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Stranger Songs
Tuesday November 19th, 2024 with Mike Regenstreif
Immigration, Part 1: The Man from God Knows Where

The theme for this edition of Stranger Songs is Immigration, Part 1: The Man from God Knows Where, the first of two editions of Stranger Songs on the theme of immigration. Click on LISTEN NOW to hear this show. Click on LISTEN to hear the current CKCU broadcast.
fragment of The Stranger Song
Leonard Cohen - Songs of Leonard Cohen - Columbia/Legacy Canadian
As I wrote in Sing Out magazine in 1999 .... Thomas Russell was a leader of the United Irish Rebellion in the 1790s. Two centuries later, singer and songwriter Tom Russell was playing a gig in Downpatrick, Ireland when he was approached by an old man in a bar. “Thomas Russell,” he said, “we hung you across the road in 1798.” Tom bought the old man a pint of beer and heard the story of his namesake and of the narrative poem about him called “The Man from God Knows Where.”

For several years prior to that encounter, Tom had been working on a song-cycle that began when a phrase, “American primitive man in an American primitive land,” occurred to him. Originally, Tom conceived the piece as a long tone-poem that would tell some of the history of America absent from the standard history texts. But as he wrote, Tom soon recognized that his own family’s history would provide much of the raw material he needed to tell a compelling story of immigration and the pursuit of the American Dream.

So, more than 200 years after Thomas Russell’s hanging, the man from God knows where is resurrected to observe and to chronicle the struggles, tragedies and joys of the Russells and Malloys who immigrate to the United States from Ireland in the nineteenth century, and of the Larsens and Olsens who come from Norway, and of their lineage through to today’s Tom Russell.

Tom Russell’s The Man from God Knows Where is more than just a song-cycle, it’s a fully realized folk-opera featuring Tom and a superb cast of American, Irish and Norwegian singers. Using singers with authentic Irish, Norwegian and rural and urban American accents helps provide authenticity to the voices of Russell’s ancestors and to the other characters who are brought to life in the folk-opera. As well, Tom frequently utilizes distinctly Irish and Norwegian instruments and musical forms to complement the more familiar American folk styles that run through the score to The Man from God Knows Where.

Tom wrote most of the songs we hear in The Man from God Knows Where. There are also some traditional folksongs, a song written by David Massengill, and a poem by Walt Whitman.
The Man from God Knows Where
Tom Russell - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
Wayfarin' Stranger
Iris DeMent - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
Patrick Russell
Tom Russell & Iris DeMent - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
Mary Clare Molloy (American Wake)
Dolores Keane - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
The Outcast
Dave Van Ronk - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
Ambrose Larsen
Sondre Bratland & Iris DeMent - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
The Dreamin'
Tom Russell & Dolores Keane - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
fragment of The Stranger Song
Leonard Cohen - Songs of Leonard Cohen - Columbia/Legacy Canadian
The Old Northern Shore
Sondre Bratland & Kari Bremnes - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
The Man from God Knows Where/America
Tom Russell & Walt Whitman - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
Anna Olsen
Kari Bremnes - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
Rider on an Orphan Train
Tom Russell - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
Acres of Corn
Iris DeMent - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
The Man from God Knows Where
Tom Russell - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
Sitting Bull in Venice
Tom Russell - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
The Old Rugged Cross
Iris DeMent & Kari Bremnes - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
Anna Olsen’s Letter Home
Kari Bremnes - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
Eg er framand
Sondre Bratland - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
When Irish Girls Grow Up
Dolores Keane & Iris DeMent - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
Casey Jones
Tom Russell - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
Chickasaw County Jail
Tom Russell - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
Wayfarin’ Stranger (Passage of Time)
Knut Reiersrud - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
Throwin’ Horseshoes at the Moon
Tom Russell & Iris DeMent - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
The Man from God Knows Where
Tom Russell - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
The Outcast (revisited)
Dave Van Ronk - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
Wayfarin’ Stranger (revisited)
Iris DeMent - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
Love Abides
Tom Russell & Iris DeMent - The Man from God Knows Where - HighTone
Wayfaring Stranger
American Patchwork Quartet - American Patchwork Quartet - Carolina Jasmine
fragment of The Stranger Song
Leonard Cohen - Songs of Leonard Cohen - Columbia/Legacy Canadian
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