by Richard Oxman

> “June Tabor is probably the finest female traditional British folk singer of the late 20th century — if not the best British folk singer of her time, period. What links her to Britain’s past traditions are the chilling and emotional qualities of her voice. What links her to the British present is her fine taste in material, arrangements, and backing musicians, along with a willingness to try different things and interpret work by contemporary songwriters.” — Richie Unterberger

> “The song on which Carter Burwell based the main theme of *Miller’s Crossing* is an old Irish ballad suggested by Gabriel Byrne.” — Joel Coen commenting on “Come Back to Erin”

What is meant when people say “words can’t express…”?

June Tabor’s “The Turn of the Road” gets to “the fountain from the which my current runs or else dries up,” just as Carter Burwell’s theme music for the Coen Brothers’ *Miller’s Crossing* penetrates. Partner Sylvie just pointed out “He Fades Away” as something else on the ‘94 **Against the Streams** Tabor album… which moves her… which I think goes beyond Justice.

The All Music Guide gives you a good background:

> “Tabor’s first high-profile project was a duet album with Steeleye Span’s Maddy Prior in the 1970s (the duo dubbed themselves the Silly Sisters for the occasion). An all-star cast of some of the leading lights of the British folk scene supported the singers, including Martin Carthy, Nic Jones, and Andy Irvine. For her own albums and tours she has worked with outstanding guitarists, most notably Jones and Martin Simpson. She’s also tread into folk-rock waters with Fairport Convention (whom she’s guested with onstage) and the Oyster Band (with whom she collaborated on a 1990 album). Her 1994 album, Against the Stream, found her still at her peak, interpreting both traditional tunes and efforts by modern-day composers, including Elvis Costello and Richard Thompson. Subsequent efforts include 1996’s Singing the Storm, 1997’s Aleyn and 2000’s Quiet Eye.”

I’m not even an Ethan & Joel fan ‘cross the board, by any means, but…there’s an unspeakably deep vein that runs through the stylized dialogue and melancholic music of their 1990 film.

With the movie, it’s like something is *about to happen*. With Tabor… it’s like something earthshattering happened.

Mitch Hedberg –whose material is available on this site, a sampling– provides humor which gives the impression of something *in the process of happening*; he’s, perhaps, at the oppostite end of the spectrum of a line which might have bummed-out funny bunny on one end…and fountain of Shakespearean sorrow on the other. Happening.

And I hope it happens to you. It’s poetry beyond Justice. [1]

For want of a better expression. [2]

Feeble-minded Footnotes:

[1] And poetry beyond all the holocausts that have happened…or will happen. For it speaks to the human condition that no one rises above, successful or otherwise with notions of redistribution, *preventative* this or that. Again, dipping into this is not elitism or quietism, but…wisdom. There is a Mystery at work; a very light angle on this is provided in the June 6th entry for Alternative Blind Dates on this site.

[2] On this note –in a minor vein– I trust that readers can appreciate my wording with arrangements like **whose material is available on this site, a sampling** as something understood to be “incorrect,” but…called for…. My June 6th entry for the Answers That Smart section on this site addresses this to some degree. Look at what Arnold Weinstein says about the subject in A Scream Goes Through the House: “Moliere’s Monsieur Jourdain, his unforgettable ‘*bourgeois gentilhomme*,’ is stunned to learn that he speaks, and has been speaking all is life, *prose*. Now I have nothing against prose, am even a great admirer of it, but for special effects, for a demonstration of how meanings are made, for the closest possible representation of how the mind encounters experience, for an illustration of how language and life inseminate each other, poetry must be our handbook.”