Chirp! The Lincoln High School music column
This article was written and published by Skylah Foster in The Cardinal Times on 10/28/2025
This month, autumn’s chill has finally started to seep into my bones. I don’t know about you, but whenever the leaves start to change color, I just want to curl up in my favorite sweater and listen to some chill folk music. Beautiful songwriting paired with an acoustic guitar has a way of warming me up better than any cup of tea.
Elizabeth Cotten is a quintessential 1960s folk artist. Most are probably familiar with her song “Freight Train,” which has been covered by Joan Baez, Ani DiFranco and others. I would encourage everyone to dive deeper into her discography, including her albums “Shake Sugaree” and “Vol. 3: When I’m Gone.” Some of my favorite Cotten songs are “When I’m Gone” and “Oh baby it ain’t no lie.” I would also recommend Nick Drake’s “Five Leaves Left.” Drake was a talented artist who went relatively unnoticed in his time. He recorded a few albums before tragically passing away in 1974. “Five Leaves Left” is Drake’s first album, and it has some of my favorite songs by him on it. I especially love “River Man” and “‘Cello Song.”
Additionally, I watched the movie “Harold and Maude” (directed by Hal Ashby in 1971) for the first time recently and loved it and its great soundtrack featuring Yusuf Islam /Cat Stevens songs.
A modern folk artist I have been enjoying is Haley Heyndrickx. Like some kind of magician or benevolent deity, she manages to transform what in the hands of another might be inanimate songs into living creatures. Her hymns have thrumming heartbeats of guitar strings, bodies of lyrical imagery, and gentle breaths of harmonies. Her album “I Need to Start a Garden” best displays the anthropomorphic abilities of her songs.
Some exciting albums that are coming out on Halloween are Bob Dylan’s “Through the Open Window: The Bootleg Series Vol. 18” and Florence and the Machine’s “Everybody Scream.” “Through the Open Window” is a collection that features 139 tracks recorded between 1956-1963, capturing Dylan’s early musical career, before he went electric. “Everybody Scream” is Florence and the Machine’s sixth studio album.
Excellent writing, and so glad to see a high school student enjoying folk music, and especially Elizabeth Cotten!! She played at Oregon State back in what I think was the '70s when I was a student there. I always remember her singing "Freight Train" (in the MU ballroom downstairs) and the whole audience sang along. It was a concert I've never forgotten. Oh, and Harold and Maude — I lost count of how many times my friends and I watched that movie (If you wanna sing out, sing out . . . !).