Tim Eriksen on Profiles in Folk

When I was 13 years old, blazing electric guitars made folk music a little more palatable. So Cordelia's Dad's 1990 debut album got a lot of play in the cassette player -- it opens up with a hard rock version of "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" and then spins into the belter "Rolling Down to Old Maui" and then into a grinding "Loch Lomond"; "Scarborough Fair," "The Lowlands of Holland," the grunging "Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still" and the splatacular "The Baby Song" all come easily to mind even though I haven't listened to the album in 10 years or more. It was definitely influential. (Stewart Mason's All Music Guide review compares the album to Dinosaur Jr. and Fairport Convention.)

The band appeared several times -- in a slightly more acoustic format -- on my father's radio show, Profiles in Folk on WSHU-FM in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Lead singer Tim Eriksen then went on to do a bunch of other cool old-time/Americana things and is perhaps most well-known for his involvement in the Cold Mountain soundtrack. (Remember the shape note singing scene? That's the hand of Tim Eriksen.) According to his webpage, he is also "the only person to have appeared with both Doc Watson and Kurt Cobain and to have unintentionally cut himself on stage at both CBGB and the Academy Awards."

Back on May 1st, Tim joined my father on Profiles in Folk for a full evening of (acoustic) music. The playlist and audio archive can be found here.