Your Daily Song Fix

@wtmd I never thought I would post an Indigo Girls song on Daily Song Fix, but I was listening to WTMD yesterday and “Least Complicated” came on. I really dig the harmonies and colors. I think you will too.

Aloha, this is Taylor here. Angel From Montgomery has been in my head for the past week or so, although the song maybe well known it is honest and touches the soul. It feels somewhere in the middle of the spectrum set by the recent amazing posts from Marcus and Danny, expressive female vocals with lots of range and strong roots in folk and country music.

Covered by many artist including Bonnie Raitt, Ben Harper, Carly Simon and Dave Mathews Band, the song was originally written by John Prine a key artist in the Chicago Folk Revival of the late 60’s and early 70’s. The song first appeared on Prine’s self titled debut album that was released in 1971. The version here is a duet with Bonnie Raitt from John Prine Live, also released on a Tribute to Steve Goodman.

Serving in the Army and working for the United States Postal Service for five years, Prine developed a fan base and gained positive reviews once he began playing open mic nights in the Chicago area. At one of his early appearances in New York City, Bob Dylan showed up unannounced and anonymously provided backing harmonica. Prine has released 19 albums over his career; the latest Standard Songs for Average People was released in 2007. He is touring in 2010.

South Memphis String Band are an acoustic blues-folk-country supergroup comprised of Alvin “Youngblood” Hart, Luther Dickinson of The North Mississippi Allstars, and Jimbo Mathus of the Squirrel Nut Zippers (yes, those Squirrel Nut Zippers). Their debut album, Home Sweet Home, is an old-fashioned, foot-stompin’, moonshinin’ good time that feels like it was recorded on a hot July night on someone’s front porch well below the Mason-Dixon line. Check out “The Carrier Line,” their rendition of a railroad ballad by old-time Mississippi multi-instrumentalist Sid Hemphill.

Resembling characters from a Tom Sawyer book, Brooklyn-based Spirit Family Reunion has created a West Virginian-emo-esque folk song.  “Cold, so Cold” sounds like it’s from back-country middle America, but the band is from Brooklyn, so they’ve hit the image and sound spot-on.  This song could easily find it’s way onto the soundtrack of a rough-around-the-edges horror film.

Spirit Family Reunion – Cold, So Cold – SXSW 2010 from DUKE STREET on Vimeo.

Yusuf Islam, commonly known by his former stage name Cat Stevens, is a British singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, educator, philanthropist, and prominent convert to Islam.

His early 1970s albums Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat went Triple Platinum in the United States. His album Catch Bull at Four sold half a million copies in the first two weeks of release and was Billboard’s number-one LP for three consecutive weeks. He has also earned two ASCAP songwriting awards in consecutive years, for “The First Cut Is the Deepest”, which has been a hit single for four different artists.

Cat Stevens converted to Islam at the height of his fame in December, 1977, and adopted his Muslim name, Yusuf Islam, the following year. In 1979, he left his music career to devote himself to educational and philanthropic causes in the Muslim community. He has been given several awards for his work in promoting peace in the world, including 2003’s World Award, the 2004 Man for Peace Award and the 2007 Mediterranean Prize for Peace. In 2006, he returned to pop music under the name Yusuf, with his first album of new pop songs in 28 years, entitled An Other Cup. His newest album, Roadsinger, was released on May 5, 2009.

Vusi Mahlasela, an African folk singer/songwriter, has performed on Warren Haynes’ Live at Bonnaroo release during the song “Soulshine”, and the Dave Matthews Band song, “Everyday”, from the album Everyday. I think the language of this song is Sesotho which is one of the 11 official languages of South Africa. I think the title translates to “How will it be?” because Vusi says that right before he starts singing but the Sesotho to English translator only knew the word “na.”

Your Daily Song Fix has some big news today. In the past week or so you may have noticed some slow loading and sometimes our site may not have loaded at all. Tonight we are migrating our website to a new server and expect very high performance gains. I want to apologize for any previous inconvenience and any slowness you experience today. Bear with us for just one more day as we make this important change.

On the music front, we have some more Portuguese music coming at you. Sara Tavares (born 1978) is a Portuguese singer, composer and guitarist of Cape Verdean descent. She’s known (but still relatively unknown) for singing the European-Portuguese version of “God Help the Outcasts” for the Disney movie “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” Special thanks to Emmanuel Olaleye for the song recommendation.

Caetano Veloso is a composer, singer, guitarist, writer, and political activist. He is sometimes considered to be the Bob Dylan of Brazil.