Prodigious aural history and imaginings of Woody Guthrie, through some of Guthrie’s own songs and more written specially by Meuross.

Release Date : 14th March 2025

Label : Hatsongs Records

Format: CD / CD + songbook / Digital

ON A ROLL

On a roll of song cycles, Reg Meuross can do no wrong, as he effortlessly slips between topic and genre, influence and inclination, finding, here, yet another set to wow his expanding audience. A jobbing singer-songwriter of more than a few years standing, he has always been a capable set of hands, and larynx, to find himself comfortable in styles from either side of the atlantic, as likely to bear comparisons with Dylan as with a Carthy or a Jones. Indeed, Martin Carthy has called him “A mighty songwriter and an equally fine singer” . To be able to pen such an extravagant back catalogue, that can straddle effortlessly each genre, is no small feat.

Song cycles? Well, whilst he has never strayed away from tackling difficult subjects: dementia, historical injustice and Victor Jara all within his remit, it is within recent years that he has taken single subjects and spread them over the whole of an album, taking on collaboration to further gild the lily. So first, his 2018 set, 12 Silk Handkerchiefs, around the 1968 Hull triple trawler tragedy, and its aftermath. This was followed, in 2023, by Stolen By God, his frankly astonishing work, covering the legacies of the slave-trade. Performed with kora player, Jali Fily Cissokho, and concertina player Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne, this was little short of stunning, as was witnessed, live, at Shrewsbury Folk Festival, a year or so back. How to top that?

COMMISSIONED BY TOWNSHEND

I guess it does no harm to have the patronage of someone with the history and gravitas of Pete Townshend, who actually commissioned this project, producing the album and playing on a track or two. But, fear not, this is no extravaganza of windmill guitars, nor a covers heavy tribute to Guthrie, being rather Meuross musing on the life and times of the dustbowl troubadour.

Yes, there are just less than a handful of interpretations, but the bulk of this piece is of new songs, written to give a flavour of the life and times of Woodrow Wyatt Guthrie. And what a band he has pulled together to help him, with, as well as Townshend, big hitters like Phil Beer and Geraint Watkins, sidesman to Van Morrison, Nick Lowe and many many more, and currently part of Slim Chance. Add in Marion Fleetwood, and her fiddle, together with the crack rhythm section of Roy Dodds and Simon Edwards (Fairground Attraction), and you have quite a line-up.

THE ALBUM UNFURLS

It is with tinkling mandolin that the album unfurls, to which a solid bass and drums swiftly latch on, Meuross then starting to sing. This is the title track and sets out the stall invitingly: “You are the voice, you are the call, you are the word of one and all……. You sang for those who’d got no home, so they’d never ride the tracks alone“. And it sounds both celebratory and eulogic, with Meuross’s voice a sensitive yearn, in a minor key. The bass for this opener is Townshend, unshowy and effective, he also supplying some reedy keys. A burst of harmonica exists, so as not to forget where any tousle haired influencee got it first. A good start.

“Hey hey Woody Guthrie, I made you this song” starts off the final verse of A Folk Song’s Not A Folk Song, and is also by Meuross, but is as archetypal in construction as any of Guthrie’s own, needing that reveal to show otherwise. Banjo and accordion beef up the presentation, Meuross himself and Watkins respectively, with slide from Beer, leaving the fiddle to Fleetwood. The same overall loving craftmanship seeps into Mary’s Song, a song about Guthrie’s first wife, Mary, sung from her standpoint, she all but neglected as her husband set off on the minstrel trail. Kinder than he perhaps was to her, it is a gently sad swayalong waltz, with the mandolin, accordion and fiddle to the fore, a cajun lullaby to their all too brief marriage of nine years. The additional backing vocals are from Fleetwood.

CHANNELING GUTHRIE SENIOR

Rather than documenting any other side to the story, Meuross pens the next song, I Sent For A Wife (Charley’s song) through the voice of Guthrie Senior, touching on the fate of his wife, Woody’s mother, who “went crazy and died“, leaving a vacany to be filled: “So I did the right thing, I sent for a bride“. Does this suggest, possibly, where Woody got some of his own ideas about women and wives? This is a quirky jugband ballad, with Watkins now on saloon bar piano, and more of Fleetwood’s fiddle . It would be merely humorous were it not actually true. (The “craziness” that affected that first wife, of course, was as a result of the neurodegenerative hereditary nastiness of Huntington’s Chorea. It later to present also to the singer himself).

