Folk Best Sellers

This recording, first released by Folkways founder Moses Asch in 1976 to coincide with the celebration of America’s Bicentennial, was originally recorded by Asch in the 1940s. The collection captures Woody Guthrie at his artistic best with gritty songs about the struggles of the American worker (“Waiting at the Gate,” “The Dying Miner”), unions (“Ludlow Massacre,” “1913 Massacre”), and an ode to a bad man (“Pretty Boy Floyd”). Blues harmonicist Sonny Terry sits in with Guthrie on “Lost John,” and fellow traveling companion and folksinger Cisco Houston contributes his voice, guitar, and a song (“Get Along Little Doggie”).

The Milk Carton Kids’ fifth album , All the Things That I Did and All the Things That I Didn’t Do arrives from ANTI- Records on June 29. The new project marks the first time that acoustic duo Joey Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale have brought a band into studio with them. “We wanted to do something new,” Pattengale says. “We had been going around the country yet another time to do the duo show, going to the places we’d been before. There arose some sort of need for change.” “Musically we knew we were going to make the record with a big- ger sonic palette,” says Ryan. “It was liberating to know we didn’t have to be able to carry every song with just our two guitars.” “Sometimes in singing, we’ll switch parts for a beat or a bar or a note,” Ryan says. “And things start to obscure what is the melody and what is the supporting part.” A third presence rises out of their combined voices. “There are only so many things you can do alone that al- low you to transcend your sense of self for even a short period,” Pattengale says. “I’m the lucky recipient of a life in which for hundreds of times, day after day, I get to spend an hour that is like speaking a language only two people know and doing it in a space with others who want to hear it.”

Magic Ship-a reflection on the joys, follies, and oddities of existence-is the band's second album. The songs on Magic Ship distill eight years of experience since their 2010 debut album, Made the Harbor, of sights seen, pleasures had, feelings hurt, forgiveness extended. "Mountain Man share that rare, innate gift of almost supernatural harmonizing," says NPR. "Hauntingly beautiful."

Recorded in 1958 and released on the Folkways label in 1959, this album introduced American listeners to Joseph Spence’s unique guitar and vocal styles. These field recordings by musicologist Sam Charters capture Spence in a relaxed, expansive mood—only one of the six selections in the set is under five minutes in length. Spence’s guitar style was due in part to the D tuning of his bass string, which produced a lower bass sound. Whereas many critics have called Spence’s vocal style unorthodox, they have found his guitar playing spontaneous and iconic. Some music critics have gone so far as to refer to him as the “Thelonious Monk of folk guitar.”

Mardi Gras Music at it's best. Features Professor Longhair, Earl King, and the Wild Magnolias.

This is a Vinyl 2-LP Set and feautures the Ultimate New Orleans experience. All the classics from New Orleans best Brass bands.

Happy Woman Blues - Lucinda Williams, whose musical style defies easy categorization, recorded her first album of original songs in 1980, supported by a six-member band. Her songs are a mix of traditional and alternative country, folk, and blues that reflect her Louisiana roots. The Village Voice music critic Robert Christgau gave Happy Woman Blues an "A-" and described Williams as a "guileless throwback to the days of the acoustic blues mamas" who "means what she says and says what she means." The vinyl reissue of Happy Woman Blues, which includes a liner notes booklet with the song lyrics, is part of the Smithsonian Folkways Vinyl Reissue Series, revisiting some of the most iconic and influential albums in our collection.

With their powerful harmonies and imaginative songwriting in full force, Girlpool are making new creative leaps with their new album, What Chaos Is Imaginary. Combining elements of shoegaze, folk, and 80’s postpunk with their own melodic gifts, these two great songwriters come up with a modern classic full of great tunes and sonic surprises. Impressive growth for this already celebrated band.

