So I recently got a new computer and, with the sudden preponderance of space available, I realized I could return to my obsessive/illegal pursuit of new music - and by new I mean new to me. What follows is a short playlist. I decided to put it together when I heard the first song, "Miss Ferris" by John Hartford, a great song about steam boats. One of the characters in the song is a boat captain named Buck. Seeing as my great uncle Joseph "Buck" Davis was a steam boat captain, it only seemed reasonable that I should post up this song. The other tracks that follow are fairly recent acquisitions and other things that accompany that song well.
The image above is a lithograph depicting a steam boat race on the Ohio and Monongahela Rivers in 1949 - the boat on the left is my Uncle Buck's. (Parts of Hartford's song take place in 1947 as he notes, so the steam boats he is talking about could look a lot like these.) Buck's boat was the Wm. Larimer Jones, and as it notes in the bottom right corner "Ran course of 1.6 miles in 9 minutes with 4 light barges." Unfortunately that wasn't fast enough, as he lost to the opposing ship, The Homestead, by one second! The race was so close that this lithograph was made to commemorate it. Below is a somewhat blurry detail shot of the info about Uncle Buck's boat.
Ok, enough family history. Here are the
tunes. Tracklist:
Miss Ferris - John Hartford
Trouble Weighs a Ton - Dan Auerbach
Deep Blue Sea - Grizzly Bear
Bull Black Nova - Wilco
The Engines are Idle - Jay Bennett
Tightrope - Yeasayer
Frankie's Gun! - The Felice Brothers
Caroline - Old Crow Medicine Show
John Henry - Lesley Riddle
Rough and Rocky Road - The Stars of Harmony
Rise Above - The Dirty Projectors
From the Bottom of a Well - Mike Doughty
Swimming Song - Loudon Wainwright III
Instant Street - Deus
The Black Keys - I Got Mine
