SONG OF THE DAY

“I Had Some­thing” by Lucy Kaplan­sky (The Red Thread, Red House Records, 2004). Writ­ten by Lucy Kaplan­sky and Richard Litvin.

MY TAKE

I first heard this song on Putumayo’s Amer­i­can Folk album, and have since bought Kaplansky’s album The Red Thread because this track peaked seri­ous inter­est in me—which is say­ing some­thing major because every­thing on that well-curated com­pi­la­tion disc was a stand out to me. This Putu­mayo col­lec­tion has def­i­nitely been one of my favorite albums since 2007, when I started get­ting into Putu­mayo, because it essen­tial served as my 101 intro­duc­tory course into the con­tem­po­rary folk music scene, which, after hav­ing been a tra­di­tional and ‘60s folk fan my whole life, felt like a nat­ural pro­gres­sion in my late twenties. Reading the inter­est­ing facts from wikipedia (found below) alone would prob­a­bly peak anyone’s inter­est in Lucy Kaplan­sky, even with­out hear­ing her music. But com­bine her fas­ci­nat­ing biog­ra­phy with the lit­tle taste of genius you get hear­ing this song, and I guar­an­tee you’re a Lucy Kaplan­sky fan by the end of the day. Money down on this one. Enjoy!

Putumayo’s Amer­i­can Folk Track List

1. Pale Moon — Shan­non McNally
2. You Don’t Make It Easy Babe — Josh Ritter
3. She Don’t Like Roses — Chris­tine Kane
4. Don’t Look for Me — Jef­frey Foucault
5. Pour — Lori McKenna
6. I Had Some­thing — Lucy Kaplansky
7. Shirt — Peter Mulvey
8. Boots of Span­ish Leather — Nanci Griffith
9. Row­ing Song — Patty Griffin
10. Jubilee — Dan Littleton/Elizabeth Mitchell
11. Owens­boro — Natalie Merchant
12. Judge Not Your Brother — Eric Bibb (pre­vi­ously unreleased)

INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia)

- The Red Thread is the fifth solo album by New York singer-songwriter Lucy Kaplan­sky, released in 2004.

- Kaplan­sky has a PhD in clin­i­cal psy­chol­ogy from Yeshiva University.

- Kaplan­sky was orig­i­nally from Chicago, and at the age of 18, decided not to go to col­lege, and moved to New York City. She became involved in the city’s folk music scene, par­tic­u­larly around Green­wich Vil­lage, where she played with, among others, Suzanne Vega, Shawn Colvin and Richard Shindell.

- In 1983, she decided to become a psy­chol­o­gist, enrolling in Yeshiva Uni­ver­sity. She con­tin­ued play­ing music while doing her PhD, and began to have some suc­cess as part of a duo with Colvin. How­ever, when they began to attract record com­pany inter­est, Kaplan­sky declined, choos­ing instead to set up a pri­vate prac­tice and become a staff psy­chol­o­gist at a New York hos­pi­tal. For sev­eral years, she con­cen­trated largely on her work, and played lit­tle in the way of con­certs. How­ever, she still did some ses­sion work, such as singing back­ing vocals in the stu­dio for Suzanne Vega.

- By the early 1990s she found her­self increas­ingly drawn back to music. Colvin, who by this time had expe­ri­enced some com­mer­cial suc­cess, offered to pro­duce an album for her. The result, The Tide, a mix­ture of her own songs and sev­eral cov­ers, was released by Red House Records in 1994. At this time, she decided to give up her psy­chol­ogy prac­tice, and return to music full-time. She released four more albums before her lat­est, Over The Hills, was released in 2007.

- In 1998 Kaplan­sky joined with Dar Williams and Richard Shin­dell to form the folk group Cry Cry Cry, which made an album and toured at length before going their sep­a­rate ways.

- Her Ten Year Night album in 1999 won rave reviews and boosted her pop­u­lar­ity, lead­ing to per­for­mances on CBS-TV.

- She is in high demand as a back­ing vocal­ist on the records of oth­ers, being a semi-regular col­lab­o­ra­tor with John Gorka and Nanci Griffith.

- Her father was the not­ed math­e­mati­cian Irv­ing Kaplan­sky. Lucy Kaplan­sky some­times per­forms songs com­posed by her father (who was also an accom­plished pianist) on mathematics-related themes.

Lucy Kaplansky’s Offi­cial Website

Lucy Kaplan­sky on Myspace

VIDEO OF THE DAY