Ran Blake - Town & Country (CD)

2017 release. Plainspoken but poetic, timely and timeless, poignant yet pointed: the American folk song tradition has a long history of confronting specific injustices while embracing a universal humanity. On the starkly moving Town and Country, vocalist Dominique Eade and pianist Ran Blake take the long view of our own tumultuous moment in history with a wide-ranging collection of folk tunes that examine the travails of Americans from Main Street to the mountains. With the varied repertoire on Town and Country, Eade and Blake - long-time colleagues both on the stage and as educators at Boston's New England Conservatory - present a broad notion of folk song that's as diverse as the nation itself. There are the expected classic tunes and country ballads, the ill-fated coalminers, the tragic romantics grasping out their last breaths, the cries of faith and determination sent heavenward. But in the agile imaginations of these two inventive artists, who share a love for skewing the traditional through a modernist lens, the folk idea is broad enough to include film noir laments and TV-scaled road songs, moonlit love and Third Stream austerity.

Track List:

Disc: 1

1. Lullaby
2. It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
3. Moon Riverwest Virginia Mine Disaster
4. Elijah Rock
5. Give My Love to Rose
6. Harvest at Massachussetts General Hospital
7. The Easter Tree
8. Moonglow / Theme from Picnic
9. Thoreau
10. Moti
11. Pretty Fly
12. Open Highway
13. Gunther
14. West Virginia Mine Disaster
15. Harvest at Massachussetts General Hospital
16. Moonlight in Vermont
17. Goodnight, Irene