Craig Johnson: Deep Woods & Hollows (review)

Deep Woods & Hollows offers a loving tribute to Craig Johnson, a talented and thoughtful multi-instrumentalist, singer, and collector of songs who passed away in January 2009. John-son played in several string bands beginning in 1972, among them Skunk's Misery and the Double Decker Stringband; he was a member of the latter for more than 30 years. However, this record highlights Johnson's abilities as a solo performer and includes several of his original compositions, which illustrate the timeless quality of his music.

Deep Woods & Hollows serves as a nice companion to Away Down the Road (5-String Productions, 2010), a record released shortly after Craig Johnson's death from esophageal cancer. Whereas Away Down the Road serves as a musical scrapbook of the influential musicians—such as Clyde Davenport, Luther Davis, and Kahle Brewer—who shaped Johnson's style and repertoire, Deep Woods & Hollows places more emphasis on Johnson's original works, all of which seem equally at home with the songs and tunes of his "old masters." "The Vance Song" is one such golden nugget found on both records, a song written by a prisoner, Abner Vance, as he awaited execution. Johnson offers a haunting rendition and one of the more complete versions available.

Deep Woods & Hollows was released by the Field Recorders' Collective in 2015 and covers over 3 decades of Johnson's work. The Field Recorders' Collective is known for liberating fine collections of field recordings, those magical windows into the souls and repertoires of many musicians often never before heard by the public at large or by researchers and other musicians across geographic space. The collective, founded by Ray Alden and Judy Hyman and now comprising nearly two dozen other collectors, has released their personal and cultivated collections of field recordings since 2009, the year of Craig Johnson's death, distributing profits back to the subjects and families of those who they have recorded through the years. The recordings for Deep Woods & Hollows came from the collections of Craig Johnson's family and friends, serving as a tribute to his evolution as a musician and singer, a journey that by many accounts was cut too short by his untimely passing.

Over the course of 34 tracks, a sampling of Johnson's musical interests and influences are laid before the listener. Johnson, who played fiddle, banjo, and guitar, was also a raspy vocalist with a sort of high-pitched timbre that recalls an era before his time. He covers aspects of blues and old-time music, touching on sources both direct and ephemeral, with content ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. While there is some contextual introduction from Johnson accompanying this collection, liner notes would have been most helpful for both researchers and musicians in determining the provenance of much of his repertoire. Johnson cites some sources of his repertoire, such as the Parchman Women's Correctional Unit's "Noah Built the Ark," distributed by the State of Mississippi Cultural Division (the best I can discern, he is referring to the recording of Josephine Douglas from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History Presents Jailhouse Blues: Women's A Cappella Songs from the Parchman Penitentiary Library of Congress Field Recordings, 1936 and 1939, Rosetta Records RR1316, 1987). He also cites the influence of a wonderful variant of "Last Chance," a banjo tune offered by Willard Clower in Virginia, who gathered words from a local newspaper and combined them with the familiar tune, giving it the title "Taking a Bath on Saturday Night in a Galvanized Washing Tub." Still, there are others with no such reference, for example, John-son's version of "Foreign Lander." Did he learn it from a recording of Jean Ritchie or of another singer, or firsthand? Johnson also has an excellent version of the Appalachian fiddle tune "Smoky Row" on the album. Did his version come from Doc Roberts' recordings or from another source? It is frustrating to not have notes for much of this collection, especially because the quality of Johnson's playing is...