Search - Bill Staines :: Journey Home

Meat and potatoes like they used to serve

Jerome Clark | Canby, Minnesota | 10/04/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Bill Staines is better known as a singer-songwriter than as an interpreter of other people's songs. As a composer he occupies -- esthetically though not monetarily speaking -- that sort of middle-of-the-road realm where John Denver, a product of the commercial end of the '60s folk revival, ruled supreme for much of the 1970s. I prefer my music rougher-edged and deeper than that, so Staines's songs were never for me, though if I had to choose I'd certainly prefer them to Denver's.



On his most recent album Staines resurrects memories of the Cambridge-Boston folk scene of his youth. Hearing the result, one cannot help thinking of the late Burl Ives. Long ago Ives was the most famous folk singer in America, performing traditional songs in a straightforward, unaffected manner in concert halls and on national radio. If remembered at all today, Ives is known as a character actor and a minor country singer (in the 1960s he recorded, uninterestingly, out of Nashville); but in his time he was a contemporary and friend of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. They played many of the same stages and slept under many of the same roofs until the Red Scare and political differences divided them.



That particular Ives -- an important figure in the early revival -- ought not to be allowed to fade into obscurity. If he were alive today, one could imagine his recording an album something like this one: sturdy traditional songs -- "Stewball," "Tell Ol' Bill," "Pretty Saro," "Hobo's Lullaby," "How Can I Keep From Singing" -- alongside well-chosen covers such as Bruce Murdoch's "Rompin' Rovin' Days" (a pleasure to hear again four decades later), Buffy Sainte-Marie's "The Piney Wood Hills," Mary McCaslin's "Prairie in the Sky." Like Ives's, Staines's voice isn't great, a little on the thin and uncertain side, but it's as warm as an old sweater and fits just as snugly. Staines's three originals work just fine in this relaxed company.



If you have a taste for folk music like they used to, take a chair at the table. Staines is serving up comfort food."

Going soft

T. B. White | Flagstaff, Arizona | 02/24/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Earlier Bill Staines was better than this. The songs here are too smooth. It's almost easy listening for aging folkies like me. But I am not ready for that!"