PTSD

This is for your own good.

This is one of the rare times when I say “go buy this” and really mean it. I think you should all go out and buy every one of these songs. But if you need convincing, a small assortment of the songs of Stan Rogers, who is my favorite folk singer ever.

The Starter Pack: The Absolute Essentials

“Band Introductions” (HiH)

and my partner in crime, my friend; he’s also my brother


“Barrett’s Privateers” (FC)

a letter of marque came from the king
to the scummiest vessel I’d ever seen


“Forty-five Years” (FC)

where the earth shows its bones of wind-broken stone
and the sea and the sky are one


“Guysborough Train” (CH)

shattered your temples and i’ve brought on your fall
now i wait for the guysborough train


“The Field Behind the Plow” (NP)

for the good times come and go, but at least there’s rain
so this won’t be barren ground when September rolls around


“Morris Dancers” (HiH)

it works, too, we’ve played this song and impregnated entire audiences


“The Idiot” (NP)

oh i miss the green and the woods and streams and i don’t like cowboy clothes
but i like being free and that makes me and idiot i suppose


“White Squall” (FFW)

now it’s just my luck to have the watch with nothing left to do
but watch the deadly waters glide as we roll north to the soo


“Billy Green” (CH)

and i will tell of things i did when i was just nineteen
i helped defeat the yank invader there can be no doubt


“The Woodbridge Dog Disaster” (CH)

she would wander all day with her duster in hand
she was one of those women who clean where they stand


“Northwest Passage” (NP)

tracing one warm line through a land so wide and savage
and make a northwest passage to the sea


.zip One HERE.



The Starter Pack: Take Another Hit

See? Told you you’d want more. These are a little harder to sell than the first set, but they have their own rewards. Again, make me hapy and go buy this stuff. Buy lots, so that they release more albums and I can go buy them.


“Canol Road” (NP)

sixty-five miles into town and a winter’s thirst to drown
a winter still with two months left to go


“California” (NP)

but can i once taste northern waters then forsake them for the south
to feel California’s ashes in my mouth


“Bluenose” (HiH)

the proud fast queen of the grand banks fleet
portrayed on every dime


“Shriner Cows” (HiH)

i myself was talking to a real live Alberta cowboy. this guy, this guy, he rolled his own, he had stubble all over his face, hadn’t had a haircut in...a long time


“Night Guard” (HiH; studio track on NP)

forty-four’s no age to start again
but the bulls were getting tough and he’s never free of pain


“Flying” (FFW)

i was a third round pick in the nhl
and that’s three years of living in hell


“Take It from Day to Day” (CH)

the icy fog is in my bones
and the ache won’t go away


“Straight and True” (CH)

and if none of this is fancy the love is always straight and true
straight and true, there’s something about it, i can’t live without the coast


“Famous Inside” (CH)

i can almost hear as some of you say
you’d think he’d have more sense at his age


“The Puddler’s Tale” (CH)

they night and day pour out their thunder
as every ingot rolls away a dozen more are split asunder


“Fisherman’s Wharf” (FC)

that i looked from the citadel down to the narrows and asked what it’s coming to
i saw upper canadian concrete and glass right down to the water line


“The Rawdon Hills” (FC)

the grandsons of the mining men scratch the fields among the trees
when the gold played out they were all turned out with granite dusted knees

.zip Two HERE.

posted by Elizabeth @ 9:05 PM