Fourtold
Editorial Reviews
Sing Out!, Fall 2003
"The sound is full and bold, respectful of, but not nostalgic for, the folk groups that came before them."
Product Description
Fourtold is a concept, a recording and performing project, and a band of exceptional equals who have played and recorded together in various combinations but never before as a quartet. Drawing from original, contemporary and traditional folk music, well-respected songwriting troubadours Steve Gillette, Anne Hills, Cindy Mangsen and Michael Smith pooled their abundant talents for a CD and subsequent 2003 tour that celebrates four-part harmonies and timeless "story songs."
This configuration of long-time friends and mix-and-match collaborators came together as a mutual admiration society with a mission: "The material we chose had to be story songs that lent themselves to four-part harmony," says Anne Hills. So the members of Fourtold set out to make what could be described as an old-fashioned folk record - evocative songs about events and adventures, rather than innermost feelings, conveyed by an ever-shifting tapestry of glorious voices and warm, quietly virtuosic instrumentation.
Despite diverse origins, the songs on FOURTOLD seem as old as the family bible, as new as the morning newspaper. There are tales, real or imagined, of Western badmen (Ian Tyson's "Four Rode By"), epic horse races ("Molly and Tenbrooks"), witches and imps ("Pendle Hill," "The Nine Little Goblins"), doomed miners ("Ballad of Springhill"), assassination theories ("Two Men in the Building"), maidens besting murderous suitors ("Aramalee"), nautical disasters ("Run, Come, See Jerusalem"), and a new version of Steve Gillette's "Darcy Farrow," previously recorded by more than 300 singers and often mistaken for a traditional ballad.
With four world-class voices weaving rich, varied leads and harmonies on a sumptuous loom of acoustic guitars, banjo, accordion, concertina and bass (the latter played by producer/performer Scott Petito), listening to FOURTOLD is like reading a well-chosen anthology of short stories. This is folk music by inspired experts, reveling in each other's skills on an instantly classic CD.
Fourtold
Fourtold,Fourtold,Appleseed Records,Bluegrass,Contemporary Folk,Drawing from original, contemporary and traditional folk music, much-respected and well-loved troubadours Steve Gillette, Anne Hills, Cindy Mangsen and Michael Smith have pooled their abundant talents for a CD of story-songs and four-part harmonies.,Folk,Folk & Traditional,Folk Revival,Pop,Traditional Folk
Average customer rating: 
|
Fourtold
Fourtold Manufacturer: Appleseed Records ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD  General
| Contemporary Folk
| Folk
| Styles
| Music
General
| Folk
| Styles
| Music
Traditional Folk
| Folk
| Styles
| Music
Revival
| Folk
| Styles
| Music
General
| Bluegrass
| Country
| Styles
| Music
Similar Items:
ASIN: B00008XS2U Release Date: 2003-05-20 |
Tracks:
Album Description
Fourtold is a concept, a recording and performing project, and a band of exceptional equals who have played and recorded together in various combinations but never before as a quartet. Drawing from original, contemporary and traditional folk music, well-respected songwriting troubadours Steve Gillette, Anne Hills, Cindy Mangsen and Michael Smith pooled their abundant talents for a CD and subsequent 2003 tour that celebrates four-part harmonies and timeless "story songs."This configuration of long-time friends and mix-and-match collaborators came together as a mutual admiration society with a mission: "The material we chose had to be story songs that lent themselves to four-part harmony," says Anne Hills. So the members of Fourtold set out to make what could be described as an old-fashioned folk record - evocative songs about events and adventures, rather than innermost feelings, conveyed by an ever-shifting tapestry of glorious voices and warm, quietly virtuosic instrumentation.
Despite diverse origins, the songs on FOURTOLD seem as old as the family bible, as new as the morning newspaper. There are tales, real or imagined, of Western badmen (Ian Tyson's "Four Rode By"), epic horse races ("Molly and Tenbrooks"), witches and imps ("Pendle Hill," "The Nine Little Goblins"), doomed miners ("Ballad of Springhill"), assassination theories ("Two Men in the Building"), maidens besting murderous suitors ("Aramalee"), nautical disasters ("Run, Come, See Jerusalem"), and a new version of Steve Gillette's "Darcy Farrow," previously recorded by more than 300 singers and often mistaken for a traditional ballad.
