Contracopia's contra dance music store

Jim Tolles and Magic Truck
Hard For To Love

Paul Carpenter, Heidi Carpenter, Doug Oster, and Jim Tolles

This CD plays for me like a field recording, like something recorded on a 78 rpm acetate cutting machine in Jim's kitchen. It captures an event greater than the music itself. The square and contra dance influence, the shouts and exhortations to the microphone, the "liveness" of the performance suffuse the recordings with a sense of jubilation - a Jubilee, as in Jubal, the biblical father of all who play the harp, viol, and trumpet (and banjo, I suppose).
From "Raleigh and Spencer", played for the post alcoholic binge dirge that it is, to the exuberance of the originals, "Rachel's Song", and "A Troupe of Monkeys", it's great to spend some quality kitchen time with Jim Tolles.
~Kenny Kosek

List Items in Cart

Select an underlined tune to hear a Real Audio sample:
(You must have Real Player installed on your computer)

Hard for to Love (3:43)
Weeping Willow Tree (2:58)
Jump in the Skillet (2:41)
Farewell (1:08)
Rachel's Song (2:35)
Down the Hill (2:38)
The Rocks and the Rills (1:38)
East Virginia (3:12)
Billy in the Low Ground / Societal Breakdown (3:00)
Raleigh and Spencer (2:47)
Wagonload of Blues (2:31)
A Troupe of Monkeys (1:25)
Oh Father (3:37)
The Cuckoo (2:00)
Dance, Children, Dance! (2:11)
The Lady of Carlisle (3:28)
Paul and Silas (2:28)

Below are MP2 versions of the above samples.

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