Interviews & Press

Talking with Paul Metsa on Wall of Power Radio Hour

Ellen and I had a great conversation with musician and author Paul Metsa on Thursday for his radio shows in Duluth and the Twin Cities, talking about Ellen’s music and her life in the world of folksingers and folklorists, and particularly her meetings with Woody Guthrie, Reverend Gary Davis, and Alan Lomax.

Ellen’s interview will broadcast on Duluth’s Stars Over the Prairie show 10 a.m. to noon at 610AM-103.9FM or worldwide on streaming at www.kdal610.com. Then she’ll be on Paul’s Wall of Power Radio Hour in the Twin Cities on AM 950 KNTF today at 6 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m.

The streaming audio of the interview can be heard at AM 950’s Wall of Power website, or for your greatest convenience, just play the file below:

Please have a listen and let us know what you think in the comments. We’d love to come back sometime—the time passed very quickly and there are so many more stories to tell.

More news from Down Under

Ellen and producer Ross Wylde got a very nice writeup recently from Nicola Heath of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Australia’s public media service, talking about Ellen’s musical career from her early days up to the Go Round Songs album and our recent archival music project. Thank you to all the folks at ABC for your continuing interest in Ellen and her work!

The article hints at a few of our planned future releases, which includes a lot more treasures of Ellen’s music, but much more—we’re working on digitizing a wealth of material from her archives, including tapes, photos and film not only of Ellen but other noteworthy artists like Rev. Gary Davis and Malvina Reynolds. The article begins by mentioning that Ross and Ellen first met through Ellen’s photography, when Ross bought a print of Ellen’s candid photo of Bob Dylan behind the scenes at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, which she captured in a casual backstage moment. We have some exciting news on that subject: In the very near future, we’re planning to launch a store where you can buy prints, posters, and digital images of Ellen’s photography from across the decades, which will include some great material from Newport and other concerts, as well as Ellen’s folksong collecting trips and much more. Keep an eye on this website for an upcoming announcement.

EDIT: In a previous version of this post, I wrote that Ellen had actually performed at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, which is incorrect. Ellen reminded me of this: “That’s why I got so many good photos. I was accompanying Sarah Gunning to the festival and it was she who was performing there.  She had never been on a plane ride or to a big event like the Festival before, so she asked me to help her and go with her, which I did. It was far more interesting than actually performing!”

Ellen profiled on University of Minnesota website

We’re pleased to share this delightful profile of Ellen and our recent archival-music project, “Ellen Stekert: The New Old Sound,” written by Terri Sutton for the University of Minnesota’s College of Liberal Arts website. The article does a great job of exploring Ellen’s history both as a musician and a university professor, and how the two sides of her career influenced each other. It was a difficult balance to maintain, which ultimately led her to choose academia full-time—although music has always stayed in her heart, which is a big reason we’re all here at ellenstekert.com.

Thank you to Terri and everyone at the U of M!

Of parsley, sage, and other spices

Andrew Ford, who recently hosted Ellen and her producer Ross on Australian public radio’s The Music Show, has written a terrific article for the independent magazine Inside Story about “Scarborough Fair,” the folk song most famous for its interpretation by Simon & Garfunkel. He discusses many versions of the song, including the one sung by Ellen on Go Round Songs.

As Ford mentions, the song has a long, long history going back to the 17th century or even earlier. It is one of the 305 collected in Francis James Child’s groundbreaking work of folklore scholarship English and Scottish Popular Ballads, better known as The Child Ballads, where it is called “The Cambric Shirt.” Ellen also recorded a version of “Cambric Shirt” with Milt Okun in the 1950s on the album Traditional American Love Songs.

(Incidentally, while researching this post, I found two separate reviews of the album that suggest that Simon’s arrangement might have been influenced not just by Martin Carthy, which is well known, but Milt and Ellen’s version of the song as well. I don’t know how true that really is, but I’d like to think so—it’s certainly likely that he heard both of the previous versions before recording his.)

Here’s audio of both of Ellen’s versions of the song:

Barking Dog, singing Stekert

The fine folks at the folk-music radio show Barking Dog on CKUW in Winnipeg, Manitoba, have been longtime supporters of Ellen’s music and our work here on ellenstekert.com. In fact, they were the very first people to email us, barely a week after we first went online. It’s a terrific show with a wonderfully eclectic and encyclopedic sensibility. Barking Dog has been playing lots of music from Ellen’s Go Around Songs recently on the show, and even wrote about her recently in their blog’s June roundup of links. (And it’s never a bad thing to be on the same page as a great performance by Skip James.)

Thank you to host Juliana Young, producer Dylan Bodner, and everyone at CKUW and Barking Dog! We hope you’re staying safe from the forest fires up there in Manitoba.

Ellen on Australian radio’s “The Music Show”!

We are very happy to let you know that Australian public broadcaster ABC Radio National’s The Music Show interviewed Ellen along with her producer, singer-songwriter Ross Wylde, about her career and her recent archival releases, including Go Around Songs, Vol. 1. It’s a full hour of conversation with lots of music.

You can listen to the episode, Ellen Stekert: A Full Life in Folk Music, online at The Music Show’s website.

Thank you to the folks at the Music Show!

Australia says g’day to “Tomorrow”

Some nice news from down under: Arts in 30, the weekly arts news program of Australia’s ABC Radio National, chose Ellen’s “Tomorrow Is A Long Time” as their track of the week! You can hear Ellie Parnell talk about the song and Ellen’s music at the end of the program here. Ellen and producer Ross Wylde also recorded an interview with Arts in 30 that should broadcast later this month—we’ll keep you posted.

Thanks to Ellie and the folks at Arts in 30.


Ellen featured in American Songwriter

Ellen was featured today in Lauren Boisvert’s American Songwriter roundup of “incredible female folk singers who were often overlooked” from the 1960s Greenwich Village era! The writeup includes streaming audio of Ellen’s song “Tomorrow is a Long Time.” The article also discusses Connie Converse and Karen Dalton, making a fine trio of musicians. Read it here.

Making a racket on Racket

Ellen is interviewed by the fine folks at Minneapolis news website Racket! She talks about her forays into digitizing her music, which started as a solo project for Ellen in 2020, during the isolating time of COVID-19, and helped spark the idea of remastering and releasing some of those archival songs.

Racket also talked to Ross Wylde, a young singer-songwriter from California who has become a good friend of Ellen’s and a real booster of her music. Thanks to Ross, the archival project has launched into high gear over the last few months: Besides the two singles we’ve released so far, an entire album of Ellen’s songs is due for release later this year. It’ll be called Go ‘Round Songs.

Read the interview with Ellen and Ross here at this link.