About - Tall Tale Tunes

With the release of my first album, Themes From A Rainy Decade, I began to take the writing and recording of instrumental music as a serious endeavour and new chapter in what was already a long and lucky career.

Over the course of composing and releasing six albums, occasionally a melody would come along that felt like a folk tune in it’s simplicity. Somehow they never quite fit into whatever album I was working on at the moment, so I began a separate folder with “Folk” scrawled across it in pencil. Whenever one of these tunes came to me I’d write it out and file it there.

Near the completion of my last record, Ballads In Otherness, a pair of these folksy tunes tumbled out of my guitar within a few days of each other. I dutifully transcribed them to manuscript and deposited them in the folk folder. I was surprised by how many songs had accumulated and began playing through them, pleased that many still held water for me as compositions. I’d already been thinking ahead to the record that would follow Ballads In Otherness, wanting something different but having no idea what that might be. Playing my way through the folk folder I realised the next record was sitting right there in front of me.

I began recording in November of 2018 laying down three or four tunes very quickly before putting the project away to commence a tour with Mark Knopfler. I came back to it again in late 2019 having written some more while on the road and put my shoulder to the wheel intending to get the record out by Spring of 2020. As 2020 unfolded, the awful news that a strange new virus, C-19 was sweeping the world and by March we’d all retreated from work and into our homes. The folk project sat patiently waiting another 15 months before I would come back to the studio and complete it. It’s been a long time and I’ve lived with many of these recordings for nearly three years never tiring of them. At their heart these Tall Tale Tunes are simple melodies that I’ve chosen to treat in some unusual ways. Not everyone will hear it as folk music but that genre is a broad banner and to my way of thinking Tall Tale Tunes falls squarely under it’s heading.

What is folk music? Stop the first 40 people you meet and ask that question. You’ll likely get as many answers and they’ll all be correct. Anglo, Scot, Irish? African, European, South American, North American, Australian? The ballads and songs collected by Child, Sharpe, A.P. Carter and the Lomax’s? Ethnic musics, the blues, jazz? Leadbelly, Guthrie, Seeger, The Kingston Trio? Ramblin’ Jack? Ramblin’ Bob? Peter, Paul, Mary? Joan Baez, Joni M, Johnny Cash? Trad-folk, psych-folk, folk-rock, folk revival, skiffle? The simple answer to this and more is yes. Like all music that has proven hearty and durable, folk music covers a lot of ground and criss-crosses continents.

To it I would add purpose-written songs by pop and country tunesmiths to evoke a folk flavour; Kisses Sweeter Than Wine, Scarlet Ribbons, Sixteen Tons, The Battle Of New Orleans, It Was A Very Good Year, High Noon, The Three Bells, The Long Black Veil and so many more. According to Big Bill Broonzy, “All the songs I ever heard in my life was folk songs. I never heard horses sing none of ‘em yet.”

The music has breadth, scope and a common thread; songs that tell a tale, a story in words and simple tunes. That is what I’ve tried to do with this collection of Tall Tale Tunes, convey a narrative but solely through music without the specifics of words. The title of each conjures a story that the music suggested to me as I wrote them, however, I encourage you to let these tunes create your own movie. After all, folk music always had a way of changing to best suit whoever held it at the moment.

They’re in your hands now.

Richard Bennett
Nashville, Tennessee  2022