Single Song Sunday: Hard Times Come Again No More
Last year’s final post - a Single Song Sunday feature on Cash classic I Still Miss Someone - found me musing on death, loss, and change after a rough year in the Howdy house.
This year finds me in a different frame of mind. My work as an inner city teacher of an obscure elective subject is joyous and fulfilling, a challenge worth taking up each day. Our small community grows ever stronger, as does our commitment to it; each new activity we join brings new friends and companions. Our household has been passed over by death, and we are thankful for it. The brand new kittens have grown into half-pint terrors with personality, no longer shadows of the long-time companion they came to us to replace.
It’s strange and unsettling to look back and find oneself so blessed. It seems like the worst kind of hubris to claim such an existence as one’s own.
But I have to admit, it’s been a pretty good year.
Of course, life isn’t perfect, and there is always pain. My ears never fully recovered from tinnitus, and each time I write a post, or consider a new song or a song anew, the buzzing ghost of audio distraction hovers over me like a mosquito in a quiet camp. My older daughter and I are working on anger management, talking through the rage that runs through her veins as my own tendency towards quick heat begins to show itself in her. Two years after losing her job to the early recession, my wife is still struggling with self-employment as an event planner, exercising her talents on church socials and PTA events as a distraction from the lack of clients.
More generally, as adults, death is always in our past, present, and future. Our consideration of our own mortality becomes a context for even the best of times, part and parcel of the pain we feel at others’ loss, projected onto the universe. Over at Star Maker Machine, as we begin to forge through our now-annual review of those artists who have passed us by this year, I am saddened to realize how many have left us so young, and with so much still to give. Closer to home, friends have lost loved ones, and I take their mourning as my own, for having been on the other side, I know that trouble shared is trouble borne.
But two hours away, even as we speak, my wife’s sister and her husband learn to sleep lightly, their ears cocked for the cry of their tiny Christmas baby. In our own home, the elderchild has come to love math and computers, piano lessons and theater; her smaller sister has begun to show herself an empath capable of making grown men cry with her prescient, sensitive observations. My children grow into their selves and their world, losing their kid fears, learning their immortality; they will have to learn of its false veneer in their own way, but not now.
Life goes on, bittersweet in even the most blessed moment. We stand over the eternal stream of tears, building bridges, finding new ways to cross.
Hard Times Come Again No More - often shortened to simply Hard Times - is a perfect companion to the precarious blessing of a good year gone by. Written by popular songsmith Stephen Foster in 1854, the Civil War favorite is a not-so-gentle admonition to the affluent, reminding them to “pause in life’s pleasures” and remember the hard times, that they might be more inclined to support those whose lives are full of sorrow and pain, hunger and need.
The curious narrative frame is often overwhelmed by the dire verse portrayals; once you get past the scene-setting introduction, Foster’s lyrics speak of the plight of poverty, not the perspective of the subject. As such, many versions of this song verge on sparse and dirgelike, or at least mournful. Among these, Emmylou Harris‘ typically soaring version stands out, as does the dustbowl alt-country of Peter Bradley Adams project Eastmountainsouth, while Mavis Staples’ slow gospel blues, off the wonderful, mostly folk Foster tribute Beautiful Dreamer, is glorious and funerial.
Ragged works, too: Dylan finds a hoarse sympathy in his delivery; the amateur Breskin siblings go broken and deliciously instrumental. And a more balanced effect comes of the addition of slow strings, as in the almost classical-slash-appalachian cello-and-fiddle take from Yo Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Mark O’Connor project Appalachian Journey with James Taylor on vocals, or the way Willie Nelson’s broken voice plays majestically off Darol Anger’s sweet yet mournful fiddle and David Grisman’s mandolin on Anger’s American folk opus Heritage.
But Foster’s litany is surprisingly complex. There’s celebration of the giver, here, and a pride in the repeated refrain of the song’s title. The gospel tradition of bluegrass, especially, allows for a lighter, more upbeat tone, heard here in the warm stringband tones of the Dry Branch Fire Squad, and an almost cheerful take from a young Claire Lynch with her early project the Front Porch String Band. A different sort of lightness can be found in the fluid Celtic take from Irish tradfolk group Cherish the Ladies, which - with a rich mix of harp and flute, pipe and squeezebox, piano and voices - comes off as majestic and sweet.
Too, the unspoken spiritual connotations of the song contain their own strange hope. And later versions add explicitly religious lines, such as the “how we tremble before thee, have mercy we implore” contained in the below version from this year’s indiefolk anthology of spiritual songs and hymns Come O Spirit!. With or without the additional lyrics, sung as a simple hymn, Hard Times is bittersweet, balancing the portrait of poverty with the potential for salvation inherent in the subject’s situation; Laura Love and David Massengill, among others, find this balance, bringing beauty to simple, plaintive versions, though Love’s rearrangement of the refrain is eminently that of the singer-songwriter ballad, too.
