Bonnie Prince Billy

Hear Bonnie Prince Billy, Freakons, The Rheingans Sisters on “The Kingston Coffee House”

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WRIU Kingston Coffee House 10/28/25

By Mike Stevenson

On tonight’s KINGSTON COFFEE HOUSE, you’ll hear songs about heroic union organizers, deadly mine disasters, wailing orphans, and coal mining’s grim history of economic and ecological devastation in a set we call Dark As a Dungeon. We feature the wonderful collaboration between Freakwater and The Mekons! (“Freakons”, of course!)

In hour two, we will be taking a deep dive into the music of Will Oldham (aka “Bonnie Prince Billy”)

In the third hour, we play a set called Little Devils and Dark Angels – haunting music for the Halloween season provided by Faun Fables, Lankum, The Rheingans Sisters, Josienne Clarke and Róis 

Along the way, you’ll hear some classic Greenwich Village folk music from Fred Neil, Tim Harden and Karen Dalton

PLAYLIST

Ann Sheridan – Coffee shop banter from “They Drive by Night” (1940)
Freakwater – “Waitress Song” (Old Paint, 1995)
Rod Stewart – Tomorrow Is a Long Time (Dylan) Every Picture Tells a Story, 1971

DARK AS A DUNGEON
Merle Travis – Dark as a Dungeon (Folk Songs of the Hills, 1947)
[From the LP Freakons, 2019:]
Freakons – Blackleg Miner (traditional)
Freakons – Abernant 84/85 (The Mekons)
Freakons – Dreadful Memories (Sarah Ogan Gunning)
Freakons – “Corrie Doon”/”A Coal Miner’s Lullaby” (Matt McGinn)
Cowboy Junkies – “Mining for Gold” (traditional)
The Journeymen – “Dark as a Dungeon” (Travis) Coming Attraction: Live! 1962

GREENWICH VILLAGE FAVORITES
Fred Neil – Everybody’s Talkin'(Fred Neil, 1967)
Fred Neil – Ba Di Da (Fred Neil, 1967)
Tim Hardin- “Misty Roses” Tim Hardin #1 (1966)
Karen Dalton – “Something On Your Mind” (Dino Valenti)
Bobby Darin “If I Were a Carpenter” (Hardin)
Rod Stewart “Reason to Believe” (Hardin) Every Picture Tells a Story, 1971

Featured Artist: Will Oldham
Will Oldham/Palace – “New Partner” Viva Las Blues (1995)
Will Oldham/Palace – “Oh Lord, Are you in Need?” (There Is No-One Who Will Take Care of You, 1993)
Bonnie Prince Billy – The Dragon Song (from the film “Pete’s Dragon”, 2016)
Bonnie Prince Billy – “Intentional Injury” (from the film “True Detective”)
Bonnie Prince Billy & Dawn Landes – “Dark Eyes” (Bob Dylan)
Bonnie Prince Billy & Dawn McCarthy -“What Am I Living For” (What the Brothers Sang, 2013)
Joan Shelley “The Fading” (Like the River Loves the Sea, 2019)
Trembling Bells & Bonnie Prince Billy – “I’ll Be Looking Out for Me”
Bonnie Prince Billy “One of These Days” (The Purple Bird)
Johnny Cash “I See a Darkness”(American II; Solitary Man, 2000)

The HOBBLEDEHOY SET: Little Devils and Black Angels
ROIS – “Angelus II” (Mo Léan, 2024)
Jean Ritchie – “The Little Devils” (traditional)
ROIS – “Caoine” (Mo Léan, 2024)
The Rheingans Sisters – “Devils” (Devils, 2025)
ROIS – Oh, Lovely (Mo Léan, 2024)
Lankum – Fugue
Faun Fable “Black Angels” (Counterclockwise, 2024)
Lankum “What Will We Do When We Have No Money?” (Cold Old Fire, 2017)
The Rheingans “The Great Devil / Mr. Turner’s (Devils, 2025)
Josienne Clarke “The Madler Horror Story” (Far From Nowhere)

The Kingston Coffeehouse: Katie Cruel

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Originally broadcast September 9, 2025, on WRIU 90.3 FM.


