Comedians & Angels by Tom Paxton

A longtime master of topical, personal, and children’s songwriting, and the recent recipient of several lifetime achievement honors, Tom Paxton is in a richly reflective mood on Comedians & Angels, his first studio CD since Looking for the Moon, a Grammy finalist as “Best Contemporary Folk Album of 2002.”

Upon turning 70, “I find that my definition of love songs is broader than I once would have found,” writes Tom in the liner notes to Comedians & Angels, a thematic CD of “love songs, songs of remembrance and regret, even a hymn … Still, there is love in them all.”

Over the course of the new CD’s 15 tracks, Paxton pays tribute to his family, his fellow musicians and activists, and to lovers “real or merely imagined.” Stylistically uniting seven newly-penned originals with rerecorded versions of apposite songs from his back catalogue of more than 40 albums is the warmth, simplicity and from-the-heart grace that has been as much a Paxton trademark as his humorous, sometimes biting political songs, his Scandinavian fisherman’s cap, and the twinkle in his eyes.

Tom’s musical valentines name few specific names, leaving the songs universal, but his love for Midge, his wife of more than four decades and to whom the CD is dedicated, shines deep and bright on tracks like “The First Song is For You,” “Reason to Be,” “I Like the Way You Look,” “Dance in the Kitchen,” “You Are Love,” and “Home to Me (Is Anywhere You Are).” “Jennifer and Kate” is a paean to two more of his angels, his daughters. The CD’s opening hymn, “How Beautiful Upon the Mountain,” celebrates the political activists of the Sixties and their idealistic descendants, and the album concludes with its title song, a melancholy but loving reminiscence of his former contemporaries on the early Greenwich Village folk scene, who included Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Dave Van Ronk.

Recorded in Nashville by frequent Paxton producer Jim Rooney, who also contributes backing vocals, there’s a light country/Americana flavor throughout Comedians & Angels provided by many of the musicians who also played on Looking for the Moon, including Dobro/slide guitarist Al Perkins (Emmylou Harris, the Flying Burrito Brothers), pianist Pete Wasner, fiddler/mandolinist Tim Crouch, and guitarist Mark Howard (who has backed Iris Dement, John Hartford, and another of this album’s guests, Nanci Griffith). Joining Griffith and Rooney on harmony vocals are bluegrass/folk duo Barry & Holly Tashian, Suzi Ragsdale, and Jim Photoglo, all of whom have their own recording and performing careers.

As one of the first modern folksingers to write his own songs – early, enduring, and much-covered compositions like “The Last Thing on My Mind,” “Ramblin’ Boy” and “Whose Garden Was This?” and recent, instant classics like the 9/11 reflection, “The Bravest” – Tom Paxton has influenced generations of singer-songwriters and attracted lovers of thoughtful, funny, heartfelt original music. He has set the creative bar high, but Comedians & Angels sails over it effortlessly, with room to spare.

tompaxton.com
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