Appleseed's 21st Anniversary: Roots and Branches (2018)

liefst 57 songs op deze verzamelaar ter gelegenheid van het 21 jarig bestaan van het sociaal en politiek geëngageerde folk label Appleseed, dat in 1997 werd opgericht door Jim Musselman.

deze 3-cd verzamelaar heeft de volgende ondertitels:

cd 1 (tracks 1 t/m 17) "Let the Truth Be Told" - Songs that make a statement about the state of the world and of America. These songs speak for themselves, and for us as well"

cd 2 (tracks 18 t/m 35) "The Wisdom Keepers" - Songs by great singer-songwriters. The record industry, by its nature, has always discriminated against older artists. I intentionally sought out some of the great musicians of the 60's and 70's who had slipped out of sight and signed them to Appleseed. We released Tom Rush's first solo album in 35 years (What I Know), persuaded David Bromberg to record his first album in almost two decades (Try Me One More Time), and issued Donovan's new one (Beat Cafe) after an eight-year hiatus. The Native Americans call their elders "wisdom keepers" and value their teachings. Here, we do the same with musicians.

cd 3 (tracks 36 t/m 57) "Keeping the Songs Alive" - Some of these songs have been around for hundreds of years. Some were brought by immigrants to America where all they could bring were the clothes on their backs and the songs in their hearts that reminded them from home. These songs, with their images of the past and often timeless emotions, deserve to be kept alive.

alle nummers verschenen reeds eerder op de Appleseed releases, uitgezonderd 9 "exclusive new tracks".

dit zijn de volgende nummers:
2. If I Had a Hammer - Bruce Springsteen
3. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap - Tom Morello
4. Well May the World Go - Tim Robbins
7. Across the Border - Tom Russell
9. Scared of Guns - John Wesley Harding
11. Needle of Death - Anne Hills
18. Get It Right One Day - Jesse Winchester
33. There is Love (The Wedding Song) - John Stewart
40. Wild Mountain Thyme - Donovan

het is niet allemaal goud dat blinkt, maar voor de liefhebber valt er genoeg moois te ontdekken, zoals de uitvoering van het Springsteen nummer "Across the Border" door Tom Russell en het niet eerder uitgebrachte "Get It Right One Day" van wijlen Jesse Winchester.

deelcitaat uit de liner notes van Jim Musselman (founder & president of Appleseed Recordings):

"Some twenty-one years after Appleseed's first release ( "Sail On" by Dick Gaughan, the "Scottish Woody Guthrie"), I sit here writing these notes. One hundred and sixty-five CD's and 3,000 songs have come through our doors and out into the world. Songs used by NBC News after 9/11 and by news programs reporting other events. Songs performed on on David Letterman, Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Fallon and other late night shows. Songs that subsequently appeared in TV shows and in movies. Twenty artists in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame have recorded for Appleseed. But most importantly there is peace in Northern Ireland and there has not been violence there for years. Non-violence works and abandoning the "eye for an eye" mentality leads to peace. Do not wake me up from this dream......

The CD's in this, our 21st Anniversary set, have been loosely organized by separate, but frequently overlapping, themes, matching my three goals in forming Appleseed Recordings - to provide an outlet for songs of social justice, both current and past; to release newly written songs of personal experience and emotion in modern times; and to keep alive the centuries of still-vital traditional songs from our country's and our world's history. To learn how to move forward, we can never forget the lessons, or the songs, of the past"

verder een quote van alle tijden:
"The answer to injustice is not to silence the critic but to end the injustice" (Paul Robeson)