"Know thy history. Let it horrify you; let it inspire you. Let it show you how the future can look, for nothing in this world has not come around before. These songs are based on slave narratives from the 1800s, African American experiences of the last century, and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and headlines from streets of Ferguson and Baltimore today. Voices demanding to be heard, to impart the hard-earned wisdom of a tangled, difficult, complicated history; we just try to open the door and let them through." —Rhiannon Giddens

Freedom Highway, Grammy Award–winner and 2017 Grammy nominee Rhiannon Giddens' follow-up to her highly praised debut album Tomorrow Is My Turn, will be released by Nonesuch Records on February 24, 2017. The record includes nine original songs Giddens wrote or co-wrote while she and her band toured after Tomorrow Is My Turn's 2015 release, along with a traditional song and two civil rights-era songs, "Birmingham Sunday" and Staple Singers' well-known "Freedom Highway," from which the album takes its name. Giddens and the band will tour the U.S. in the spring; details will be announced shortly.

Vinyl LP pressing. Elizabeth Cotten's 1958 debut album on Folkways is best known for containing the earliest recording of her classic "Freight Train." The breadth of her repertoire and her endearing style have captivated generations of guitarists and fans of traditional American music. Cotten's self-taught, upside-down, left-handed playing style on the guitar and banjo made her a true original. Many of her deeply personal compositions, such as the immortal "Oh Babe It Ain't No Lie," are also included here. "[A] classic that belongs in every collection..." (Blues Review Quarterly), this reissue is part of Smithsonian Folkways Vinyl Reissue Series and features Mike Seeger's updated notes with comments on Cotten's life, musical style, and song lyrics.

Vinyl LP pressing. In 2011, an eponymous, self-recorded EP led to touring, and before long The Lumineers started attracting devout fans. They're drawn by songs like "Ho Hey" and "Stubborn Love," Americana-inflected barn burners in the vein of the Avett Brothers and Mumford & Sons. The roots revival of the last few yeas has primed listeners for a new generation of rustic, heart-on-the-sleeve music. The Lumineers walk that line with an unerring gift for timeless melodies and soul-stirring lyrics.

Vinyl LP pressing including digital download. The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is the second studio album by legendary singer/songwriter Bob Dylan. Whereas his self-titled debut album Bob Dylan had contained only two original songs, Freewheelin' represented the beginning of Dylan's writing contemporary words to traditional melodies. Eleven of the thirteen songs on the album are Dylan's original compositions. The album opens with "Blowin' in the Wind", which became an anthem of the 1960s, and an international hit for folk trio Peter, Paul & Mary soon after the release of Freewheelin'. The album featured several other songs which came to be regarded as among Dylan's best compositions and classics of the 1960s folk scene: "Girl from the North Country", "Masters of War", "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" and "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right".

The highly-anticipated album, The Tree of Forgiveness, is Prine's first collection of new material since 2005's Grammy-winning Fair and Square. Rather than going out on a limb, Prine cultivated the themes that have brought international acclaim since the 1970s. For example, he can take a topic like loneliness and make it funny or heartbreaking.

Prine teamed with Grammy-winning producer Dave Cobb to record in Nashville's historic Studio A, enlisting friends like Brandi Carlile, Jason Isbell, and Amanda Shires to sing along. The songs are new, although some had waited to be finished for decades, like a co-write with Phil Spectro called 'God Only Knows'; Another incomplete song, 'I Have Met My Love Today' now celebrates the unexpected spark that leads to lifelong romance -- with a dash of youthful innocence. The musical arrangements may be simpler than on past efforts, yet his unique ability to distill complex emotions into everyday language remains fully intact.

Vinyl LP pressing including digital download. Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits is the first compilation album by Bob Dylan, released in March 1967 on Columbia Records. It contains every Top 40 single Dylan enjoyed through 1967. It peaked at #10 on the pop album chart in the United States, and went to #3 on the album chart in the United Kingdom. Greatest Hits serves as Dylan's de facto singles collection for the 1960s. With the exception of "The Times They Are a-Changin'," "It Ain't Me Babe," and "Mr. Tambourine Man," all tracks on this album were released as 45 RPM singles in the United States during that decade. It is worth noting that in 1963 "Blowin' in the Wind" became a #2 hit single for Peter, Paul and Mary, and that in 1965 "Times" made it to #9 as a single release in the United Kingdom. That same year of 1965 a truncated rock and roll version of "Mr. Tambourine Man" had been a number one hit for The Byrds in the summer, and the Turtles took a folk-rock version of "It Ain't Me Babe" to #8. The remaining six tracks all made the Billboard Top 40 in 1965 and 1966.

