A native of Wisconsin, Field Of Stars is McCutcheon’s 45th album in an illustrious career that has embraced folk and Americana alike, with songs ranged from the relationships and romance to political protest and social commentary. With backing musicians that include Peter Kennedy on electric guitar, fiddle player Stuart Duncan, Cory Walker on banjo and Tim O’Brien joining on vocals and mandolin, ‘Here’, a piano ballad about a familiar if fictional character, opens with the homely image of “My sister’s in the kitchen/With the bread and the cheese/Lettuce and tomato/Some mayonnaise, please/An apple and a glass of milk”, a memory of junior high school, summertime and freedom that launches a song about the life ahead with a marriage , a baby and a dog, “Everything you wanted/Back when you were young/Could you have imagined”, though the closing line “Did you ever think you’d miss/Your whole life” has an I ain’t ever satisfied sting in the tail. The booklet’s reference to Ram Dass is for American spiritual teacher and the guru of modern yoga who wrote ‘Be Here Now’.
The first of several co-writes, a collaboration with Carrie Newcomer who also sings vocals, the title track, one of several that conjure lyrical, musical and vocal comparisons to Stan Rogers, is a six-minute number that speaks of four pilgrims walking the Camino de Santiago, a 1000-year-old, 500-mile pilgrimage in the footsteps of St Francis beginning in the French Pyrenees and ending in the Spanish town of Santiago de Compostela, or field of stars, where legend has it the bones of the apostle James are interred. It starts with a personal investment (“I promised my brother we’d do it one day/But we waited six months too long…So, I carry this small box of ashes/Just as I told him I’d do/This last journey, we will take together”) and moves to a nun preparing to forsake his habit (“I took my vows to the order/And for decades I struggled to know/Now I carry the weight of decision/This God I’ve been taught is too small”). A third is a soldier looking for some sort of salvation (“It’s quiet here, not like in Kabul/I have been on some treks in my day/It is lighter without gear and rifle… In my pocket I carry a medal/I will leave at the tomb of St. James/In my heart I carry a great pressing weight/That I struggle each day just to name”). The fourth is the narrator recalling their fellow travellers and the purpose of their journey (“I met a soldier, a nun, and a brother/Each of them carried a burden/And each of them laid it on down/That was the job of the journey/To make it at last holy ground”) because “Some things we just have to carry along/Our joys, our doubts, and our trials/Just to lay them all down at the bones of the saint/No matter how long or how far/We walk in the way, we walk in the world”.
History and real-life figures are part of the storytelling, ‘The Hammer’, another piano-based track with an anthemic folksy tune Stephen Foster might have penned, being written in memory of Henry Aaron on the day he died in 2021. Born in Mobile, Alabama, Henry Louis Aaron went on to become a baseball legend, playing 23 seasons in the Major Leagues between 1954 and 1976 and also an activist in the Civil Rights Movement on account of the racist hate mail he received, the song written from the perspective of a devotee recalling his childhood memories (“I was just eleven/When I first heard the song/A quarter million people/On that mall all sang along/“If I Had a Hammer”/And, like a bolt out of the blue/I turned to my mom/And said, ‘We do!’”), the third verse namechecking a field of fellow players, among them Lou Gehrig, Eddie Matthews and Jackie Robinson.
A second co-write, this with Trent Wagler, ‘Hell & High Water’ inexplicably isn’t included on the lyric booklet but, musically and lyrically echoing his affinity with the Appalachians and with moody work from Duncan, tells of the flooding in eastern Kentucky in 2022 as he sings “When the waters come for you, you won’t be kneeling down”. Again rooted in history, albeit more distant, MS St. Louis recounts the shameful account of how, in 1939, the ship set sail from Hamburg carrying 900 Jewish refugees to Cuba, then to Canada and the United States only to turned away and returned to Europe, many dying in the Holocaust, “Just ashes in the wind”, the bitterly ironic line “the lady of the harbor lifts her lamp for all to see/ ‘You poor, your huddled masses/Yearning to breathe free’” taking a timely resonance in the light of the incoming racist presidency captured in the lines “I read the news today/Another tale of refugees/Turned back and turned away/What does our history tell us/Must we live it all again?”
McCutcheon’s sung of his shoemaker uncle before on ‘One Strong Arm’ and does so again with ‘Stubby’, again celebrating his skill as fast-pitch softball star for his church team as he remembers spending two weeks with him one summer as “With his glove tucked under his left arm/He cradled the ball with his right/He threw to the plate, quickly slipped on his glove/It was just such a beautiful sight/If he fielded a hit, he’d scoop up the ball/Toss it up right in front of his face/Tuck his glove underarm, catch the ball in one motion/His throw’d beat the man to first base…He made every batter look foolish/As he mowed then all down, one by one”.
