Running for the Drum

Last updated
Running for the Drum
Running for the Drum.jpg
Studio album by
ReleasedSeptember 2008
Recorded2008
Genre Folk, rock
Length43:31
Label Appleseed
Producer Chris Birkett, Buffy Sainte-Marie
Buffy Sainte-Marie chronology
Up Where We Belong
(1996)
Running for the Drum
(2008)
The Pathfinder: Buried Treasures – The Mid-70's Recordings
(2010)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [1]
The Phoenix Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [2]
musicOMH Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar half.svgStar empty.svg [3]
Slant Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar half.svgStar empty.svg [4]

Running for the Drum is the fourteenth studio album by Buffy Sainte-Marie, released in 2008. One of Sainte-Marie's more successful albums, it spawned one single with "No No Keshagesh". Sainte-Marie also rewrote two verses of "America The Beautiful".

Contents

History

The album's title comes from a lyric in the song "Cho Cho Fire". Running for the Drum features the DVD documentary on Buffy Sainte-Marie, A Multimedia Life, which features exclusive interviews with artists such as Joni Mitchell and Taj Mahal and performances by Sainte-Marie.

Sessions for this album began in 2006 until 2007, mostly recorded in Sainte-Marie's home recording studio in Hawaii and part in France. The album opens with two aboriginal influenced songs, "No No Keshagesh" (the album's only single and made as if to sound at a rally) and "Cho Cho Fire". Apart from a reworking on the tracks "Little Wheel Spin and Spin" and “Still This Love Goes On”, all of the tracks here are newly written and unique to this album. Running for the Drum won the prestigious Juno Award for Aboriginal Album of the Year. It features her friend, Taj Mahal on acoustic piano.

In 2025, after the revocation of Sainte-Marie's membership in the Order of Canada on the grounds that the questions about her indigenous status meant that she could no longer provide satisfactory proof of Canadian citizenship at all, the album's Juno Award was revoked. [5]

Track listing

All tracks written by Buffy Sainte-Marie except where noted.

  1. "No No Keshagesh" – 4:44
  2. "Cho Cho Fire" – 3:05
  3. "Working For The Government" – 3:33
  4. "Little Wheel Spin and Spin" – 3:05
  5. "Too Much Is Never Enough" – 3:58
  6. "To The Ends of the World" – 3:45
  7. "When I Had You" – 4:12
  8. "I Bet My Heart On You" – 3:26
  9. "Blue Sunday" – 2:55
  10. "Easy Like The Snow Falls Down" – 3:52
  11. "America the Beautiful" – 3:01 (Katharine Lee Bates, Samuel A. Ward, Sainte-Marie)
  12. "Still This Love Goes On" – 3:55

Personnel

Production

References

  1. Allmusic review
  2. "The Phoenix review". Archived from the original on 2012-10-14. Retrieved 2009-08-30.
  3. "MusicOMH review". Archived from the original on 2011-06-04. Retrieved 2009-08-30.
  4. "Slant Magazine review". Slant Magazine . Archived from the original on 2009-08-15. Retrieved 2009-08-30.
  5. Kevin Maimann, "Buffy Sainte-Marie stripped of Juno, Polaris music awards". CBC News, March 7, 2025.