Search - Andrew Calhoun & Campground :: Bound to Go

Bound to Go
Andrew Calhoun & Campground
Bound to Go
Genres: Country, Alternative Rock, Folk, Pop
 
  •  Track Listings (35) - Disc #1


     
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CD Details

All Artists: Andrew Calhoun & Campground
Title: Bound to Go
Members Wishing: 0
Total Copies: 0
Label: Waterbug Records
Original Release Date: 1/1/2008
Re-Release Date: 5/20/2008
Genres: Country, Alternative Rock, Folk, Pop
Styles: Bluegrass, New Wave & Post-Punk, Traditional Folk, Contemporary Folk
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 753114008324

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Member CD Reviews

IC B. (icberry)
Reviewed on 7/29/2018...
"On Bound to Go, Andrew Calhoun delves into one of the American song bag's most inspirational niches, tunes that were composed in response to the history of slavery in the American South. There are spirituals with their thinly veiled messages of liberation, love songs and lullabies, work songs, prison songs, tunes that show an obvious African influence, and one song collected from the African-American soldiers who fought for the United States in World War I.

Calhoun is joined by 14 fervent vocalists and eight musicians who support the singers with their understated power. Some of the album's 35 tracks are well-known, at least to folkies, but most are not, the result of Calhoun's exhaustive research and a determination to present unfamiliar songs telling this timeless story of inspiration and faith in the face of a system of indifferent evil. Most of the tunes are short, but they're all undeniably powerful. There are so many transcendent moments here that it's hard to highlight just a few.

As the album unfolds -- and this is an album in the old sense, a unified work that holds together as a single work of art -- you can feel your spirit unfolding, lifted up by the power that generations of unknown composers and singers have put into these songs. That said, there are still moments that jump out at you: "Turkle Dove," with a tune that echoes through a dozen folk songs, sung in the jubilee gospel style by Casey Calhoun, Andrew Calhoun, and Fred Campeau; "Run to Jesus," a song given to the Fisk Jubilee Singers by Frederick Douglass, the first song he ever heard that made him think of a life beyond slavery, delivered simply by Runako Robinson, Valerie Carter-Brown, Big Llou Johnson, Tony Dale, Fred Campeau, and Katherine Davis; "Them Old Black Gnats," an a cappella song of suffering with a hidden message of resistance marked by Big Llou Johnson's mournful baritone; "Anchor Line," a mournful blues with an implied message of escape on the underground railroad sung by Andrew Calhoun (the tune is also known as "The Crawdad Song"); and "Ol' Egyp'," a chilling song of escape from the bloodhounds of the slave masters. "Hear the Trumpet Sound," a staple from the songbook of the Fisk Jubilee Singers with mournful cello accompaniment, is a song full of resolute faith and somber resignation."
from allmusic.com

CD Reviews

What is "folk?"
Arthur Shuey | Wilmington, NC USA | 08/22/2008
(4 out of 5 stars)

"Folk ... You can recognize it in some sensory way, but what, in words, is it? Topically, it's about Man's inhumanity to Man, and it does not encourage human vices. Of all pre-rap musical genres, folk requires the least training and talent. It's typically, but not exclusively, from rural, undereducated areas. Folk music perspective is usually first person detached, as in, "I saw a man who was broke and hungry," as opposed to the first person involved perspective of the blues, which would write the same sentiment, "I'm broke and hungry," or classical music's classical, "A man was hungry 200 years ago."

This record is folk because it's rudimentary arrangements of 19th century songs, played rudimentarily. The songs are interesting, stemming as they do from antebellum slave hymns, shouts and hollers. It's the sort of record enjoyed most by musicians, ethnomusicologists and film industry music directors. It would be nice to see it in most American public libraries and a lot of school and church libraries and it would be a nice project for church groups, high school history classes and/or blues societies to purchase copies for those libraries. Old words can be good words can need to be spread. To folks.

"