Dolly's Wildflowers: live music from the series

Jad, Dolly Parton's America. So I did say last week that the next episode would be in two weeks, and that is true. Shima and I are working on episode seven as we speak, but consider this a bonus because during the course of producing and recording this series, we collected a lot of music. A lot of people came in and performed songs for us. Actually, a lot of people we were interviewing suddenly broke into song, and we ended up having a lot of music, and we've been getting a lot of emails saying, play more music. Okay, so here we go. In this bonus EP, I'm going to present to you guys some of the musicians that we encountered, most of whom were interpreting Dolly's music. A bit later, I'm going to play you selections from a live event that I hosted that was loosely inspired by the series and by the music in the series. I'm going to play you selections from a live event that I hosted that was loosely inspired by the series and by the music in the series. But for the moment, I just want to play you some stuff that people have asked for, starting with, well, you know, last EP we did, episode six, about Jolene. We featured a guy named Justin Hiltner playing a song, his song, Silver Dagger. Actually, it wasn't his song. It was an old British ballad that he heard Dolly cover on one of her Bluegrass albums that became very important to him. It's a song called Silver Dagger, and he played that. We had a lot of people ask to hear the whole thing. So here it is. And I'll tell you, when he first played this song for us, it stuck so deep in my head. Maybe we would want to reset for that. Yeah, let's reset for that. Okay. So you don't have the two mics and everything. Justin was recorded by Tasha Lemley. All right, here's Silver Dagger. Silver Dagger Don't sing love songs, you'll wake my mind She's sleeping here Right by my side In her right hand Is a silver dagger She says that I Can't be your bride All men are fools So says my mother They'll tell you wicked Love and lies And then they'll go And court some other Leave you alone To pine inside And then they'll go My daddy is A handsome devil He's got a chain Five miles long And on every link A heart does dangle Of another man He's loving wrong Oh Go court another Tender maiden In hopes that she Might be your wife For I've been warned And I've decided I've decided I'll sleep alone All of my life Don't sing love songs You'll wake my mother She's laying here Right by my side And I'll sleep alone And in her right hand Is a silver dagger She says that I Can't be your bride She says that I can't be your bride She says that I can't be your bride She says that I can't be your bride That's Justin Hiltner with Silver Dagger. That song kills me. Recorded by Tasha Lemley. You can check out more of his stuff at justinhiltner.com Alright, next. I'm invited to perform my Kikuyu gospel songs which I also now blend with country. I carry my guitar and do like two country songs then I do my other gospel Kikuyu songs. For episode three, we interviewed a woman named Esther Konkara who's known as the Kenyan Dolly Parton. She performed over Skype for us from Kiambu County just outside of Nairobi, Kenya. And she sang a bunch of stuff for us. Some gospel songs in her native Kikuyu and also some Dolly songs. We'll crossfade from one to the other. We connected with Steph and Steph and Courtney through an event we hosted at Radiolab and then got them into the studio to record. During that session, which we recorded at WNYC and which was engineered by the amazing Alex Overington, Courtney, who plays guitar, just sort of spur of the moment shredded through this instrumental cover of Dolly's Marry Me. Total earworm. That's the vibe on guitar. That's all she played, but I have listened to that one minute like 70 times. We'll be featuring more from that trio, Steph Jenkins, Stephanie Coleman, and Courtney Harmon in the next few episodes. Going to take a short break now and then we'll be back with some very different kind of music. That I presented at a live event in Brooklyn that was loosely inspired by the series. That's coming up. Hello, hello. Hi, everybody. Thank you, Eleanor. Thank you, National Sawdust, for getting me back here and creating a place where I can do a weird thing. Hey, I'm Brian. I'm Jad Abumrad. Back with a bonus EP of music we recorded live as part of the series Dolly Burns America. About two weeks before we released the series, Into the Wild, I hosted an event in Brooklyn that was sort of inspired by that visit that Shima and I took to Dolly's Tennessee Mountain Home, which I described in episode four. How we went up there to see the home and it reminded me very strongly of my dad's Lebanese mountain home. And so when we came back, I got to thinking about, all the songs that we sing about home and how as we leave home, we carry those songs with us and we morph them and transform them. And so I ended up hosting this event at National Sawdust in Brooklyn as part of the National Sawdust Plus series curated by Eleanor Park, where I got together three incredible musicians, Shelly Washington, Bora Yoon, and Caroline Shaw, who all played traditional music that they connect to, that reminds them of home, that is from their home. But they all took, that music and gave it a new spin. We called the event Covering Home, like covers of traditional songs of home. And I'll play you some excerpts. Please give it up for Shelly Washington. Shelly Washington was the first one up. She's a composer at Princeton University. Her work has been performed all around the world. Hello, everyone. So I will be playing this large tube. This is a baritone saxophone. If you have not seen one before, it's also the first one. This is the one that Lisa Simpson plays. And it is. Shelly explained that her traditional music was actually a record that her parents gave her when she first started playing the sax when she was about 12. My parents gave me one of the Mingus big band, like essential