Roll Columbia: Woody Guthrie's 26 Northwest Songs

In these pages last year (#120) I reviewed Greg Vandy's book 26 Songs in 30 Days: Woody Guthrie's Columbia River Songs and the Planned Promised Land in the Pacific Northwest. It told the tale of how, in 1941, Guthrie was hired to write a set of compositions promoting the Grand Coulee Dam and the benefits of cheap hydro-electric power. Guthrie warmed to the task and in a startling burst of creativity wrote 26 songs in 30 days, including such classics as ‘Pastures of Plenty’, ‘Hard Travelin” and ‘Roll On Columbia’. This two-disc set is a spin-off from the book and features a bunch of contemporary American folk artists recording the entire suite of compositions. As such, it's the first time the ‘Northwest songs’ have ever been gathered together, for nine of them were never actually recorded by Guthrie and others were lost. With more than two dozen artists involved, it seems slightly invidious to pick out highlights. But the first CD features lovely back-porch female harmonies from the Tornfelt Sisters on the previously unrecorded ‘Eleckatricity and All’; Al James and Jon Neufeld's shimmering Americana on ‘The Talking Blues’; and the brilliant picking of Orville Johnson on ‘Jackhammer Blues’. Gems on the second disc include former REM guitarist Peter Buck and friends on ‘Washington Talkin’ Blues’ and Darrin Craig's magical singing of lines such as ‘in the misty crystal glitter of that wild and windward spray’ on ‘The Grand Coulee Dam’.