After two years of relentless touring, Colter Wall wanted to make an album about home. Drawing on the stories of Saskatchewan, Canada, the young songwriter's corner of the world takes shape throughout his second full-length album, Songs of the Plains. Produced by Dave Cobb in Nashville's Studio A, the project combines striking original folk songs, well-chosen outside cuts, and a couple of traditional songs that reflect his roots growing up in the small city of Swift Current.

Vinyl LP pressing. This intimate collection of Townes Van Zandt live recordings from 1993 is being pressed on double vinyl for the first time. "... The 17-song set finds Van Zandt in fine form - upbeat, gracious, apparently sober - and in good company, with fiddler Owen Cody and guitarist Danny Rowland adding a dimension of musical enhancement that never overwhelms the nuances of the material," wrote No Depression. "As anyone who ever saw Van Zandt fall off a stool recognizes, there was no such thing as a typical Townes performance, but when he was good, no one working in the Texas troubadour tradition has ever been better... Listeners only familiar with this album's higher-profile material in more popular renditions by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard ("Pancho & Lefty'), Don Williams and Emmylou Harris ("If I Needed You') or Nanci Griffith and Arlo Guthrie ("Tecumseh Valley") may have heard the tunes, heard the words, but they haven't really heard the songs until they've heard Townes."

HQ vinyl reissue of original 1969 compilation featuring several non-album singles, all the hits!

Various Positions is the seventh studio album by Leonard Cohen, released in December 1984 (and February 1985). It marked not only his turn to the modern sound and use of synthesizers (particularly on the opening track), but also, after the harmonies and backing vocals from Jennifer Warnes on the previous Recent Songs (1979), an even greater contribution from Warnes, who is credited equally to Cohen as vocalist on all of the tracks. - The album was recorded at Quadrasonic Sound in New York in the summer of 1983 with Leanne Ungar engineering. A small core of musicians from a group called Slow Train backed Cohen on the album. The album contains two songs that would become live standards for Cohen: "Dance Me to the End of Love" and "Hallelujah".

Bob Dylan - Love And Theft - LP Vinyl Album

Desire is the seventeenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on January 5, 1976, through Columbia Records. It is one of Dylan's most collaborative efforts, featuring the same caravan of musicians as the acclaimed Rolling Thunder Revue tours the previous year.

Import LP pressing of this iconic album. Universal. 2013.

The long awaited first pressing of Gillian Welchs The Harrow & The Harvest was mastered direct from the original tapes through custom Ortofon amplifiers to a Neumann VMS-80 cutting system and plated and pressed on standard-weight audiophile-quality vinyl at Quality Record Pressings. Grammy-nominated for Best Engineered Album (Non Classical) and Best Folk Album, this deluxe package includes new full color cover art by John Dyer Baizley and full lyric insert.

Life is a Rorschach, life is a Rashomon. Fuck your facts. Throw em out with yesterday s webpages. Lives lie beyond the equations of currency, border lines and government and truth is just a drop in the beholder s eye. Ty Segall has made whole records that wrestle with realities fighting against some, pulling mightily to bring others into being. Of late, he s thrown up his hands and donned clown shoes, dancing merrily in the dual role of oppressed/oppressor! His hands aren t any more or less dirty than anyone else s but amidst the thunder and the chaos of the ongoing storm, he s looking for the eye within. The new self-titled record the next record after Emotional Mugger, Manipulator, Sleeper, Twins, Goodbye Bread, Melted, Lemons, and the first self-titled album that started it up in the nowdistant year of 2008 is a clean flow, a wash of transparency falling into a world that needs to see a few things through clearly, to their logical end. It s got some of the most lobe-blasting neckwork since the Ty Segall Band s Slaughterhouse (from way back in the long, hot summer of 2012), but it also features a steep flight of fluent acoustic settings, as Ty s new songs range around in their search for freedom without exorcism, flying the dark colors high up the pole in an act of simple self-reclamation. All he wants is some truth! The construction and destruction of his chosen realities has, until now, been a luxury Ty has rightfully reserved for himself, striping overdubs together to form the sound but for this new album, he entered a studio backed by a full band Emmett Kelly, Mikal Cronin, Charles Moothart and Ben Boye to get a read on this so-called clarity. This leads to a new departure in group sound, as well as some of the most visceral and penetrating vocal passages yet heard from Ty Segall. Freedom/Warm Hands puts the sweet back into suite; Orange Color Queen is a supreme moment of tenderness; Talkin , a roots-infused truth-attack. Papers, looks behind the doors of Ty s process; Break A Guitar is a brutal fun-fest pitched to the back of the house. Ty Segall keeps you guessing, bracing your skin with a welcome astringency, seeking to stem the bleeding with chunks and splashes of guitar, tight beats, audio-verité toilet smashes, a Wurlitzer electric piano in a jam, blazing harmonies, and LOTS of songs to sing. There s no concept beyond that; finding the right places to be is a momentary thing. Ty Segall is the sum of his songs and about getting the free. The free to be!