albums that I immediately just tried to memorize every single line. I'm just obsessed with that entire album. So like every solo line, I could sing all of them. And you can hear like the band chattering. And the background and making these little like, uh-huh, like different exciting moments. So you might hear that in the piece. What Shelly did is she took all her favorite Mingus lines, put them all together in the same piece, and then played it on her gigantic baritone sax that she's named Titan. Here's an excerpt of that piece called Moingus. Moingus. That was an excerpt of Moingus from composer Shelly Washington. You can check out more of her work at shellywashington.com. That's S-H-E-L-L-E-Y, washington.com. Next up was composer Bora Yoon. This is a piece that is, it's called The Houses We Carry Within. And it was actually in response to an exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in D.C. last spring. It's a Korean artist named Do Ho Sa who makes these really beautiful fabric houses made of actually Korean hanbok material, which is this kind of like stiff crinoline that's translucent. And he literally makes exact replicas of his Berlin apartment, his Lower East Side apartment, the house he grew up in Korea. But they're all reconstructed. They're all reconstructed from his memory. So there's these fabric houses that just hang in space and you get to walk through them. Wow. I mean, it's really OCD to the hilt. I mean, like radiators, like crocheted together. So these are all kind of these suspended times and spaces because he talks about how as an expat from Korea, he goes to all these different cities and lives in all these different places, but his accent's too thick so they always say he's not from there. But when he goes home to Korea, they're like, well, you're not Korean. You're not from here either. You left. It's this constant theme in his work. So the exhibit was called Almost Home. And this idea of home existing in your memory or in your mind or kind of that the houses that we carry inside of us and that these architectures live in our memories and our archetypes. For the performance, Bora played about a dozen different instruments and found percussion objects and very strange things like a stro violin, which is a violin with a horn on it. And she played electronics saying, here's an excerpt. Here's an excerpt. Here's an excerpt. Here's an excerpt. M-I-O-O-N dot com. You can see a lot of her multimedia stuff there, hear a lot of her music. Okay, the final performer of the evening was Caroline Shaw, Pulitzer Prize-winning performer, composer, collaborated with pretty much everybody from Kanye to the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. And she did a duet with cellist Andrew Yee. Series of duets, actually. I'm going to play you two of them. Okay, so maybe just set up the next song, and then I think our fellow composers, performers should join me on the stage because we're going to be Caroline's backup bowl band. Sure. So what are we about to hear? The next tune is called On Jordan's Stormy Banks I Stand. At least that's the first line. It's not really a title. And that was written, the words are written by Samuel Stennett of England in 1787. But it also is this essential exodus narrative of leaving a place, searching for freedom, crossing the River Jordan, and the function of the River Jordan is strong in a lot of these songs. And the last one is a very famous I'll Fly Away, which is also written by Albert Brumley in 1932. It's an interesting history, the song, though, because he himself is kind of covering other songs that have to do with the exodus narrative in the South. So I find the song kind of interesting and problematic, and I keep trying to. find what it means to go home in that song. Excellent. Caroline Shaw, Andrew Yee, give it up. I'm very happy to be joined by Shelley and Bora and Elena and Jad here, too. Thank you. And cast a wishful eye To Canaan's fair and happy land Where my possessions lie Don't you feel like going home Don't you feel like going home Don't you feel like going home My home is in the promised land And I feel like going home Oh, that transportive rapture scene That I've never seen before Oh, that transportive rapture scene That rises to my eyes Sweet fields Arrayed in living green And rivers of delight Don't you feel like going home Don't you feel like going home Don't you feel like going home My home is in the promised land And I feel like going home And I feel like going home Some bright morning When this life is over I'll fly away To that home On God's celestial shore I'll fly away I'll fly away Oh, glory I'll fly away When I die Hallelujah, by and by I'll fly away I'll fly away When the shadows of this life are over I'll fly away Like a bird from those prison walls I'll fly I'll fly away I'll fly away Oh, glory I'll fly away When I die Hallelujah, by and by I'll fly away I'll fly away Oh, how glad and happy When we meet Oh, how glad and happy I'll fly away I'll fly away No more cold iron shackles On your feet No more cold iron shackles on your feet No more cold iron shackles on your feet I'll fly away I'll fly away, oh glory I'll fly away When I die, hallelujah, by and by I'll fly away Just a few more weary days and then I'll fly away I'll fly away To a land where joys will never end I'll fly away I'll fly away, oh glory I'll fly away When I die, hallelujah, by and by I'll fly away I'll fly away Just a few more weary days and then Thank you to the series that Elena curates. I want to thank Jeff Tang, Charles Hagman, Garth McAlevey, who was the mix engineer for the night. Thank you to Jeremy Bloom for helping to mix this episode. And all the musicians who appeared in this bonus EP, Justin Hiltner, Esther Konkara, Steph Chenkin, Steph Coleman, Courtney Hartman, Shelley Washington, Bora Yoon, Caroline Shaw, and Andrew Yee. Shima and I will be back in one week with another episode of Dolly Parton's America. Until then, I'm Jad Abumrad. Thanks for listening.