By Michael Stevenson, host The Kingston Coffeehouse

PLAYLIST
“Katie Cruel” (traditional) – Karen Dalton
“Bashed Out” (K. Stables) – This Is the Kit , 2015 Bashed Out
“God Loves a Drunk” (R Thompson) – Norma Waterson, 1996 

“I’m Waiting For You to Smile” – Katell Keineg, 1994 O Seasons O Castles 
“Love Will Tear Us Apart” (Ian Curtis) June Tabor & Oysterband, 2011 Ragged Kingdom
“People’s Faces” – Kae Tempest, 2019 The Book of Traps and Lessons
“Train Song” – Vashti Bunyan, r. 1966, Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind
“Anachie Gordon” (traditional) The Unthanks, 2010 Here’s the Tender Coming
“Henry Lee” (traditional) Nick Cave & PJ Harvey, 2011 Murder Ballads
“The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” (Ewan MacColl) – Offa Rex, 2017 The Queen of Hearts
“She Moved through the Fair” (traditional) – Anne Briggs, 1963 Edinburgh Folk Festival Vol. 1
“Banjo Player of Aleph One” – Gwenifer Raymond 2025 Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark
“Wheely Down” (R. Thompson) – Ivor Cutler, 1993 The World is a Wonderful Place
“Roundabout” – Ryley Walker, 2017 Golden Sings That Have Been Sung
“Brighter than the Blues” – Joan Shelly, 2016 Over and Even
“Three Ravens” (traditional) – Jake Xerxes Fussell, 2019 Out of Sight
“Lullaby” (from the film Wicker Man) – Magnet (Paul Giovanni) 1972
“Rivers Run Red” (Ella Oona Russell) – The New Eves, 2025 The New Eve is Rising
“Witches Reel” (traditional) – Starheid Gossip, 2015 Step Sisters
“Entertaining of a Shy Girl” – Donovan 1968 Hurdy Gurdy Man
“The Hedgehog Song”(Heron/Williamson) – Incredible String Band, 1966 The 5000 Spirits or Layers of an Onion
“Lay it Down” (G. Thomas) – Bonny Prince Billy with The Trembling Bells, 2014 New Trip On Old Wine
“Conch Shell” Katell Keineg, 1994 O Seasons O Castle
“Into My Arms” – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, 1997 Boatman’s Call
“Place to Be” – Nick Drake, Pink Moon
“How Wild the Wind Blows” – Molly Lee, 2018 The Tides Magnificence
“The Sweetest Decline” – Beth Orton Central Reservation
“The Wagoner’s Lad” (Traditional) – Bert Jansch, 1966 Jack Orion
“Nottamun Town” (traditional)- Fairport Convention, 1969 What We Did on Our Holidays
“Masters of War” – Bob Dylan, 1963 The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
“Needle of Death” – Bert Jansch, 1965 Bert Jansch
“Golden Brown” – The Stranglers 1982
“Meet On the Ledge” (R.Thompson) – Fairport Convention, 1969 What We Did on Our Holidays
“Anji” – Davy Graham
“Green Are Your Eyes” (b.Jansch) – Marianne Faithul, 1966 North Country Maid
“The Water” – Johnny Flynn & Laura Marling, 2010 Been Listening
“The Parting Glass” (traditional) – James Elkington 2017 Wintres Woma
“Katie Cruel” (traditional) – Agnes Obel
“Blues Run the Game” – Jackson C. Frank, 1965 Jackson C. Frank
“Home Sweet Home” (Bishop /Payne)- The King’s Singers 1993 Folk Songs of the British Isles
“A Heart Needs a Home” – Linda & Richard Thompson, 1975 Hokey Pokey
“Goodnight World” – Lisa O’Neil, 2023 All This Is Chance

Màiri Morrison & Alasdair Roberts “Remembered in Exile: Songs and Ballads From Nova Scotia”

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Traditional transatlantic folk songs spring to life on this splendid collection of bloody tales.

Drag city isn’t a label you’d immediately associate with traditional Scottish folk songs but when Alasdair Roberts pressed a demo of his songs into the hands of Will Oldham (AKA Bonnie “Prince” Billy) some years back he was taken into the fold, releasing a series of albums which sat somewhere in between alternative and traditional folk. ‘Remembered In Exile’, his second collaboration with Isle of Lewis singer Màiri Morrison, finds the pair of them delving more into tradition as they head across the Atlantic to record ten traditional Canadian songs with Scottish roots, aided and abetted by Nova Scotian bass player and musical arranger Pete Johnston. They draw heavily on the work carried out by the late folklorist Helen Creighton (also from Nova Scotia) who collected such songs with an emphasis on of the westward journey undertaken by Scottish fishers, crofters, merchants and their families as they migrated to Canada from the 1600s to the mid-1800s.

