44
In 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned the legal right to abortion, a right that had been enshrined in US law since 1973’s historic Roe versus Wade case.
Observed American songwriter Dawn Landes: “We’re suddenly back in 1971 all over again.”
In the wake of the decision, which turned the clock back on women’s autonomy half a century, Landes found herself returning to a long out-of-print book entitled The Liberated Woman’s Songbook.
“I came across a copy of the songbook in a used bookstore somewhere along the way. I can’t remember which store or when exactly, but I know I’ve had it for more than ten years,” she recalls. “It’s a songbook from 1971, published at the height of the Women’s Liberation Movement and compiled by folklorist and guitarist Jerry Silverman: the artwork is very provocative; there’s a woman on the front in a black leather jacket pointing and shouting and looking very defiant; there are historical photos and information to put the songs into context.”
A former editor for ’50s folk publication Sing Out! Magazine, musician and writer Silverman was behind numerous song collections covering subjects such as train songs, baseball songs, and ballads of the Holocaust. The Liberated Woman’s Songbook bought together (to quote the book cover) ’77 singable folk songs about women and their battles with husbands, lovers, the devil, the system … and themselves’, grouped under sub-headings Songs Of The Struggle, Songs Of Courting, Marriage and Domestic Life, and They Did Their Thing!, all penned over a period of 140 years.
“There are laments and calls for justice, labour songs, suffrage songs, a hilarious complaint by a new bride to her mother about hating sex,” says Landes, who, revisiting the ageing material, felt compelled to record a selection – released earlier this year as The Liberated Woman’s Songbook.
Focusing “mostly on Songs Of The Struggle”, she says: “A lot of the songs I gravitated to were penned by women who probably weren’t musicians. Many of these songs had been rewritten to hymns or popular songs of the day.”
While many of the authors may have lacked a formal musical education, each song is nonetheless a genuine musical and lyrical gem.
“One of my favourite songs, The Housewife’s Lament, was mistakenly credited in the book as being ‘found in the diary of Mrs. Sara A Price of Ottawa, Illinois’. But upon investigation, the lyrics were written by the poet [and American suffragette] Eliza Sproat Turner!”
As she whittled the rich material down to an album’s worth, Landes was surprised how modern the songs still felt.
“It’s shocking how contemporary they feel!” Landes declares. “The oldest song on the album is Hard Is The Fortune of All Womankind, which was first documented in the 1830s, but the first verse dates back even further to 1728, from a British theatrical piece, The Ladies’ Case.”
Chosen as Landes’ opening salvo, she quotes the song (which was previously recorded by Joan Baez and Peggy Seeger under the alternate title The Wagoner’s Lad):
‘Oh Hard is the fortune of all womankind
‘They’re always controlled, always confined
‘Controlled by their parents until they are wives
‘Then slaves to their husbands the rest of their lives.’
Another of her faves, the shuffling One Hundred Years, dates from 1866 and imagines how life would be significantly better by the 1960s. Yet even now, many of the author’s aspirations – from true equality to the end of slavery – still remain frustratingly out of reach.
“So true. Fanny Gage, who wrote the lyrics to that song, was a respected writer, feminist and abolitionist who fought for many social changes that didn’t come through in her lifetime.
“Singing that song 160 years later – [and] on the eve of an extremely important [US presidential] election where women’s reproductive rights hang in the balance – could be delivered in one of two ways:
“One: All sarcasm. We’re doomed. Here we are again, and nothing has changed. F#!@ this!
“Two: All optimism. Resolve to ‘Keep Hoping Machine Running’ like Woody Guthrie did.
“When I sing it, I can’t help but feel hopeful,” Landes continues. “I hope that in one hundred years, women will have more equity, equal pay, bodily autonomy…”
Having demoed tracks, Landes turned to collaborator/producer Josh Kaufman to help “bring everything into focus.”
“Josh and I have played a lot of music together over the years, and that was really important for this project because we worked remotely – he was in his studio in New York, and I was in mine in North Carolina.
“He’s responsible for so much of the sound of the album. We didn’t actually get to perform these songs together until last summer, on stage at Newport Folk Festival, after everything had already been recorded!”
In arranging the material – which ranges from 1830’s Hard Is The Fortune… to 1970’s Liberation, Now! (subtitled Theme of Women’s Liberation) – Landes says: “Most of the language updates were minimal, really just to keep the listener in their own era. ‘He forth the grog shop come’ became ‘He came back from the bar’, etc.”
Originally from Kentucky, Landes cut her teeth in New York, where she made a name for herself thanks to an alluring blend of folk/ alt-folk, Americana, and pop. Since her self-produced 2005 debut, Dawn’s Music, she’s released six further LPs and a run of EPs that have seen her delve into Nashville country, bluegrass and yé-yé and team up with such notable comrades as My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, Justin Townes Earle, Sufjan Stevens, Will Oldham, Norah Jones and Nico Muhly. Around her own expertly crafted material, she’s additionally dropped beautifully conceived covers of songs by Taj Mahal, Tom Petty, Roxy Music, and Peter, Bjorn and John.
Never one to shy away from a challenge, Landes has also expanded into theatre with the musical, Row – based on based on the memoir, A Pearl In The Storm, by Tori Murden McClure, the first woman to row solo across the Atlantic (a feat she completed in December 1999 on her second attempt). With a book by Daniel Goldstein, the project resulted in a well-received ‘concept album’ in 2020, although the planned theatrical premiere was postponed until post-pandemic.
“Working on Row has been an epic adventure,” she enthuses. “When it was finally staged in 2021 [as part of the Williamstown Theatre Festival, in Williamstown, Massachusetts], I had been working on it for eight years, and it was amazing to see it live.”
With a full-cast audio recording available via streaming platform Audible, it’s a project that’s still consuming the songwriter.
“Believe it or not, we are still working on it and hope to have future productions down the line! I’m in it for the long haul, I guess.”
But before Row’s return, Landes hops over to the UK (by plane) for seven dates, beginning with a performance of The Liberated Woman’s Songbook at Birmingham’s Moseley Folk and Arts Festival on Saturday 31 August 2024, and promises more Liberated … recordings will follow.
“It’s an important election season coming up in the States, and I’m planning to release a live recording from our first full performance to help encourage people to get out and vote,” she says before signing off. “Also, look out for a B-side from The Liberated Woman’s Songbook album sessions featuring a few special guests…”
■ Moseley Folk and Arts Festival runs from Friday 30 August to Sunday 1 September 2024, with appearances from Levellers, The Scratch and Frankie Archer (Fri); Dexys, The Staves, Bess Atwell, Dawn Landes and Katherine Priddy (Sat); and Belle and Sebastian, Kate Rusby, Lisa O’Neill and Mdou Moctar (Sun). Details: moseleyfolk.co.uk
Also: Dawn Landes & Friends perform The Liberated Woman’s Songbook with special guest Peggy Seeger at The Barbican, Saturday 7 September 2024.
Full dates and ticket links can be found here: https://www.dawnlandes.com/tour-dates/
