Agnes on the Cowcatcher
Tanglefoot
Borealis Recording Company
2002
14 tracks
Tanglefoot gets away with a lot. Agnes on the Cowcatcher is billed as 100% Canadian Folk, which technically it is. It's definitely 100% Canadian. Whether it's 100% Folk is debatable. The music often employs complex arrangements and leans toward a Pop sensibility. The lyrics tend to be heavily researched, heavy-handed Canadian, and more academic and poetic than homegrown, evoking less Ian Tyson than Duncan Campbell Scott. There's also a parochial feel to this music, a redolence of the Ottawa Valley and environs. Much less than this could get a band written off the list of most folk-purists or even general folk listeners.
Tanglefoot gets away with it. This band is no regional or cult favourite. Parochial and chauvinistic though their music my be, they are popular in the United States and Europe. Their intellectual and even bookish lyrics, like good Will's plays, appeal to the common masses. The songs capture the imagination of a surprisingly broad and diverse audience and, at its core, the hardcore folkies.
"So," you ask, "how do Joe Grant and the boys push these various aesthetic envelopes and get away with it?"
I have two theories. The first has to do with audience perception. Tanglefoot looks like a folk band. These musicians dress the part to the hilt. In their press photos and in person, Tanglefoot appears every bit what a Hollywood costumer would have a folk band appear. The second, better explanation is just that Joe Grant, Al Parrish, brothers Rob and Steve Ritchie, and Terry Young are just very, very good at what they do.
One pleasure of listening to Tanglefoot over the years is that each year the words and the music get better. This year's Agnes on the Cowcatcher is no exception, bringing the listener more of the same, but with greater polish and with the occasional surprise thrown in.
While most lyrics on this release are penned by Joe Grant, some are written or co-written by the other members of Tanglefoot. "Our Field This Side of Heaven" is a beautiful piece written by Rob Ritchie, originally for his then soon to be wife but now for us all to hear. Not so rooted in the rocks, lakes, and history of Canada as other Tanglefoot songs, the lyrics have a very traditional and universal feel to them. The words are poetry and the music a perfect complement to carry them forward into the listener's heart.
"Summer Ghosts" is ghostly in more than one sense. With words and music both written by Joe Grant, this song conjures the late Stan Rogers so strongly that, hearing it without knowing better a listener might conclude that it's a Rogers composition. That it's performed a capella only intensifies the effect.
Another Rogers also enters the mix. "Radioman" tells the humourous, although political in a very Canadian way, tale of a farmer's purchase of a brand new Rogers Majestic radio (made by Ted Rogers dad) to play music for his milk cows, and of what happens when the tuner breaks down and can only receive American stations. This is a very funny song that declares that the cows have to "learn that American is foreign."
"Little Soldiers" is less successful than most of the other songs. Evoking folk songs of the Seventies Bobby Goldsboro, Glen Campbell ouevre, the music has a pleasant enough, if jumpy sound. It's the lyrics that I find frustrating. It's more than a little difficult to figure what the song is about, what is the story. There seems to be something about a father dying and business partners having affairs with one another's wives, and a wife asking her husband if he had noticed their child crying. But there's no centre, no focus, no story-line. Usually, Tanglefoot's explanatory notes are clear and explain what is not clear in a song. In this case, even the notes are a jumble of platitudes and generalizations about a person only being able to take so much. The overall feeling is that this is a song released too soon, while it is still too inward and personal to be revised to it's ultimate more universal form.
The stories in this release range across Canada, from Frank, Alberta, to Eastern Ontario, to the Maritimes, and points between. The stories cross time from the War of 1812 through the early Twentieth Century to the here and now. These are mostly true stories and they are truly Canadian stories
Perhaps Tanglefoot is not getting away with so much after all. This release is, after all, 100% Canadian Folk, and probably the best work this band has released to date. If you must have a Tanglewood CD in your collection of Canadian folk music, then Agnes on the Cowcatcher will be an excellent choice.
More information on Tanglefoot is available at www.tanglefootmusic.com.
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