| Jack's Crows | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 1991 | |||
| Genre | Folk | |||
| Label | High Street [1] | |||
| Producer | Dawn Atkinson, Will Ackerman | |||
| John Gorka chronology | ||||
| ||||
Jack's Crows is an album by the American musician John Gorka. [2] [3] It was released in 1991. [4] [5] The album's title was supplied by Jack Hardy. [6] "House in the Fields", for which a video was produced, was marketed to country music outlets. [7]
The album was produced by Dawn Atkinson and Will Ackerman. [8] Its songs are set mostly in the small towns near the border between Pennsylvania and New Jersey. [9] [10] Unlike during the recording sessions for his previous albums, Gorka recorded most of Jack's Crows with all the musicians present in the studio at one time. [6] It was Gorka's intention to move on from the love songs of previous albums to songs about places and people. [11] Shawn Colvin sang on two of Jack's Crows' tracks. [12]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [13] |
| The Encyclopedia of Popular Music | [14] |
| MusicHound Rock: The Essential Album Guide |  [8] |
| The Republican | [12] |
The Washington Post wrote that "Gorka matches his subtle, intelligent and original songwriting with a deep, thrilling baritone ripe with masculine melancholy, that makes whatever he's singing fairly unforgettable." [15] The Ottawa Citizen stated that Gorka "conjures up characters and landscapes that share an unpretentious dignity and grandeur." [16]
The Republican determined that, "though ballads dominate, there is sizzle here, particularly on the bleak urban landscape Gorka paints on 'Where the Bottles Break'." [12] The State-Times concluded that, "though his calmly academic baritone on Jack's Crows tends to put the lyrics at arm's length, the lyrics themselves are so intelligently written that they manage to transcend their aloof presentation." [17]
AllMusic noted that "Where the Bottles Break" "is a rockin' song about personal convictions and the real-estate business." [13]
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Silence" | |
| 2. | "Treasure Islands" | |
| 3. | "Jack's Crows" | |
| 4. | "House in the Fields" | |
| 5. | "The Mercy of the Wheels" | |
| 6. | "Good" | |
| 7. | "Semper Fi" | |
| 8. | "Where the Bottles Break" | |
| 9. | "Night Is a Woman" | |
| 10. | "I'm from New Jersey" | |
| 11. | "My New Neighborhood" | |
| 12. | "The Ballad of Jamie Bee" | |
| 13. | "You're On Your Way" |
Lucy Kaplansky is an American folk musician based in New York City. Kaplansky has a PhD in clinical psychology from Yeshiva University and plays guitar, mandolin, and piano.
Thomas Richard Paxton is an American folk singer-songwriter who has had a music career spanning more than sixty years. In 2009, Paxton received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a music educator as well as an advocate for folk singers to combine traditional songs with new compositions.
Waltons were a Canadian folk rock band, active primarily in the 1990s. The band released three studio albums during their career, and won a Juno Award for Best New Group at the Juno Awards of 1994.
John Gorka is an American singer-songwriter. In 1991, Rolling Stone magazine called him "the preeminent male singer-songwriter of what has been dubbed the New Folk Movement."
Out of the Valley is a 1994 album by contemporary folk singer-songwriter John Gorka. This is Gorka's fifth album and unlike the previous four recorded in various places in the northeastern United States, Out of the Valley was recorded at Imagine Sound Studios in Nashville, Tennessee. This is also the first of several Gorka albums to employ the talents of guitarist/producer John Jennings.
Ellis Paul is an American singer-songwriter and folk musician. Born in Presque Isle, Aroostook County, Maine, Paul is a key figure in what has become known as the Boston school of songwriting, a literate, provocative, and urbanely romantic folk-pop style that helped ignite the folk revival of the 1990s. His pop music songs have appeared in movies and on television, bridging the gap between the modern folk sound and the populist traditions of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.
Eliza Gilkyson is a Taos, New Mexico–based folk musician. She is the daughter of songwriter and folk musician Terry Gilkyson and his wife, Jane. Her brother is guitarist Tony Gilkyson, who played with the Los Angeles–based bands Lone Justice and X. She is married to scholar and author Robert Jensen. Gilkyson is a two-time Grammy Award nominee, receiving a nomination for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 2004 and Best Folk Album in 2014.
