FRESH TRACK: Too Sad for the Public – ‘G. Burns in the Bottom (pt1)’

“G. Burns in the Bottom (pt1)” is from producer/composer Dick Connette’s latest, Vol. 2 from his Too Sad for the Public project, titled Yet and Still.  He calls this work song-stirring, taking American folk, breaking it down, and shaking it up, finding new life among its most cherished traditions. The track takes off from an old string-band recording, “G. Burns Is Gonna Rise Again” which was itself a parody of the 19th-century gospel song “Dese Bones Shall Rise Again.” The original “G. Burns” is a collection of unrelated floating folk couplets with the recurring resurrection refrain, but in the spoken intro the singer complains that he can’t go down to the bottom anymore, because all they do there is sing religion at him. I turned my song into a dialogue, where the sinner gets the first and last say, and the saints do all their preaching in the middle.

Ana Egge – lead vocal, guitar
Lucy Wainwright Roche – backing vocal
Suzzy Roche – backing vocal
Dick Connette – harmonium
Dan Levine – euphonium
Lorenzo Wolff – baritone guitar, bass
Bill Ruyle – footsteps, cymbal pair, bass drum

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