7725 - JOEL RAFAEL - AMERICA COME HOME (2012)

JOEL RAFAEL
''AMERICA COME HOME''
JULY 17 2012
45:20

01 - Dance Around My Atom Fire 2:58
Woody Guthrie
02 - America Come Home 4:15
03 - Dharma Burns 3:37
04 - Go Tell The Savior 3:23
Jack Hardy
05 - Indian Summer 3:40
David O'Brien, Joel Rafael
06 - Runaway Girl 4:24
07 - Meanwhile The Rain 3:53
08 - I Can't Feel Your Love 3:37
09 - Within Your Graces 3:47
Joel Rafael, Rebecca Unger
10 - Singing In The Streets 3:42
Jack Tempchin
11 - Goldmine 3:31
12 - Racing And Chasing The Sun 4:19
Tracks By Rafael, Except As Indicated

David Crosby/Vocal Harmony
Steve DiStanislao/Drums
Mark Goldenberg/Guitar (Electric), Hammond B3
Kevin McCormick/Bass
Graham Nash/Vocal Harmony
Joel Rafael/Guitar (Acoustic), Vocals
Beth Fitchet Wood/Vocals (Background)

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7724 - JOEL RAFAEL BAND - WOODYBOYE: SONGS OF WOODY GUTHRIE (AND TALES WORTH TELLING) VOLUME II (2004)

JOEL RAFAEL BAND
''WOODYBOYE: SONGS OF WOODY GUTHRIE (AND TALES WORTH TELLING), VOLUME II"
APRIL 26 2005
45:42

01 - Rangers Command 3:16
02 - Stepstone 3:57
03 - Sierra Blanca Massacre 5:52
04 - This Train Is Bound For Glory 3:01
05 - Ramblin' Reckless Hobo 2:49
06 - Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key 4:42
07 - Dance Around My Atom Fire 2:44
08 - Two Good Men 4:05
09 - Circle Of Truth 4:17
10 - Your Sandal String 3:34
11 - Heaven My Home 3:28
12 - Love Thyself 3:19

Ruslan Biryukov/Cello
Jackson Browne/Vocals
The Burns Sisters/Vocals
Matt Cartsonis/Banjo, Mandola, Slide Guitar
Arlo Guthrie/Vocals
Carl Johnson/Guitar (Acoustic), Vocals
Jimmy LaFave/Vocals
Will Landin/Bass
Mauricio-Fritz Lewak/Drums, Percussion
Van Dyke Parks/Accordion, Piano
Jamaica Rafael/String Arrangements, Violin, Vocals
Joel Rafael/Guitar (Acoustic), Vocals
Jennifer Warnes/Vocal Arrangement, Vocals

REVIEW
by William Ruhlmann
Joel Rafael's second album of Woody Guthrie songs is more ambitious than his first, 2003's Woodeye, and turns to more obscure material. On Woodeye, Rafael applied his husky voice (perhaps closer to Ramblin' Jack Elliott than to Guthrie) and folk/country band arrangements to some of Guthrie's more familiar songs, though he also dug up some rare stuff and even provided a musical setting to an unpublished Guthrie lyric, "Dance a Little Longer." He goes further into the arcane here, with good results. Again, there are Guthrie songs that are relatively little known, such as "Stepstone" (on which guests Jackson Browne, Jimmy LaFave, and Arlo Guthrie add vocals), "Two Good Men" (part of Guthrie's song cycle about the executed anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti), "Circle of Truth," and "Heaven My Home." And, due to the success of "Dance a Little Longer," Rafael has been given some more Guthrie lyrics to musicalize, resulting in the premieres of "Ramblin' Reckless Hero," "Dance Around My Atom Fire," "Your Sandal String," and "Love Thyself." Rafael even covers one of the Billy Bragg-composed Guthrie songs from Mermaid Avenue, "Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key." (He also interpolates one of his own originals, "Sierra Blanca Massacre," which is on the same theme as Guthrie's "Deportee.") There may be no "This Land Is Your Land," but Rafael succeeds in a goal the Guthrie estate has been pushing since the late ‘90s, to demonstrate that there is much more to Guthrie than the songs everybody knows. In some cases, the new songs, as performed by Bragg and Wilco, by the German singer Wenzel, or others, have been stylistically diverse. Rafael is very much in the Guthrie folk tradition, however. He comes up with simple, folkish melodies and sings the songs in a voice that almost sounds like Guthrie, just a Guthrie people haven't heard before.

