Shaking Out the Sheets - Dirty Linen Classics
The Collected Works of Jack Hardy
1-800-Prime-CD
It’s probably safe to assume that the American singer/songwriter revival that began in New York City in the early 1980s and then spread across the country could have occurred without Jack Hardy’s influence. Surely, though, it would have taken some different directions. As the organizer of the weekly Songwriter’s Exchange song swaps, where budding writers gathered at his Greenwich Village apartment to discuss their common craft, and as the founder and original editor of the immensely influential Fast Folk Musical Magazine, Hardy was both an inspirational coach and an opinionated critic who helped nurture the vibrant New York songwriting community that produced musicians who included Suzanne Vega, Shawn Colvin, John Gorka, the Roches, Steve Forbert, and many more.
Although he has never achieved the fame or the commercial success of some of his proteges, Hardy has written a song or two of his own along the way. Born in South Bend, Indiana, in 1947, he spent his teenage years in Colorado, went to college in Connecticut, and settled in New York in 1975. He has been recording steadily since the early 1970s, but much of his three-decade catalog has been generally unavailable because it was released only in Europe, or on an obscure label, or has gone out of print, or all three. The folks at 1-800-PRIME CD have now combined reissues of all of his pre-1997 albums along with a few unreleased songs to produce this 10-CD, 127-track, double-box set that serves as a definitive account of Hardy’s career to date. (A 15-track "sampler" disc is also available.) It’s a huge, daunting mass of music, over nine hours’ worth, and probably only Hardy’s biggest fans will want to play the whole set on a regular basis. But if you take the time to sort through the pile, you’ll find many songs that are among the most carefully crafted and challenging in contemporary American acoustic music.
His themes and images often draw from the misty corners of Celtic mythology or the dusty records of American and European history. His storytelling cadence is often reminiscent of old ballads, and more often than not his mood is dark or at least contemplative. The melodies are a mix of American country sounds and the modal tunes of Irish bards, a connection that Hardy seems to savor. His lyrics are complex, abstract, and symbolic, a mix of lingering romantic ideals and hard-edged cynicism, and he clearly seems to enjoy making his listeners think. He may dare his audience to figure out what he’s trying to say, but he also credits them with the intelligence to do so.
- Tom Nelligan (Waltham, MA)