Featuring Claire Lynch on vocals and written with Zoe Mulford, ‘Only Ones Dancing’ is an old-fashioned waltzer that, as the title suggests, is about being romantically swept off your feet (“We didn’t care that we were the only ones dancing/Dancing just suddenly seemed like the right thing to do/Our new favorite melody, simple and sweet/So put your arms ’round me and sway to the beat/And everyone else can stay glued to their seats -.I just want to dance with you”) that goes from an anniversary serenade by the same “guy from that long-ago bar/With a backup quartet and a shiny guitar” and to “Waffle House Sunday, a family affair/The girls and their partners and kids are all there/When, there on the jukebox, that singer, that song/We stand, with the little ones egging us on/The girls roll their eyes, but they know that we will/This pair of old lovers who just can’t stay still”.
An eventide hymnal of sort with piano, organ and fiddle, ‘At the End Of The Day’ was written in 2017 to mark the firing up of the Johanna Kiln, the largest wood-fired kiln in North America, built by his long-time St. John’s University friend and master Japanese potter
Richard Bresnahan, the song a “small prayer/At the end of the day/I wish this peace was everywhere…And we will rise up/Count our blessings by the score/We will rise up/From all the burdens that we bore”.
Staying with the theme of blessings, translated as “repairing the world“, ‘Tikkun Olam’ is a Hebrew phrase that, a central concept in Judaism, refers to drawing closer to God through kindness to others, the song about dignity in homelessness (“He wasn’t looking for a handout/Wouldn’t take a dime/A solemn, silent witness/With a homemade cardboard sign”) as McCutcheon sings “I didn’t understand the words/I couldn’t pass him by/He turned as I approached him/And looked me in the eye/“It comes from ancient Judaism/But is born anew/For the work that lies before us/You don’t have to be a Jew’…. I may be only one, old man/But we each must do our part/If what I’ve done just reaches one/Praise God, that is a start”.
Another rooted in history, given a sprightly fiddle tune setting with O’Brien on mandolin, the Seeger-ish ‘Redneck’ was written to mark the centenary of the Battle of Blair Mountain , the largest armed labour struggle in American history as Nimrod Workman, Mother Jones and the UMWA worked to organise the mines of Mingo and Logan counties, the miners wearing red bandanas around their necks to identify themselves, from whence the title term derives , proudly declaimed in the chorus “I am a Redneck, (I’ll) say it long and loud/I am a Redneck, a coal miner and I’m proud”.
Having recently turned seventy, the spry old time waltzing ‘Too Old To Die Young’ is a witty number about growing old (“My youth passed before me/Guess I just missed the cut
It seems only yesterday/That my life had begun/Though my body’s intact/I must face the fact/I’m too old to die young…Always thought I’d go out/In a great blaze of glory/But instead, I just hung in”) with the resolution “I guess I’ll accept/That this is my lot/I will rage and I’ll holler/For the time that I’ve got/Drink it down to the dregs/Right up to the end/Be the best damn old fart/That there ever has been”.
Kennedy on lap steel, the creak in the weary bones is echoed in ‘Tired’ (“Is it slaving at a lousy job/That’s eating at my soul?/Eight hours a day plus overtime/Digging Massey coal/Tearing out the mountain’s guts/At the bottom of a hole…When I started I was young/Always did what I was told/I sweltered in their heat/Shivered in their cold/I gave them my best years/‘Til now I’m broken, bent, and old”), though the last verse indicates it also loss that’s bearing down on the soul (“The emptiness when I get home/The silence shouts like thunder/The night’s too long, the bed’s too wide/Is it really any wonder/That I’m tired/And I’m so lost without you”).
The last song about a real-life figure is the Rogers-like circling fingerpicked ‘Peter Norman’, who, an Australian, the third man and silver medal winner alongside Tommie Smith and John Carlo for the 200 metre finals and raising their fists on the platform of the 1968 Olympics in Mexico in protest at the Tlateloloco massacres, Mexico’s answer to Kent State when the Mexican army killed between 300 and 400 demonstrating students. Many felt that it was his salute that meant he was unofficially sanctioned and never again selected for the Olympics, but in “in the battle between right & wrong/There is no second place”.
The final co-write, adapting David Shumate’s poem, the piano and fiddle waltzing ‘Waiting For The Moon’ is another love song, albeit to a planetary object of affection that references George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful Life, that again reveals itself as a meditation on mortality (“Now, like the moon, I wax and I wane/Don’t know just how many I might see again/And, like her, someday I will vanish from sight/To appear as a thing you see only at night”).
It ends with him joined by a cappella quartet Windborne for the unaccompanied benedictory ‘Blessing’, a table grace (“Bless our friends/Yes, bless our foes/Bless the weary/Work of those/Who make this world”) adopted by Bresnahan for the meals during the firing of the Johanna Kiln that includes the wonderful refrain “Raise your voice/Raise your song/Live your thanks/Your whole life long/We are all saints/We are all jerks/Bless this food/And bless this work”. A warm amen then to an album that’s already made this old fart a strong contender for the year end best ofs.
Mike Davies
Artist’s website: www.folkmusic.com
No new videos yet, so here’s a recent oldie – ‘The Night That John Prine Died’:
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