Wayfaring Strangers: Ladies from the Canyon. AllMusic Rating. As the title of this compilation indicates, the artists on this collection of mega-rare cuts by female singer/songwriters of the era are often in a Joni Mitchell mood. Confessional and narrative lyrics, predominant folky acoustic guitars. Deeper than recent crit-revisionist darlings Linda Perhacs, Judee Sill, or Vashti Bunyan, Ladies From The Canyon takes a solid look at folk s private and obscure underbelly. Close your eyes and you could just as well be in a hazily lit club at Bleeker & MacDougal as a sun-splashed Laurel Canyon coffeehouse.
Having already achieved cult legend status with its pleasingly eccentric collections of obscure old soul and funk recordings as well as the 2006 Ladies From The Canyon set of long-forgotten privately issued American female artists, the Numero Group now turns its restorative powers to the nether world of the acoustic guitar.
Spreading its net to those who fluttered on the folk horizon between 1966-81 in the wake of the idiosyncratic guitar liberties demonstrated by the likes of John Fahey and Leo Kottke, it casts a rare spotlight on those who fell under the radar, such as Tom Smith, Ted Lucas, Scott White, Dana Westover, Mark Lang and Dwayne Canan. Household names they are not, and there’s little in this quietly elusive homage to the eclecticism of the acoustic guitar that’s going to change any of that. And yet, played in its entirety it does wield an undeniably off-kilter charm that, guitar enthusiast or no, soothes the soul and seems to shroud the music in an otherly mellow glow. Jim Ohlschmidt’s complex 12-string mood piece, Delta Freeze, sounds like it’s straight out of a David Lynch movie, and Dan Lambert’s slide orgy on Charley Town never goes where you expect it. A puzzling niche, but an engaging one.
Wayfaring Stranger Youtube
While the title might lead some listeners to expect a set of rare female-led blues acts, this album is actually devoted to delicately downbeat folk-rock and singer/songwriter-oriented material, which is to say these women have the blues, even if they don't always sing the blues. Compiled from a variety of hard-to-find LPs and singles recorded between 1967 and 1973 (with one tune from 1965 interrupting the time line), this disc is a bit more eclectic than similar collections that have appeared in recent years (most notably the excellent Wayfaring Strangers: Ladies from the Canyon); while nearly all these artists are clearly in the same singer/songwriter tradition as Joni Mitchell (who became a role model to thousands of young women with acoustic guitars back in the day), these 16 tunes also dip into trippy jazz-influenced explorations ('Blind as You Are' by Michele), folk with a pronounced country accent (Kathy Smith's 'What Nancy Knows'), arty freak folk ('Queen Wilhelmina' by Amanda Trees), Native American percussion and chanting (Leonda's 'Zono My Bird'), and even a bit of soulful if dandified blues (Anna Black's 'Gloomy Sunday'). While most of these acts are hopelessly obscure, both Bonnie Koloc and Rosalie Sorrels were and are well-known in contemporary folk circles, suggesting the folks who compiled this were going for merit as much as rarity. Lurking somewhere between the hippie era and the dawn of California pseudo-mysticism, there's a lot of purposeful spaciness in the lyrics of these tunes, but the performances are nearly always beautiful and impassioned, and the arrangements confirm these songs came from the days when record making was a craft created by flesh-and-blood musicians. Women Blue is a fine set of unjustly scarce material, and Past and Present would do well to compile a second volume of similar rarities.
The Wayfaring Stranger Song
| Sample | Title/Composer | Performer | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 02:28 | ||
| 2 | 04:38 | ||
| 3 | 02:11 | ||
| 4 | 03:19 | ||
| 5 | 02:24 | ||
| 6 | 03:01 | ||
| 7 | 02:52 | ||
| 8 | 03:10 | ||
| 9 | 04:33 | ||
| 10 | 02:41 | ||
| 11 | 03:09 | ||
| 12 | 04:25 | ||
| 13 | 04:16 | ||
| 14 | 03:15 | ||
| 15 | 02:28 | ||
| 16 | 03:40 |