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Matraca Berg "The Dreaming Fields"

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Ponder if you will, what farm life is like. The work never stops, every day, dawn til dusk, rain and cold or heat and relentless sunshine. There are things to tend to. A rural friend fretted to me in 1975 that the kids were leaving, that they didn’t want to embrace the lifestyle they were born into. They were city bound. This migration from the family farm was illuminated further for me by the Farm Aid Concerts I covered for XM. I have a much greater understanding for this from time spent during Farm Aid with the families, the farmers, and the workers, each with a different skew on this vast subject.

Matraca Berg put out her latest album, The Dreaming Fields, last year. At last, she has done a video for the title track, which is an elegy for her grandparents’ dairy farm. It actually has footage Matraca provided to illustrate.

She says, “The story of the small family farms struggle is so heartbreaking. When my grandparents were too old to work and were forced to sell it off, I felt compelled to write this song. My childhood years at the farm were my happiest and the most magical. I wanted to write a tribute to Elmer and Inga Berg for all their hard, hard work all those years, and for all the big love they gave their family. I will miss that place. A big part of who we were feels gone now.”

Beautiful. Sad.

-Jessie Scott

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Sons Of Bill "Find My Way Back Home"

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After Christmas this year, before the trip to Steamboat for MusicFest, I did a small but disciplined thing, that is, I put the presents away. This of course can be problematic as there is something that I put in a drawer which I have been searching for all week, but cannot find to save my soul. But there was another item that I happily hung up in my closet. Since it was not a winter thing, I was so stoked to discover it and I pulled it down with glee, feeling the wonder of the holiday all over again. So cool when you get a gift that is a season or two ahead, simply delicious. While I continue digging for the other one that I squirreled away somewhere, allow me to direct your attention to a video that we kept under wraps for this occasion.

We had Sons Of Bill in our digs at the Steamboat Grand Hotel during MusicFest at Steamboat Springs 2011. It is with great fanfare that they have finally released their fab new album Sirens as of last week. Don’t you know, we would have loved to hook back up with them during our Spring Music Fog Marathon last month in Austin, but just plumb ran out of room. But the good news is that while fishing around in the Music Fog closet, we found a video we have not yet posted, that is indeed one of the tunes from the new album. By the way, there is a massive tour going down for Sons Of Bill, so catch them when they are close. Here is “Find My Way Back Home,” the Music Fog version, recorded in January of 2011. Huzzah!

-Jessie Scott

 

Find My Way Back Home - Sirens