John Studebaker "Jack" Hardy was an American singer-songwriter and playwright based in Greenwich Village, who was influential as a writer, performer, and mentor in the North American and European folk music scenes for decades. He was cited as a major influence by Suzanne Vega, John Gorka, and others who emerged from that scene in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Hardy was the author of hundreds of songs, and toured for almost forty years. He was also the founding editor of Fast Folk Musical Magazine, a periodical famous within music circles for twenty years that shipped with a full album in each issue, whose entire catalog is now part of the Smithsonian Folkways collection.
"Killing Floor" is a 1964 song by American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist Howlin' Wolf. Called "one of the defining classics of Chicago electric blues", "Killing Floor" became a blues standard with recordings by various artists. It has been acknowledged by the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame, which noted its popularity among rock as well as blues musicians. English rock group Led Zeppelin adapted the song for their "The Lemon Song", for which Howlin' Wolf is named as a co-author.
Pure John Gorka is a "best of" collection of John Gorka's work selected from the five albums Gorka released on the Windham Hill/High Street label between 1990 and 1996. This collection was released on June 27, 2006, by Windham Hill as part of a series of "Pure" albums by former Windham Hill artists; other titles cover the careers of diverse musicians such as Jim Brickman, Mark Isham, Shadowfax, Tuck & Patti, and Will Ackerman.
Between Five and Seven is the sixth studio album by folk singer-songwriter John Gorka. It was released in August 1996. It is the last of the five albums Gorka recorded for Windham Hill/High Street Records before returning to the smaller, Red House label. Gorka produced the album with John Jennings who also produced Gorka's previous record, Out of the Valley. Unlike the previous record made in Nashville, Tennessee, the recording was done at Paisley Park Studios, Chanhassen, Minnesota and the instrumentation has been described as "more acoustic, less pop-oriented." Paisley Park is southwest of Minneapolis and is the studio designed and owned by the artist, Prince.
Land of the Bottom Line is the second album by contemporary folk singer-songwriter John Gorka. The album was also Gorka's major label debut for High Street Records/Windham Hill Records. The album was highly acclaimed by critics at the time, and continues to be cited by some as Gorka's finest work. The album's fifteen tracks and near hour-long length also provided an unusually large amount of music for a recording of that era. As Sing Out! editor Mark Moss noted in a review, the topics covered run "the gamut of John's favorite subjects: love, hard luck, local characters, and more."
Lik My Trakter is the first album by the Canadian band the Waltons, released in 1992. Initially released independently, it received a national release on Warner Music Canada; it was released by Sire Records in the U.S. The band supported the album with a Canadian tour, often playing with Barenaked Ladies. The album was certified gold in Canada.
Tango is an album by the American musician Patty Larkin, released in 1991. Larkin promoted the album by participating in the "On a Winter's Night" tour, with Christine Lavin and John Gorka.
World Outside is the seventh studio album by the English rock band the Psychedelic Furs, released 1 July 1991 by Columbia Records in the US. It includes the single "Until She Comes", which hit No. 1 on the US Modern Rock Tracks chart in September 1991. "Don't Be a Girl" was the second single.
Celtae was a Canadian band, formed in 2001 in Ottawa, playing neo-Celtic music. The band was founded by Nathan MacDonald of Cape Breton Island, and included Matt Holland of Summerside, Prince Edward Island and Tyree Lush of Gambo, Newfoundland and Labrador. Original fiddler Jules Sisk left the band, and was replaced by Dana Arrowsmith of Sudbury, Ontario.
Tris McCall is a music journalist, novelist, and rock musician from Hudson County, New Jersey, described by The New York Times as "the plugged-in, Internet-era muse of Jersey City." In 2010, he became the music critic for the Newark Star-Ledger. As of 2017, McCall has released four solo albums; songs intended for two future albums are previewed alongside his short stories in a web project called McCall's Almanac.
"Driving Wheel", sometimes recorded as "Lost My Driving Wheel", is a song written by British-born Canadian folk singer David Wiffen. The song was popularized by Tom Rush, and has been performed and recorded by many well-known musicians.
Sideman Serenade is an album by the American musician David Bromberg, released in 1989. It was his first studio album in almost 10 years; he would not release another studio album until 2007. Bromberg had spent much of the 1980s working as a violin maker, after legal difficulties with his previous label, Fantasy Records.
Dart to the Heart is an album by the Canadian musician Bruce Cockburn, released in 1994. Cockburn considered it to be primarily an album of love songs.
