This Jewish kid with the blues sounds like something you might have heard in the college coffeehouse back when the earth was cooling and him and Rory Block were both precocious. Jumping on his acoustic guitar and taking you back down home, he covers all the bases from Charlie Patton to Dave Van Ronk and all that’s missing is the sound of bombs dropping in Viet Nam to really take you back to the day. An old timey master, this is as unvarnished and unpretentious as you can get. A solid load of fun stuff for anyone not too cool for school.
Notes from Andy Cohen
Tryin’ To Get Home has been assembling itself in my head for several years. It’s a record for grownups. All these songs have meaning to me because they speak to what matters, righteous things big and small. I’m happy about how the pre-war (WW2) songs came out, and happy also that the ones I made up seem to fit with the older ones. A few songs by other folks, ones I thought were appropriate for the project, round it out. Mostly, I want to present material that I believe in, as clearly and intelligibly as I can.
Album Credits
ANDY COHEN vocals, acoustic guitar ALL TRACKS EXCEPT 12 string guitar (10), steel guitar (8), piano (3, 13) RANDY “DA BONES MAN” SEPPALA bones (16)
PRODUCED BY Michael Robert Frank, Earwig Music Company, Inc.
TRACKS AND RECORDING DATES Recorded, mixed and edited by Jim Godsey, JBG Audio, Palatine, IL: 1 (9/16/14); 2, 4, 5, 8, 13 (6/20/18); 7, 9 (2/21/15); 11 (9/10/18); 12 (8/19/14); 16 (10/31/19) Recorded, mixed and edited by Gary Vincent, Clarksdale Sound Stage, Clarksdale, MS:3, 6 (6/12/20); 10 (6/11/20); 14 (6/12/20); 15,16 (2/3/20)
All tracks mastered by Jim Godsey, JBG Audio, Palatine, IL
PHOTOGRAPHY: Cover by Eric Johnson, at Blind Blake’s Gravesite, Glen Oaks Cemetery, Milwaukee, WI Back Cover by Brian Stansberry, LICENSED UNDER THE CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION 3.0 Inside Flap Panel by Paul Dellechiaie, at the Minstrel Concert Series (3/7/14), Morristown, NJ
GRAPHIC DESIGN BY Al Brandtner, Brandtner Design, Chicago, IL
© ℗ 2020 Earwig Music Company, Inc.
Track Listing
- Step It Up and Go (Fulton Allen pka Blind Boy Fuller), EMI Longitude Music Co. 2:24
- Pea Vine Blues (Charlie Patton, EMI Longitude Music Co.) 5:29
- Louis Jay Meyers Memorial Stomp (Andrew M. Cohen, Earwig Music Company, Inc.) 2:09
- Riley And Spencer (Fields Ward, traditional, arrangement by Andrew Cohen) 3:16
- Bad Dream Blues (Dave Van Ronk, Downtown DLJ Songs LLC OBO Folklore Productions Inc.) 4:42
- Puffin’ That Stuff (Andrew M. Cohen, Earwig Music Company, Inc.) 1:41
- One Monkey Don’t Stop the Show (Saunders Terrell pka Sonny Terry, Prestige Music Co.) 2:08
- Talkin’ Casey (Mississippi John Hurt, Wynwood Music Company Inc.; The Adage Group LLC) 6:39
- Reverend Gary Rag (Andrew M. Cohen, Earwig Music Company, Inc.) 1:36
- Bob Dylan’s Dream (Robert Dylan, Bob Dylan Music OBO Special Rider Music) 4:08
- Death Don’t Have No Mercy (Gary Davis, with additional lyrics by Andrew M. Cohen and William Lee Ellis, Downtown DLJ Songs LLC OBO Budde Music Inc.) 5:35
- Tryin’ to Get Home (Gary Davis, Downtown DLJ Songs LLC OBO Budde Music Inc.) 2:47
- Earwig Stomp (Andrew M. Cohen, Earwig Music Company, Inc.) 1:15
- Time to Go (Lawrence J. Penn, Cookie Man Music Company, Inc.) 4:47
- I Ain’t Gonna Give You None of My Jelly Roll (Clarence Williams and Spencer Williams, Shapiro Bernstein & Co Inc.) 2:43
- West Coast Blues (Blind Arthur Blake, Spikedriver LLC) 2:14
- Planxty Miss Joanna Swan (Andrew M. Cohen, Earwig Music Company, Inc.) 2:22