OOMPAH, JUGBAND & BANJO

The first Guthrie song is up next, the possibly lesser known So Long, It’s Been Good To Know Ya. This time it is Katie Whitehouse adding the backing vocals, the melody characterised by the Tex-Mex oompah style of Norteño, Watkins doubling on accordion and organ, whilst a banjo footprint keeps it in line. Some prayer house piano and strummed acoustic then feature for Woody Come Home, a plaintive appeal from, presumably, Mary again, for her errant husband to come back home: “Come home, Woody boy, I miss your sweet face, I’m lonely and broke in this desolate place“.

It is every bit as sad as that sounds, if setting up the stall for Guthrie’s own I Ain’t Got No Home In This World Anymore as a perfect, if harsh, riposte. With choral BVs and a rousing second section where the accordion, banjo, bass and drums chug up a gear, it is a fine rendition.

AN ANTHEM FOR THE COUNTER CULTURE

Meuross then, once more, shows a canny knack for adding the context of his songs to allow additional narrative to be read into Guthrie’s own. Fit For Work (Illegal Hands) is a deliberate borrow of subject dear to Guthrie, if placed a song or two ahead the song you are beginning to think of. And it is a worthy companion piece, both catchy and communicative. But rather than that obvious song, he follows it with This Land Is Your Land.

Almost a countercultural national anthem, Meuross’s arrangement strips back much the gung ho features often applied, just voice and that reedy chapel organ again. When the chorale pipe in, they sound restrained and hymnal, rather than the protest anthem it has become. True, it builds, adding a more strident tone and meter, but is perhaps a more faithful delivery that many others you might know. Beer adds a lovely run with, partly, bottleneck, to this fuller length version than is also usually aired.

PAINED INDIGNATION

Woody Guthrie’s Chains sets out the singer’s apparent M.O., set to piano and organ, a lonesome lament to his being “chained to the forsaken, the forgotten and the forlorn“, that lifts a phrase or two from Guthrie’s actual words, giving that extra credibility. It is a miniature maudlin masterpiece, referencing Guthrie Senior’s KKK affiliations, “strange fruit”, co-conspirator Leadbelly and even his Huntington’s: “the sickness that has bound me….. steals my life away“. That hint of death is thus the perfect moment now for Deportees to get its turn, and it’s a good one. Fairly spare in construction, guitar and mandolin mainly, it allows Meuross to draw out every ounce of pained indignation from the lyric.

Red Shoes runs with this episode, using the eponymous red shoes that could be afforded by “just a short day’s trip” over the border, those shoes falling from the plane as it plunged. Bethany Porter adds some plangent cello to this one, as well as her additional vocal, whilst Watkins continues to get good use out of the pipe organ, duetting with the cello and Fleetwood’s fiddle to exert maximum pathos. Stackabones and Runaway Boy now returns to the imagined narrative of Guthrie, Stackabones referring to his daughter, Cathy, killed in an electrical fire, with her father away at sea, in the merchant marine, and Guthrie himself the runaway boy. Just voice and guitar, it is supremely economical narrative.

FAST FORWARD

The shanty like I Ain’t Dead, which seems to have Guthrie ruing the disconnect between the fighter for freedoms in song versus the husband and father falling short at home, mentioning again the circumstances of his daughter’s demise. Chilling stuff set to a sturdy beat. It feeds, appropriately enough, into Riding To Jerusalem, a biblical sounding inquisition around the gaps between the message and the manifest. The swirly organ solo is from Townshend, melting into and with the harmonica, giving a feel of Bob Dylan’s born again years.

NARRATION BY…

Bob Dylan, you say? It is likely “him” narrating the final cut, The Gypsy Singer, Dylan having paid several visits to the now dying and diminished Guthrie. Indeed, you will recognise this from the opening scene of A Complete Unknown. A charming song, it contains the apparent advice for the visitor to “get yourself a guitar, sonny, get yourself a suit.” In the style of early Dylan, it is clearly also the style of Guthrie, with Meuross avoiding the overt textures of either voice, leaving that to the accompaniment, guitar, piano and organ. The fiddle, when it comes, is now both Beer and Fleetwood, and it is a powerful and thought provoking finale.

Quite a package is this, and Meuross has clearly put a lot of time and effort into it, gathering the facts and filtering them into songs that act as a bridge between the man and the myth, debunking maybe some of the latter to paint a better picture of the former. It may have been Townshend’s idea, but, in choosing Meuross to carry it through, the project has been gifted a golden touch and a golden voice. The band are superb at being just that, taking no shine from the principal artist, allowing him to glow merely all the brighter, reflecting their additional gloss.

Here’s a glorious taster, A Folk Song’s A Song:

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