âItâs hard to imagine another artist on the folk scene who combines the same concise, deceptively understated, lyrical insight and sometimes devastating wit with such world-class instrumental prowess.â Musichound Folk

12 MP3 Songs
FOLK: Modern Folk, FOLK: Traditional Folk

Show all album songs: Retold Songs


Details:
Redux, renew, re-visit, re-do.

Twelve vintage songs from the pen of Joel Mabus, freshly recorded. Each has grown up a bit since the first time around, and each merits a re-telling.

"Retold" showcases the songwriting side of Joel Mabus. All of these songs were written by Joel between 1987 and 1997, and were all released on albums during that period. But the tracks here are all new for 2008. In some cases the lyrics have been tweaked, in others the attitude adjusted. Some of these songs were originally released in a live 1988 recording, so this represents the first studio versions.

Some will call this a "best of" album, but not Joel. In the notes he writes, "This album does offer a sample of my earlier songs, and some audience favorites are included, I suppose. But my main criteria in choosing these 12 songs was that I am still fond of these âkidsâ after all this time, and I think I know their personalities better now. They deserved another round in the studio with the old man."

JOEL MABUS BIO

Joel Mabus has split his 35-year career in folk music between the traditional and the original. Split is perhaps not the proper word, because the old and the new intertwine in his music, whether he is singing an old ballad with a new interpretive twist or writing a new song with a 21st century perspective that sounds like it has been handed down from generations past.

Where is he from? He was born and raised in a working-class family in a modest Southern Illinois town, about 105 miles southeast of Mark Twain, 190 miles northwest of Bill Monroe, 110 miles southwest of Burl Ives and just over the river and up the hill from Scott Joplin.

His great-grandfather Louis Charles Lee was an Illinois farmhouse fiddler of the 19th century. Most of the following generations were farmhouse musicians too. When Joelâs mother and father came of age in the Great Depression, they took their old-time music on the road as professional entertainers, barnstorming the Midwest with road shows for Prairie Farmer, the parent company of the WLS Barn Dance, the progenitor of the Grand Ole Opry.

This pedigree was not lost on Joel as a child. When his schoolmates were grooving to the Beach Boys and the Monkeys, he was learning the tunes of the Carter Family, Bill Monroe and Jimmie Rodgers. He also absorbed some of the blues and spiritual music that is thick in his native Southern Illinois along the Mississippi River.

Despite the poverty his family was thrown into after his fatherâs untimely death, Joel attended university in Michigan (on a national merit scholarship), where he studied anthropology by day and learned the business of being a professional musician by night. Interests grew beyond bluegrass & old time stringband music, and Joel studied older blues, western swing, and even Celtic dance music long before it was the fad. He also began to write songs.

After journeymanâs work in several local bluegrass and string bands, Joel made his first record for a Michigan label in 1977 with mandolin legend Frank Wakefield guesting. Three years later he signed with Flying Fish Records for a two-record deal. In 1986 he was one of the first established folksingers to start his own independent label, even before the advent of the home studio and compact disc, which make the practice so common today.

While he is known to many as a songwriter, having penned several songs familiar to the folk crowd (âTouch a Name On the Wall,â âThe Druggist,â and âThe Duct Tape Bluesâ are three that have been covered by many and published in the pages of Singout Magazine), he is also a fixture on the traditional scene as a guitarist, old-time banjoist, singer and fiddler. He has taught at Augusta Heritage, Puget Sound Guitar Workshop, and fiddled at countless dance camps. (His fiddle tune, âThe Blue Jigâ has become a modern contradance standard on three continents and has been recorded numerous times by dance bands.)

Subsequent to his instrumental guitar release in 2005, âParlor Guitar,â Joel was asked by Hal Leonard Publishing to write transcriptions from that CD for publication. The book, Parlor Guitar, is now available worldwide for guitarists to learn Joelâs arrangements of these early 20th century classics.

Joel was also among the first wave to join the North American Folk Music & Dance Alliance (âFolk Alliance,â for short) in 1990, and showcased officially at the 1991 international conference in Chicago, where he was given two standing ovations. Top agent David Tamulevich wrote, "It was one of the most memorable and remarkable sets I have ever had the pleasure of seeing."

Mabus has made 19 solo albums in his recording career â most of them still available. His latest are âThe Banjo Monologuesâ in 2007, a unique blend of old-time banjo and storytelling, and âRetoldâ in 2008, new versions of 12 of his vintage original songs.