Si Kahn is one of the grand old boys of folk song writing. Search a decent folk collection, and you might find John McCutcheon singing Kahn's "Gone, Gonna Rise Again" or Andy Irvine singing "Aragon Mill" on Patrick Street's "Linthead Trilogy." Kahn's life has been full of activism and many of his songs deal with themes of social justice. Threads, centering on cotton workers, is no exception, from the picking to the sewing, from the days of slavery to the days of designer jeans. It's an interesting album.
These are songs with strong musical themes, and sometimes seem to be familiar. My husband, for example, pointed out that "Blue Jeans For Me, Brown Lung For Me" seemed to be the same tune as "Grandpa Was A Carpenter": conversely, it reminded me of "You Got the Money, Honey I Got the Time." "Stitch And Sew" reminded my son of "that storm king guy": Vancouver, Washington singer Tom May. It's true that there are only a finite number of melodies, but I think rather Kahn has found a key to the pattern of memorable tunes and melodies.
Though not in strict temporal sequence, the folkiest songs are at the beginning of the album. Especially nice are two songs about the Northeast. "Down On the Merrimack River" is about a mill girl and "Stitch and Sew" is, not surprisingly, about a seamstress. One of the strongest lyrically, Kahn uses fire as a metaphor for the union movement:
"Far in the mountains where blood marks the coal
Down in the shaft a fire is growing
Closer and closer it comes to our lives...
Stitch and sew, stitch and sew,
Pulling the thread till the silk is on fire."
This...and Kahn's sometimes deep voice...must have reminded my son of firefighters at Storm King, so far away. At the same time, in Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, slaves picked cotton to fuel the mills in the song "Field By Field, Row By Row." But perhaps not so far south, how would they know "Love is as rare as flowers in the snow?" Kahn writes:
"Last night I dreamed
We were working in a row
of cotton that shone like pure silver
A path made of gold
Stretched away from the field."
As "time passes" on "Threads," Kahn yields to popular influences and the songs aren't as much fun for the traditionalist. But the stories are still interesting. In a Charleston spinning mill, a woman refuses the advances of her boss and ends up on the night shift. And, with an Americana arrangement, "Blue Jeans For You..." is cute, but ends:
"If you pick out just one strand...
You can hold it between your fingers
And snap it with one hand
But weave those strands together
They make a cloth so strong."
Towards the end of Threads, there is less local color in the songs. In "Moose Lodge," old men think about their lives. I would have liked more specifics. Nothing like being at odds with the liner notes! Booklet author Dick Pleasants from Boston thought of Maine, but I thought of my town on the Columbia River. Maybe that was Kahn's point, but for me the song just slipped away.
Si Kahn's voice is weathered, and slightly off pitch, which may bother vocal purists. The mostly acoustic arrangements are fine musically, and vary their arrangement to suit the topic of the song. I do like the folk banjo better than the easy listening and folk rock.
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