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7723 - JOEL RAFAEL BAND - WOODEYE: SONGS OF WOODY GUTHRIE (2002)

JOEL RAFAEL BAND
''WOODEYE: SONGS OF WOODY GUTHRIE''
MARCH 4 2003
55:58

01 - When The Curfew Blows 2:18
02 - 1913 Massacre 4:20
03 - Don't Kill My Baby And My Son 5:01
04 - Sowing On The Mountain 2:04
Traditional
05 - Pretty Boy Floyd 4:36
06 - Danville Girl 3:29
07 - Ramblin' Round 3:36
08 - I Ain't Got No Home 2:24
09 - Talking Fishing Blues 3:53
10 - Dust Storm Disaster 3:58
11 - Dance A Little Longer 4:21
12 - Dear Mrs. Roosevelt 3:50
Guthrie, Martina Hoffman
13 - Plane Wreck At Los Gatos 5:45
14 - Talking Oklahoma Hills 6:03
Joel Rafael
Tracks By Guthrie, Except As Indicated

Jeff Berkley/Percussion, Vocals (Background)
Matt Cartsonis/Bottleneck Guitar, Mandola
Carl Johnson/Guitar (Acoustic), Vocals (Background)
Frenchy O'Brien/Shaker
Van Dyke Parks/Accordion
Ellis Paul/Vocals (Background)
Dan Potruch/Drums (Snare), Percussion
Jamaica Rafael/String Arrangements, Strings, Viola, Violin, Vocal Harmony, Vocals (Background)
Joel Rafael/Guitar (Acoustic), Vocals, Vocals (Background)
Dan Rothchild/Bass, Drums, Vocals (Background)
Jennifer Warnes/Vocal Arrangement, Vocals

REVIEW
by William Ruhlmann
Singer Joel Rafael, who has performed at the Woody Guthrie Festival in Guthrie's hometown of Okemah, OK, clearly is a Guthrie scholar, a point he reinforces by putting a photograph on the cover of the CD booklet for Woodeye of a collection of Guthrie books, LPs, and other CDs. He also makes a point of saying in his brief liner notes that he has studied different recordings of Guthrie's songs to make "a genuine effort to present his lyrics as accurately as possible," a task he acknowledges being complicated somewhat by Guthrie's own tendency to improvise and forget. Not surprisingly, Rafael's renditions of Guthrie's songs are much in the style that Guthrie and his earlier followers performed them. In fact, with his husky voice, Rafael sounds like Ramblin' Jack Elliott or the young Bob Dylan trying to sound like Guthrie. The arrangements he and his acoustic string band (Rafael on rhythm guitar, Carl Johnson on lead guitar, Jamaica Rafael on violin, Dan Rothchild on bass, Jeff Berkley on percussion) work up are in an authentic folk/country style, augmented now and then by such sympathetic guests as Van Dyke Parks, Ellis Paul, and Jennifer Warnes. Rafael mixes familiar Guthrie tunes with some obscure ones. Among the latter, the real find is "Don't Kill My Baby and My Son," an anti-lynching song based on a true story from Oklahoma. Rafael is one of several songwriters who have been given access to the trove of Guthrie lyrics without music, and he has done a setting of a 1950 work called "Dance a Little Longer" that turns out to be a good song sounding like yet another husky voiced folksinger, John Prine. Rafael's own discursive "Talking Oklahoma Hills" makes for a rambling closer, but by the end he is to be forgiven for the indulgence, having long since proved his affinity for the subject of this tribute album.

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