Traveling Wildfire
a music review
Released in 2023
2024 Grammy nomination for best folk album
Smithsonian Folkways released this Dom Flemons album in 2023. I liked it then and just relistened to it today.
I met Dom Flemons at Pickathon in 2015 and have seen him a couple of times. He is an educator at heart with his music and continues stressing the importance and influence of the forgotten parts of our history as he did in Black Cowboys, his 2018 release for Smithsonian.
On his most recent album, Traveling Wildfire, he truly drives the lesson home with "Nobody Wrote It Down."
Although many of the songs are Flemons's originals, the album also include some real gems in his arrangements and interpretations of little known pieces by other artists. I particularly liked what he does with Dylan's "Guess I'm Doing Fine" and Eric Andersen's "Song to JCB."
There's a good lesson to be learned in Flemons's music. Go learn it.
Mocarski grade: A-