippi Sheiks, about 1930. But we’ll also probably never know for sure, and some of the verses were surely added later. Still, let’s remember that he existed, and that, of course, if he wrote it he never got paid any royalties.
15. NOW IS THE COOL OF THE DAY (©Jean Ritchie, Geordie Music ASCAP) One of Jean Ritchie’s most beautiful and most powerful songs. It reminds us that, if people are stewards of the earth, we could surely do a better job of it. When Carrie sings this, you can hear the proverbial pin drop.
17. SWING AND TURN JUBILEE (trad.) This is a Play Party song that Jean Ritchie learned as a child. A Play Party is, more or less, a square dance without a band, and the dancers sing the verses, so they won’t need the fiddle, which of course is the Devil’s Instrument. Which is probably why Carrie plays it, and certainly why she plays it in this song.
18. HONEY BABY BLUES (trad.) We learned this from Mac Benford, old timey banjo player extraordinaire, who in turn got it from Clarence Ashley and friends. It’s got a wonderful verse: “Leavin’ if I don’t stay too long”. I can relate to that. If I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it.
20. REUBEN’S TRAIN (trad.) This song, sometimes called 900 Miles, shares one of a whole family of tunes that probably came to this country with West African slaves. You can imagine playing this tune on a one-stringed instrument. It’s hypnotic. There are a lot of variants on this song, but this one was borrowed from Debby McClatchy.
21. DOWN THE ROAD / PIG ANKLE RAG (© Bill Staines, Mineral River Records/ trad.) Bill Staines wrote this song, probably the most optimistic song that either of us knows. When life throws you a curve ball, or the headlines get you down, there’s a day worth living down the road. The Pig Ankle Rag? Good question. Someone said that the Pig Ankle was an early 20th Century dance craze. True? Great old ragtime tune, though.
23. KEN AND DEBRA’S WALTZ (© 2006 Carrie Shore) Nowadays Carrie writes lovely waltzes at the drop of a hat, for a newborn niece or two, for a departed friend. But this was one of the first, for some very special folks who helped make this CD possible.
25. DO RE MI (©1961 Cromwell Music Inc OBO Ludlow Music Inc.) Woody Guthrie wrote his Dust Bowl Ballads to talk to and about what was happening in the hard times of the Great Depression, but, like many of his songs, this one says something bigger that lingers on, many decades later, as once again the fat cats gain weight at the expense of everyone else. Carrie really wails on the fiddle here.
Phil lives in the town of Caroline, near Ithaca, NY. Carrie lives in Conklin Forks, near Binghamton, NY. On this CD, most of the time, Carrie plays a lovely, undocumented, second hand fiddle that eight of her friends chipped in and bought her at the Old Songs festival back in 2005. Phil plays a 1959 Martin D-21 that has been through many wars. Neither of them endorses anything, at least not yet.
– Notes: Phil Shapiro. Graphics: Carrie Shore. 3/2008
Special Thanks to my brother-in-law, Matt Schneider, for the wonderful pictures used for our CD art
and to Terry Kelleher for the great picture of my tattoo! You guys are terrific!! - Carrie
PHIL SHAPIRO AND CARRIE SHORE The American Folk Tradition, LIVE
This album was great fun to make because, well, we didn't know that we were making an album. Most of it was recorded on WVBR's Bound for Glory, broadcast live from the Cafe at Anabel Taylor Hall at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. I (Phil) am the host of the Bound for Glory, North America's longest running live folk concert broadcast. On February 23, 2003, one of my performers became ill, and I had to fill an evening on a few hours notice, so I called Carrie and she came up from Binghamton. Since we didn't know we were doing an album, we weren't tense about it, and everything went just fine.
Four of the cuts, #1,2,5,and 17, were recorded live at Curley's Coffeehouse, Main St., Johnson City on April 19, 2003. Curley's is always a fun place to play, Curley being an interesting character and the audience being full of fans and friends. Thanks, Curley.
A little more info on the songs than you'll find on the CD itself:
HELLO STRANGER is a Carter Family song from a long time ago. I've modified it some over the years, using the first verse as a chorus. Hello, Strangers.
Jim West wrote BUTTERNUT TREE about his family, leavening the truth with a little poetic license. He's the stepfather of Akire Bubar, who has been spreading this wonderful song around the folk circuit.
A LITTLE ROAD AND A STONE TO ROLL is a piece of deep philosophy that oughta cure whatever ails you. I was surprised to find that it was written by John Stewart.
BEREN TANZ is a Scandinavian fiddle tune. It means Bear's Dance. It pairs very well with FROSTY MORN , an old American tune that celebrates something that we have way too much of in this part of the world.
I'm told that GOIN' DOWN THE ROAD FEELIN' BAD dates back to the 1920's, with some added verses by Woody Guthrie. Like many traditional songs, it exists in both the black and white folk traditions, musicians being more colorblind than some. Times change, and details change, but this song is still powerful today.
SONG FOR GALE Larry Kaplan wrote this about Gale Huntington of Martha's Vineyard, not Nantucket as I say on the CD. What fiddle player wouldn't want to learn this song? MY OWN HOUSE is a waltz from Scotland, where it's called ME AIN HOOSE, of course. It's widely played in this country.
OLD GREEN SWEATER comes from the ever-charming Dan Berggren of Fredonia, NY. It's sentimental and sweet, and both of us can really relate to it. It could have been written in the 19th century. Dan grew up partly in the Adirondacks, and his songs show it.
The MILWAUKEE BLUES is an old song, but nobody else puts it together exactly as we do. Some of our verses come from Jay Gould's Daughter, and some from heaven knows where. Ridin' the blinds means riding behind the steam locomotive's tender, on the front apron of the first baggage car. It's pretty safe. Ridin' the rods means riding down below, sprawled across two or three metal rods about a foot above the track. It is definitely not safe.
BYE AND BYE , also called THE CANE PRESS, is presumably an old song. So far our efforts to figure out where it really comes from haven't gotten too far. Anybody got an idea? It's a lot of fun.
Kate Long from West Virginia wrote WHO WILL WATCH THE HOMEPLACE? , a song so full of truth that it still makes me all misty from time to time.
MIDNIGHT ON THE WATER comes from Luke Thomasson, from Texas, popularized by his son Benny Thomasson. Please stop what you're doing and waltz around the kitchen. Then do it again.Frank and Anne Warner collected SETTLE DOWN , or GOIN' DOWN TO TAMPA in Florida many years ago. And they only heard it from one guy. Maybe he wrote it? Listen to the second verse. I don't know any other song where the chorus briefly becomes part of the story.
We live in turbulent times. They're good times. Most of us have enough to eat and a roof over our heads, but the times seem very precarious, as though our whole way of life is a house of cards, propped up by more and more wars. Sing LAST NIGHT I HAD THE STRANGEST DREAM with us. We all need it. Written by Ed McCurdy a long time ago.
Thanks for listening and singing...
Phil and Carrie
(p)(c)2003 Phil Shapiro and Carrie Shore
Mixed by Terry Kelleher
Edited by Phil Shapiro and Carrie Shore
Graphics by Carrie Shore
Photos: front and back, Terry Kelleher. Back of booklet, Dan
Gold. Thanks, guys.
On this CD, Carrie plays a German-made Hopf (?) violin, vintage perhaps 1860(????) given to her by her Grandma Finney.
Phil plays a Martin D-21 guitar, vintage 1959.