As such, many of the subjects of the songs here will be familiar to fans of traditional folk music with tales of lost love, tragedy and death and just the daily rigmarole of surviving in hard times prominent. Some of the songs are rendered in Gaelic, sung beautifully by Morrison, but the majority are in plain old English while all are delivered with grace, delicacy and, at times, a foreboding sense of doom. Chief among them is the seven minute tale which is ‘Katharine Jaffray’. A narrative ballad which unveils much as Fairport Convention’s ‘Matty Groves’ did, it tells the tale of two warring suitors for a maiden’s hand and has been long well known in folk circles under the title of ‘The Green Wedding’. Morrison and Roberts deliver the song quite wonderfully as it slowly builds to a fiddle and drum fuelled climax, their voices both entwined and sparring.

A wheezing harmonium drone adds atmosphere to the ship faring tale which is ‘Uilleam Glen’, a tantalising listen, while their rendition of the familiar air ‘Hi Horò’s Na Hòro H-eile’ is quite magnificent. The most contemporary take on these traditional artefacts is to be heard on ‘The Bonny House of Airlie’, a song which was collected in the Child Ballads. It’s a bloody tale and with its thundering double bass, shards of electric guitar and martial drumming it’s the most dramatic song on the album.

While such folk music might be considered an outlier in terms of Americana, Morrison and Roberts are working very much in the vein of bands from here in the UK and in America who find succour in these traditional sounds and ‘Remembered in Exile’ is, simply put, quite excellent.

RATING: 8/10

Source: Màiri Morrison & Alasdair Roberts “Remembered in Exile: Songs and Ballads From Nova Scotia” – Americana UK

Record Review: “The Purple Bird” by Bonnie “Prince” Billy

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The Purple Bird by Bonnie “Prince” Billy released in 2025. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.

Singer/songwriter Will Oldham, aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy, has had an infatuation with traditional country music for the entirety of his career, and its influence has grown more pronounced at different phases of his discography.

Though his enigmatic persona is always present in his songs, some of Oldham’s most engaging tunes are those where he’s tempered his strangeness with the warm familiarity of classic country underpinnings. In 2004, his Greatest Palace Music collection took this approach into overdrive, re-recording new versions of some of his early outsider Americana songs in full Nashville regalia, with crack session players transforming the songs into traditional country and/or Western arrangements. The Purple Bird represents Oldham taking another swing at the time-honored Nashville sound.

Album producer David Ferguson (a longtime collaborator of Oldham’s who has also worked with Johnny Cash, Sturgil Simpson, and many other big names of country) co-wrote many of the songs, assembled a band, and connected a host of talented guests to bring the sessions to life. Ferguson’s hand on the album is best felt in its most lively moments, like the joyous “The Water’s Fine” with its chicken-scratch guitar leads and grinning fiddle parts or the timeless honky tonk bumble of “Tonight with the Dogs I’m Sleeping,” a hilarious drunkard’s lament that sees its flailing protagonist literally sleeping in the doghouse after a long night out. However, ballads like the beautifully melancholic “Boise, Idaho” and album standout “One of These Days (I’m Gonna Spend the Whole Night with You)” are just as powerful if more refined, both with gentle soft-rock melodic sensibilities that merge with dreamy pedal steel, electric piano, or mandolin augmentation to create an almost tropical take on the traditional country slow dance.

Oldham is the sole writer on several songs, including “Guns Are for Cowards,” which uses a buoyant and celebratory oompah instrumental as the backdrop for lyrics about horrific gun violence, the understated “Sometimes It’s Hard to Breathe,” and the horn-heavy mellowness of “New Water.” These songs are great, but they feel more in keeping with the sound of recent work like 2023’s Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You. The Purple Bird shines the brightest in its most collaborative moments. It’s when the band is in full swing that Oldham sounds tuned-in and excited (even giddy) to be crafting the kind of classic country record that he’s enjoyed so much himself.

The depth of the production helps deliver this feeling, elevating the sound of The Purple Bird to a place where all of its carefully placed details and rusty joy can be clearly heard, and even more markedly felt.

Source: The Purple Bird – Bonnie “Prince” Billy | Album | AllMusic