Oh the Wind & Rain

Jody Stecher | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 21, 1999)
• Original Release Date: September 21, 1999
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Appleseed Records
• ASIN: B00000K539
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #340,075 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars experimental and traditional at the same time, October 30, 1999

By 

H. Kaiser (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Oh the Wind & Rain (Audio CD)

On this collection of American and English folk ballads Stecher demonstrates his enormous and expressive control of expression in tiny details. This is the richest folk recording that I have heard in a long time. Truly entertaining and inspiring at the same time. Rampant eclecticism and traditionalism happily coexisting, it's like nothing else in any year. A moment ago I mistyped "recoding" instead of "recording"... I think my fingers must have known what they were doing for Jody seems to be re-coding these ballads as well as recording them. Encrypting new shades of meaning that he has found within himself and his own life experinces that suddenly become part of the tradition in fornt of your ears. It's realy a musical magic trick to hear his oud and mandolin version of the title track, informed by its own roots, as well as the Hindustani tradition of classical music that Stecher has studied for so many years; it's unconventionally new and traditionally right at the same time.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a triumph, June 11, 2000

By 

Jerome Clark (Canby, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Oh the Wind & Rain (Audio CD)

As fine a singer of traditional American music as came out of the folk revival, Jody Stecher just keeps getting better and better. This affecting collection of ballads well known ("Gypsy Davy," "Barbary Ellen") and obscure ("Old Bangum," "Lord Leitrim") caps an already exceptional recording career. As my friend Robin Williams (the folk singer, not the comedian) likes to say, the highways are littered with the bodies of those who thought folk music is easy. Happily, the music has been inside Stecher so long that he breathes it as much as he sings it; you couldn't sound this way unless you were in some way living inside these old tunes and stories. Stecher's principal influence is, and remains, the Appalachian tradition, though most of the songs here (including his extraordinary reading of the title tune, also known as "The Two Sisters" and as the template for Dylan's "Percy's Song") are easily traceable to Anglo-Celtic roots. Stecher sings them all, including the very British "Lowlands of Holland," as a Southern mountain singer would. The instrumental accompaniment is spare and tasteful when it's there at all; some of it is just Stecher's voice, in the ancient style. Either way, you'll be riveted, and you certainly don't have to be an ethnomusicologist to be moved by this lovely, perfectly executed disc. A triumph by any standard.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Transcendent, October 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Oh the Wind & Rain (Audio CD)

Beautiful and breathtaking beyond description. Time and the world stop when you listen to this recording. A masterpiece!