With four world-class voices weaving rich, varied leads and harmonies on a sumptuous loom of acoustic guitars, banjo, accordion, concertina and bass (the latter played by producer/performer Scott Petito), listening to FOURTOLD is like reading a well-chosen anthology of short stories. This is folk music by inspired experts, reveling in each other's skills on an instantly classic CD.
Customer Reviews:
Really Excellent CD by an Excellent group!.......2005-10-02
It is the work of the Weavers!!!.......2004-01-06
revival folk revived.......2003-08-30
Fourtold is a quartet made up of husband-and-wife Steve Gillette and Cindy Mangsen, Anne Hills, and Michael Smith. Gillette and Smith have deserved reputations as formidable songwriters. Gillette's "Darcy Farrow" (written with Tom Campbell) is among the finest new songs to come out of the 1960s revival, and as good an imitation-trad ballad as anyone has ever written. Smith composed the often-covered "The Dutchman," which is not among my favorite songs, and "Panther in Michigan," which is.
Their current project revives -- on a smarter, more sophisticated level -- the harmony groups that began with the Weavers in the early 1950s and continued with the Tarriers, the Brothers Four, the Journeymen, and the like, before the style faded out of fashion and radio play in the mid-1960s. There have been occasional attempts to revive it. In the 1980s the long-forgotten Village Squares tried, without notable musical or esthetic sense, to shed soft-core folk's twee image and reinvent it as hip, attitude-bristling stance. A few years ago John Stewart and Darwin's Army botched an attempt to reintroduce and modernize a Kingston Trio sound. Only a mid-1990s political-humor group, the Foremen, pulled it off, mainly by writing hilariously, nastily satirical songs in the manner of a latterday Chad Mitchell Trio. Michael Smith has toured with a group calling itself Weavermania!, which recreates the repertoire of the Weavers. I imagine few nongray hairs in the audience. In 2003 the mockumentary A Mighty Wind made merry with an imagined reunion of what a friend of mine calls "fauxk singers."
Fourtold isn't bad, a generally successful effort to do serious music with an approach history has judged not exactly the most obviously promising. If you demand that your folk music be hard-edged and authentic -- actually, I do, usually -- this may not be for you. The faults are hard not to notice, for example the vapid arrangement of Eric von Schmidt's calypso "Joshua Gone Barbados," square enough to turn "Sonny Chile" into "Sonny Child." (To hear it done right, hunt up Tom Rush's tasty version or, better yet, Johnny Cash's definitive one.) "Ballad of Springhill" still sounds like something Peggy Seeger both wrote and sang -- which, in fact, it is -- and that can mean only one thing: Run!
On the other hand, "Darcy Farrow," lovely as always, never wears out its welcome. "Four Rode by," the great Ian and Sylvia song, gets a respectable treatment, and the traditional "I Drew My Ship," too seldom heard, makes a happy appearance. The arrangement of "Panther in Michigan" carries a bit too much baggage and suffers next to Smith's crisper solo version (on an out-of-print Flying Fish album from the 1980s), but it's still good to have it available again. The CD concludes with the spiritual "Run, Come, See Jerusalem" performed as the Weavers might have done it, except that Fourtold's version mercifully avoids the fingernails-on-chalkboard effect Weavers records invariably have on me.
In sum: good songs mostly done decently and, on the whole, an amiable, modest pleasure.
Music Review:
Recommended Music:
Danny Tenaglia: Athens (V.10) [Import]
Mendelssohn: String quartet No. 2, Op. 13 / String quintet No. 2, Op. 87
Ivan Skosbstov - Russian Folk Songs
klickalation mafious [Explicit Lyrics]
Habia Una Vez... [Limited Edition] [Import]