New Multitudes "Hoping Machine"

I only took one CD with me during vacation last week. This was it.

"New Multitudes" is the album name (but I think it should be the band name, because calling them "Jay Farrar, Will Johnson, Anders Parker, Yim Yames" every time is a non-melodic mouthful).

This is another collection of Woody Guthrie lyrics, from what seems to be a bottomless well of writings that he left behind from the years he was too debilitated from Huntington's Disease to play guitar.

I had heard Barbara play this song on the air before I left for vacation. "Hoping Machine" so moved her, that she actually teared up on the air while talking about it.

I put it on my headphones as I left the island for vacation, and even with the heads-up that this could make me cry, well, it still made me cry.

I've joked about Jay Farrar's limited palette before. But damn, within his wheelhouse, his is the most beautiful, moving voice, with a tone that is both warm and cuts through absolutely everything.

Yeah, I cried on the ferry.

Beautiful.


Hear the song on Youtube.