Balladtree.com
by Andrew Calhoun
Myshkin
Why Do All The Country Girls Leave?
(Binky Records)

Myshkin hails from New Orleans, frequently touring with partner Mike West. She's also a member of the Little Red Hen women's booking/music cooperative, which operated a seductive, buzzing guerrilla showcase room at the 2001 Folk Alliance Conference in February. Myshkin's a literate, musically eclectic singer-songwriter with something true and wise to offer.

The tray card lists fifteen songs each followed by a different musical category (rock, ambient, waltz, ska-billy, soul, jazz, yorkshire brass, etc.). A careful listen shows, she's not kidding. What's special here, aside from her dexterous and earthy musicianship, is Myshkin's sense of history. The peoples' history, not the textbook version. In "Apricot Tree," (swing) it's neighborhood history

and i did like the rush and the silvery speed
but i could never handle all that belly full of need
cause my life then was like some very pregnant seed
that could not find any soil to scratch a hollow in and breed
and every day after work that is how it'd be in that little tiny house under
the apricot tree you and your new junky boyfriend and me falling apart under
the apricot tree...

From "Yvonne's Bar":
"kids pass on pogo sticks the ripped screen door of yvonne's old bar there on
the corner two blocks off the avenue and there's no oaks at all and the
houses are small and the houses are cut in two and kids ain't played with pogo
sticks since before me or you existed..."

"Market Town (Folk!)" rambles slowly into a implacable portrayal of the
obscene, appalling horror of slavery. It opens with a rustic scene of a boy going
to town with his father to trade "their tobacco for coffee and tea."

was a man named green in the market town bound for new orleans that last
stop down and james and his father went to see the man's
wares in a little yard hidden from curious stares.

now green the soul driver a whip in his hand set his stock to dancing and look aren't they happy but even young james could see the difference in style between a grimace of pain and a smile was an old man of sixty, boot black in his hair for to make him look forty still plenty of work in there was a woman with two daughters and a girl with one son and jim's father's eyes fixed on that little one...

so take care what you do for your market town for your oil in barrels and your money in banks you can kick dust over the blood on the ground but you're still whipping people to dance and even a child will see that..."

There's a couple of classic-sounding love songs here, "Birds of a Feather" (jazz) and "Sugarman" (polka); all the performances carry unforced heart and authority. This is a beautiful voice. The only song I'll complain about is the title track, which features the trick of narrator as transparent jerk, maybe an OK place to start for a satirist, but, as one of few contemporary songwriters willing and able to engage reality without blinders, Myshkin doesn't need the device.

It's here - life, in its blood and mess and hope. This one's worth tracking down. Myshkin's the finest songwriter I've run across since Dave Carter emerged from obscurity a couple of years back.