CD
Let it Shine
Songs for children, children's songs.
€ 10
CD
From Texas to Montana
From Texas to Montana. It's a journey through a wild and windy land, a journey through time and a tough trip of transformation, from the buffalo range to the cattle range, from prairie grass to power dam. Riding wild mustangs, cowboys - former southern soldiers, former slaves, vaqueros from Mexico, all just a step past boyhood - drove longhorn cattle north to the railheads in Kansas and to the northern plains beyond. The buffalo herds were still enormous and the Comanches and other plains peoples still lived free, but both were doomed. Their destruction paved the way for the future. Immigrants came to the West seeking gold and work and hope. But the land is harsh. For most, the dream of gold proved to be a nightmare. Some were overwhelmed by the vastness of the land and their own isolation therein. Work was to be had, yes, but it demanded men willing to following it, building dams, cutting trees and harvesting wheat. For many, rootlessness became a way of life and some never found their way home.
There is nothing fanciful about these songs. They are hard-bitten reality. They tell the tales of actual events, honest emotions and above all of real people: the buffalo hunter Crego, Quanah Parker, Charlie and Mary Goodnight, Bob Fudge, the Blocker brothers, Bessie Mulhern, Wagner Dodge as well as the Cherokee cowboy, the Mexican immigrants, the unemployed cowboys, the dead hobo and all the others who remain nameless.
From Texas to Montana. A tough trip.
John Shreve
1 Old Chisholm Trail
2 The Range of the Buffalo
3 Anthem, 1 (Buck Ramsey)
4 Power in the Wind (Andy Wilkinson)
5 Soldier’s Joy
6 The Pecos Stream
7 A Woman’s Life (Andy Wilkinson)
8 The Freedom Song (Andy Wilkinson)
9 Los Estados Unidos (Sid Hausman)
10 Anthem, 2 (Buck Ramsey)
11 The Old Double Diamond (Gary McMahan)
12 Diamond Joe
13 Bob Fudge (Ian Tyson)
14 Nothin‘ to Do But Go (Henry Herbert Knibbs)
15 Old Buddy, Goodnight (Utah Phillips)
16 Sourdough/The Miner’s Song (Bill Staines)
17 Jackhammer John (Woody Guthrie)
18 Bessie and Me (Tom May)
19 Deep Water, Ice and Snow (Ben Perkins)
20 Cold Missouri Waters (James Keelaghan)
21 Roll On Owyhee (Ian Tyson)
22 Anthem, 3 (Buck Ramsey)
23 Montana Backroads (Bruce Carlson)
24 bonus track: Walking After Midnight, sung by Kay Shreve
€ 10
CD
Wild and Windy Places
In the vastness of the American West, time has always been a slippery object, has always followed its own twisted path. Those peoples who have known the land for thousands of years understand time not as a straight line, leading from the past over the present to the future, but as a circular process, always returning to the beginning. In circular time there is no progress, only change within a never-ending cycle. In the West, past and present have always mingled with one another. San Francisco was a cosmopolitan city while just a few hundred miles to the east, native peoples still lived as their ancestors had done thousands of years before. Tourists were traveling west on the transcontinental railroad before the tribes of the Plains had been defeated. The story of the West can best be told by the places where it has taken place: along the rivers of Texas, in the border town of Laredo, the mining camp of Ludlow, the valley of the Little Big Horn, in Hell's Canyon, at the Grand Coulee Dam, in the Manzanar Internment Camp, in the hobo jungles along the endless rails, in a rundown trailer park in Seattle and in all the dry and dusty places where men and women don't belong. For all who have lived in the West it has meant adjusting to the rapid changes taking place and coming to terms with all those wild and windy places.
The Brazos River Song
Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill / Cruising Down the Boyne (Eddie Smyth)
No, Not Columbus (David Campbell)
White Woman‘s Clothes (Andy Wilkinson)
Garry Owen
Mick Ryan's Lament (Robert Lee Dunlap)
The Grand Coulee Dam (Woody Guthrie)
Don't Ask What a River is for (Pete Seeger)
Dust Bowl Refugee (Woody Guthrie)
The Preacher and the Slave (Joe Hill)
Ludlow Massacre (Woody Guthrie)
Manzanar (Tom Russell)
The Whistle in the Night
Old Wing (Pat Garvey)
Blue Wing (Tom Russell)
Magpie (Ian Tyson)
Cowboy's Lament
€ 10
CD
Leap of Faith
After two collections of songs about the American West, here is a collection of some of the best songs I know, songs about life and death, about faith and the grace of God. Two-thirds of the way down the one-way road we travel, one stops to think about things, where one has been and where the road is leading. That why I made this CD. It is in memory of my father, Ben Shreve and dedicated to my children. This is not intended to be a CD that is used as background music.
Across the Great Divide (Kate Wolf)
Always a Train in My Dreams (Steve Gillette, Charles John Quarto)
Starlight on the Rails (Utah Phillips)
I Pity the Poor Immigrant (Bob Dylan)
The Cape (Guy Clark)
Little Birdie (traditional)
Pancho and Lefty (Townes Van Zandt)
The Ones Who Made Home (James Keelaghan)
Planter's Bar (Jerry Rasmussen)
Stuff that Works (Guy Clark)
Weepy Doesn't Know (Utah Phillips)
Huckleberry Finn (Bob Dyer)
Larimer Street (Utah Phillips)
Johnny Hard (traditional)
Gone, Gonna Rise Again (Si Kahn)
Desperados Waiting for a Train (Guy Clark)
Last Train (Arlo Guthrie)
€ 10
CD
Who's Gonna Build Your Wall?
