Search - Si Kahn :: New Wood

Kahn has written the best body of political folk songs about working class folks since Woody Guthrie. His writing is marked by borrowings from traditional Appalachian tunes and telling details from the actual lives of working people. On his debut album, New Wood, he writes of a coal miner tired of "bad top that's ready to fall," of a prostitute who provides $20-an-hour therapy for lawyers and politicians in an office where "the plaster's cracked and peeling," and of a woman truck driver who's "ninety pounds of fire in a five foot frame." Kahn's voice has a cramped range and a thin tone, but he never tries to sing notes he can't hit and his understated delivery is perfect for these 17 carefully wrought stories. --Geoffrey Himes