- Eastmountainsouth: Hard Times
- Laura Love: Hard Times
- Bob Dylan: Hard Times
- Emmylou Harris: Hard Times
- Dry Branch Fire Squad: Hard Times
- Front Porch String Band: Hard Times
- Cherish the Ladies: Hard Times
- Flip & Joe Breskin: Hard Times
- David Bazan, Rosie Thomas, J.Tillman, Laura Gibson, John & Chris Totten: Hard Times
- Darol Anger w/ Willie Nelson & Dave Grisman: Hard Times Come Again No More
- David Massengill: Hard Times Come Again No More
- Mavis Staples: Hard Times Come Again No More
- James Taylor, Yo Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Mark O’Connor: Hard Times Come Again No More
It’s in our hearts to give when we can; after all, we were homeless, once, with two tiny children, no job, and a fading safety net, and would not have survived if not for the support and charity of those around us. But this reminder of humility and grace towards those who have not prospered is a necessary one, nonetheless.
If you, too, have been one of the lucky ones, and are already minded towards those on the other side of the door, then consider this offering both a ward against the chill and a prayer of thanksgiving, that - this year, at least - we find ourselves on the good side of poverty and hunger, able to help those needier than ourselves.
If not, then may this song, in all its versions, be a reminder that we are here, with open hand, to help ease the pain.
Amen. And may your heart be glad and prosperous, with music and friendship, in the year to come.
Cover Lay Down posts new coverfolk features and sets each Wednesday and Sunday throughout the year. See you in 2010!
Category: Single Song Sunday
December 30th, 2009 at 11:07 am
The Red Clay Ramblers also did a solid version of this song.
December 30th, 2009 at 11:44 am
Have you got a copy, Stooben? There are literally hundreds of possibilities here - you cannot imagine the research this post required! - but though some rumored covers sounded promising on paper, not all were available digitally, the Red Clay Ramblers cover included.
December 30th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
great stuff.
have you/ anyone else got an mp3 of this superb version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YrfLnlrquo
December 30th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Let us not forget that Bruce Springsteen has been ending concerts with a stunning version of this song.
December 30th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Soon as I saw the post title, I jumped to the list to make sure Eastmountainsouth was on there. #1. My fave version. Thanks for including it!
December 30th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
great post dear Joshua!
HNY!
December 31st, 2009 at 3:13 am
Great post! I, too, was looking for a Springsteen version, though. It was a mainstay at his concerts this year - usually the 1st song when they came back for their encore. Here’s one of the YouTube grabs, with Tom Morello guesting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Jz5s-51-BA
Happy New Year’s, boyhowdy and all! And, amen to the plea of the song.
December 31st, 2009 at 9:33 am
Very lyrical post and sentiment, Boyhowdy. As another survivor of a very tough year, I wish you the best.
December 31st, 2009 at 10:13 am
Here’s another well-filmed Springsteen version of Hard Times, from Bern this summer.
And cje, though the transatlantic session track you mention was never released on CD, it IS on a gorgeous-sounding [if grainy] DVD - out of print, but one copy is still available via amazon.com. If you’re in the US, make sure you get the NSTC version - PAL is for European markets!
Paula, the eastmountainsouth version is stunningly rich; you’ve got good taste! If you like it, don’t forget that Peter Bradley Adams is now a solid solo artist, too - I’ve been looking for covers so I can feature him, but not much luck yet.
More generally: Thanks for the good wishes, all! Happy New Year!
December 31st, 2009 at 11:43 am
…..and this is why I’m still here reading you all these weeks and months (is it years?!) later. Beautifully written, heartfelt and right on the money, music carefully selected to match the sentiment and Boyhowdy shining through in every line. Thank you and a Happy New Year to you and yours!
January 4th, 2010 at 10:51 pm
Boyhowdy,
Email me about the Ramblers’ version of Hard Times. I’ve got it, ripped to CD from the original vinyl (the incidental music to Sam Shepard’s “A Lie of the Mind.”) It’d be no trick to take it from CD to MP3. And I’ll go even farther than stooben–the Ramblers’ version is the one I prefer over any other I’ve ever heard.
In passing, I’ll note Nanci Griffith did an interesting version with a whole string of guests on “Other Voices, Too.”
January 5th, 2010 at 2:53 am
Syd Straw, with Ry Cooder on guitar if I remember correctly.
January 7th, 2010 at 9:18 am
I am tranfixed by the David Massengill recording… thanks for introducing me to him!
February 11th, 2010 at 12:39 pm
What about Mare Winningham, from the ‘Georgia’ soundtrack?
May 23rd, 2010 at 10:02 am
[...] Eddie From Ohio, The Nields, Vance Gilbert: Hard Times Come Again No More (orig. Stephen Foster) [...]
August 17th, 2010 at 9:47 pm
[...] Anger w/ Willie Nelson & Dave Grisman: Hard Times Come Again No More (orig. Stephen Foster) (from Heritage, [...]