original songs in the folk tradition

13 MP3 Songs
FOLK: Modern Folk, COUNTRY: Country Folk



Details:
John Wiley "The Rev" Nelson is a singer/songwriter, living with his family in Provincetown, Mass. He has played with various groups, including The Highlanders, and the Highlanders II folkie groups in Pittsburg, in the 60's, Cucumber Rapids, a bluegrass and country cover band, in Pittsburgh in the 70's, and Life's Other Side, an old-time country band in the Trenton/Princeton area since 1982. Life's Other Side has performed at Snowbird in Utah, in Santa Fe, will do a show in Montreal in 2007, and were featured on the Ernest Tubb Midnight Opry in January of 2005, with Whispering Bill Anderson. The Rev now plays with a part original music, part 30's-40's tunes, band in P-town, called Willie and the Nelson Brothers. He has been writing original music in the folk tradition since 2000, and the CD posted is his second, Jug Band Jacket. His first, Rev-Elation, featuring the Provincetown Trilogy, should be posted shortly. He writes in traditional folk styles, including ragtime, folk blues, country ballads, and talking blues. His talking blues are humorous story-songs in the old talking blues format. His first CD featured Dad in Charge of the Kids at the End of the Day Talking Blues; this CD features the talking blues, Jug Band Jacket, Consider the Alternative, and Seemed Like a Good Idea At the Time. The Rev is a retired Presbyterian Minister, with a Ph.D. in Theology, who taught Systematic Theology in Pittsburgh for ten years, and served a church in Trenton for 20 years. But he has moved on to better things, and his music is not in the Christian music tradition. On this CD is a song about the year in which he was born (1939), which was coincidentally the most creatively productive year in film Hollywood ever had. Other songs are about the breakup of the marriage of other musicians he has known, and about a woman he met whose smile had to be exorcised from his mind by the writing or "That Smile."