An EP against Trump.
1. Who's Gonna Build Your Wall? (Tom Russell, adaption John Shreve)
2. Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Woody Guthrie, Martin Hoffman)
3. Los Estados Unidos (Sid Hausmann)
4. Pastures of Plenty (Woody Guthrie)
5. The Ghost of Tom Joad (Bruce Springsteen)
€ 5
CD
just beyond silence
Words, naked words, without the instrumental backing, without voices of harmony which can carry words of lesser quality. These are not songs to listen to while dusting your shelves or preparing dinner or driving. They demand attention. Words, one after the other, and the silence between.
Dedicated t the city and the residents of Venice, where I learned the value of stillness and slowness.
€ 10
CD
Known You of Old
A collection of music with the Appalachian dulcimer.
The dulcimer is the American cousin of the hummel, the Scheitholt, the epinette desVosges, the citera and the langeleik, all played in central and northern Europe.
The dulcimer used was built by George Looney in June 1977 and purchased in Lynn McSpadden’s Dulcimer Shoppe in Mountain View, Arkansas in the summer of 1977.
€ 10
CD
Let it Shine
Songs for children, children songs.
€ 10
CD
Long Time Traveling
After twenty-five years of recording, nine albums with 170 tracks, seventy years of living, here is a collection of some of my favorite recordings along with four newly recorded songs.
I’m a Long Time Traveling
Every Grain of Sand (Bob Dylan)*
Black Jack Davy
The Cuckoo
The Range of the Buffalo
Garry Owen/Mick Ryan’s Lament (Robert Emmet Dunlap)
Los Estados Unidos (Sid Hausman)
Bob Fudge (Ian Tyson)
Johnny Hard (Woody Guthrie)
Jackhammer John (Woody Guthrie)
The Cape (Guy Clark)
Sourdough/Miner’s Song (Bill Staines)
Manzanar (Tom Russell)
Cold Missouri Waters (James Keelaghan)
Don’t Ask What a River is for (Pete Seeger)
I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine (Bob Dylan)*
Bury Me Beneath the Willow
Gone, Gonna Rise Again (Si Kahn)
Shelter from the Storm (Bob Dylan*)
Huckleberry Finn (Bob Dyer)
Sailing Down this Golden River (Pete Seeger)*
Magpie (Ian Tyson)
Last Train (Arlo Guthrie)
Song of the Bund (m. trad./English: John Shreve)
*neue Aufnahmen
€ 15
Book
Love in the Cold War: A true story from an absurd time
Falling in love in the city of Berlin in the late 1970s would have been the most normal thing in the world, but in those days, Berlin was anything but a normal city. This is the true story of a German-American couple divided by the Wall. They only desired to marry and be together, but they had to face the absurd realities of Cold War Berlin. Not until five years after they met were they allowed to get married. They were spied upon, followed and even suspected of espionage by the CIA, the East German State Security Service and the Soviet KGB. The author passed through the Wall hundreds of time, was questioned, frisked, detained and on occasion refused entry to East Berlin. He was often shadowed in East Berlin. Because she wanted to marry an American, his wife became an enemy of the state. It is the personal story of the last year and a half of their struggle to be allowed to marry, a story of the conflict between two worlds, as well as a portrait of the divided city of Berlin in the early 1980s in all its absurdity. As the author writes: “We were bit play
€ 15
Book
A Pilgrim and a Stranger: A Memoir Part Two
A Pilgrim and a Stranger is a memoir of a boy growing up in the American Midwest in the 1950s and 1960s, telling the story of an America before superhighways and shopping centers blighted the land. As a teenager, he went to live in Germany and spent months traveling alone through Europe, still very much a post-war world. In the 1970s, he came of age in Missoula, Montana, where he experienced wilderness and new intellectual and spiritual worlds, and then in Berlin, Germany, where he worked as a dishwasher in the divided city. It is a story of personal discovery and expanding horizons against the background of religious fundamentalism, the social revolution of the 1960s, the Vietnam War, political terror in Germany, failed relationships and intellectual and spiritual searching.
€ 18
Book
A Pilgrim and a Stranger: A Memoir Part One
A Pilgrim and a Stranger is a memoir of a boy growing up in the American Midwest in the 1950s and 1960s, telling the story of an America before superhighways and shopping centers blighted the land. As a teenager, he went to live in Germany and spent months traveling alone through Europe, still very much a post-war world. In the 1970s, he came of age in Missoula, Montana, where he experienced wilderness and new intellectual and spiritual worlds, and then in Berlin, Germany, where he worked as a dishwasher in the divided city. It is a story of personal discovery and expanding horizons against the background of religious fundamentalism, the social revolution of the 1960s, the Vietnam War, political terror in Germany, failed relationships and intellectual and spiritual searching.
€ 15