Tyler Clark presents: Local Mythologies writesTop Five: Child Ballads Recorded By Unexpected Artists

When they were originally collected in the 1850s by folklorist Francis James Child, the 305 songs of the Child Ballads codified English and Scottish oral folk traditions dating as far back as the 1400s. In the 1960s, they helped folk revivalists like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Fairport Convention add authentic dashes of ghostly romance and gratuitous swordplay to their setlists. Today, they're still creeping up on records, often assuming the shape of an artist's own musical vision. This week, I tracked down five contemporary acts who weren't afraid to add their own spin to songs that are older than all of their ages combined.

1) Ween - "Cold Blows The Wind" (1997)

Based on: "The Unquiet Grave"
Ballad synopsis: A girl cries on her lover's grave hard enough to wake him up. Fearing increased traffic in the cemetery, he asks her to let him stay dead.
How they made it their own: Surrounding it with weirdness. "Cold Blows The Wind" appears on the second half of The Mollusk, Dean and Gene Ween's woozy nautical send-up of '70s Hobbit-prog excesses. By the time listeners get there, they'll have heard a warped vaudeville pump-up track ("Dancing In The Show Tonight"), a nihilistic Irish drinking song ("The Blarney Stone"), and a song about a mystical conch ("The Mollusk"). Amid these musical tricks, a 600-year-old sea ballad about an undead lover seems downright relatable.

2) Fleet Foxes - "False Knight on the Road" (2008)

Based on: "The Fause Knight Upon the Road"
Ballad synopsis: The Devil spends his day off playing dress-up and hassling some kid.
How they made it their own: Keeping things light. Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold isn't trying to bum anybody out, even when he's singing about satanic temptation. Thus, we get this sun-splashed take on "The Fause Knight Upon the Road," a decidedly un-sunny song of the Devil attempting to steal a youthful passerby's soul through a game of riddles. Told against finger-picked guitar and Pecknold's reverb-soaked vocals, the ballad loses some of its spiritual dread, reflecting more about how nice a walk would be right about now than the existential struggle taking place down the path.
 

3) Sam Amidon - "How Come That Blood" (2010)

Based on: "Edward"
Ballad synopsis: A dude almost gets away with killing his brother, but is foiled by his mom and her unsettlingly specific knowledge of animal blood.
How they made it their own: Intensifying the arrangement. A song about fratricide starts off heavy no matter who's playing it, but Sam Amidon doesn't stop there. In their harrowing take on "Edward," Amidon and collaborators Shahzad Ismaily and Nico Muhly devise an arrangement in which instruments seem to correspond to the murderer's bodily reactions. From the bass's heartbeat thumps and brushed snare's hurried footsteps to the twitchy, tremolo-heavy strings that mimic shifting eyes, the music adds a muscle-tightening underscore to a song already thick with tension.
 

4) Kate Bush - "The Kick Inside" (1977)

Based on: "Lizie Wan"
Ballad synopsis: A brother and sister do the one thing brothers and sisters can't do. The sister gets pregnant. The brother gets stabby. 
How they made it their own: Changing the ending. Most versions of this ballad conclude with the brother stabbing the sister before slinking off into exile. With "The Kick Inside," Kate Bush places the knife in the hands of the sister herself. In addition to turning the death from murder to suicide, the change makes the story a soliloquy, giving us a glimpse at the inner life of a character that previously existed only to drive a cautionary tale. That new intimacy makes an already sad ending that much harder to take.
 

5) Tom Waits - "Two Sisters" (2006)

Based on: "The Twa Sisters"
Ballad synopsis: After getting shoved into a river by her jealous sister, a girl is rescued by a kindly miller...who promptly gets bribed to shove her back in.
How they made it their own: Being Tom Waits. Tom Waits is an immortal who wanders the earth, writing rad songs and drinking antifreeze. He probably wrote this one.

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