'It's all rock & roll -- no golf!' is how acclaimed singer/songwriter/violinist Amanda Shires describes her electrifying firth album, To The Sunset. She's borrowed a lyric from the effervescent track 'Break Out the Champagne,' one of ten deftly crafted songs that comprise her powerful new recording. The Texas-born road warrior, new mom, and recently minted MFA in creative writing has mined a range of musical influences to revel an Amanda Shires many didn't know existed. 'Isn't it refreshing?' Shires asks. Indeed. Distorted electric guitars, effects pedals, swirling keys and synths, and rockin' rhythms certainly suit Shire's visceral songcraft and lilting soprano.

Check out tracks, "Eve's Daughter", "Parking Lot Piroutte", and "To The Sunset"

Shovels & Rope consists of two artists with music careers prior to joining forces. Cary Ann Hearst is an acclaimed singer/songwriter who has been featured on NPR's Weekend Edition and had her song "Hell Bells" used in HBO's True Blood. Michael Trent is a celebrated solo artist and the former singer/guitarist of band The Films. O' Be Joyful is a raw, honest, gritty offering with pure energy, distinctive harmonies and stellar songwriting.

Amongst its twelve tracks, James Bay s Chaos And The Calm features the singles Hold Back the River and Let It Go. Driven by his soulful delivery, captivating storytelling, and inimitable spirit, he s poised to capture the attention of listeners worldwide within the next year. Already, numerous tastemakers are predicting big things for BAY in 2015. A multitude of major news sources have chosen him as one of 2015 s Artist to Watch. In addition The New York Times named Let It Go as one of 2014 s best songs.

Reissue of the third album by The Pogues using 2004 remastered audio

The eighth album from Marissa Nadler, For My Crimes, is the sound of guilt giving way to truth. The songs stare down the dark realization that love may not be enough to keep two people together through distance and differing needs. By asking these difficult questions about her relationships, Nadler has found a stronger sense of self and a sharper voice as both a songwriter and a vocalist, culminating in her most evocative entry in an already impressive discography. Following the release of 2016’s acclaimed Strangers, Nadler’s new marriage was put to the test as she left the Boston area on tour. She wrote throughout 2017 about this tension, and ended up with three times as many songs as she needed. But after reviewing the demos with her co-producers Justin Raisen and Lawrence Rothman, Nadler wrote a flurry of tight but no less intense new songs in the week before arriving at Rothman’s Laurel Canyon studio, House of Lux, in early January. She considered it a challenge to herself, applying new strategies and structures to the craft of “slow music” she’s honed over the last 15 years. From that group of songs came nearly all of the singles on For My Crimes, some of the most indelible of Nadler’s career. Bolstering the intimacy of these songs is the strong feminine energy that defined their recording. Between Rothman’s fluidity with both gender and genre (as heard on his 2017 album The Book of Law), and Raisen’s track record of successful collaborations with strong women (Angel Olsen, Kim Gordon, Charli XCX), Nadler felt empowered to explore without judgment in the studio. With the exception of a single saxophonist, every player on the album is a woman of notable pedigree and distinct style, many of whom have played with Nadler over the years. In addition to cameos by Angel Olsen and Kristin Kontrol, Sharon Van Etten sings backup on “I Can’t Listen to Gene Clark Anymore” and “Lover Release Me.” Mary Lattimore joins on harp for “Are You Really Gonna Move to the South,” while the great experimental multi-instrumentalist Janel Leppin plays strings throughout the record.