When I first started subscribing to Americana UK back in 2016, it was like having all my birthdays and Christmas come at once, as it supplied me with a daily diet of everything happening in the world of music I love most. These days, one of my greatest pleasures is flipping through the magazine’s back pages, reading old reviews, and checking out all the artists who have warranted coverage over the years. However, one of the biggest surprises I come across whilst perusing these timeless articles is the artist conspicuous through their absence. Those who, in their own way, have left an indelible mark on the genre we call americana with their output of songs and albums, influencing the generations who have followed, and yet, for what could be any number of reasons, have somehow not had the recognition through these pages that one would have expected. One of those artists is most definitely Rod MacDonald.
Now, before we progress any further, I must at first come clean, as MacDonald and his vast catalogue of great songs is not an artist that I have followed since he first appeared playing the bars and clubs in Greenwich Village, during its revival in the 1980s, of which he was a leading player. No, once again, I am indebted to my good friend and americana music guru Alan Peatfield for bringing MacDonald’s music to my attention a few years ago, not for the first time, creating an ‘Eureka’ moment and an exclamation on the lines of “How have I not heard of this guy before?”
Starting with his acclaimed debut No Commercial Traffic in 1983, MacDonald has to date recorded fourteen solo albums and published three novels, the most recent Election Night seeing the light of day last year. Though never achieving any major chart success, MacDonald has built a strong fan base over the years while his songs have been covered by such artists as Dave Van Ronk, Shawn Colvin, Four Bitchin’ Babes, Jonathan Edwards and Garnet Rogers. During his time in New York, he co-founded the Greenwich Village Folk Festival, and despite having relocated to South Florida in 1995, he is still the President and co-producer of its events.
It is tempting at this point to dig deeper into MacDonald’s career, but this is not a ‘More People Really Should Know About’ feature, and in any case, it would feel slightly insulting to bracket such an esteemed artist with such a long and relatively successful career, not to mention his legion of fans. So instead, we will turn the focus to one of his finest songs, which first appeared on his debut album all those years ago and is today considered his signature tune.
At nearly six minutes long, American Jerusalem focuses on the stark contrast between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless, in Manhattan during the late 1970s and early 1980s. However, almost prophetically, the song manages to somehow presage the events that took place on September 11th 2001, with such lines as “in the ashes of American-Jerusalem, the prophets live their deaths out on the corner, the pretty people say there should have been a warning, but nobody heard it” and then later in the song the killer line, “then shadows lick the sun, the streets are paved with footsteps on the run”. When ‘Smithsonian Folkways’ re-released Fast Folk: A Community of Singers & Songwriters from the vaults of Fast Folk’s seminal collection of 200 songwriters and 600 songs dating back to 1982, a live performance of Americana Jerusalem, by MacDonald at NYC’s Bottom Line was the opening track, while the song’s theme has continued to resonate through the years with a review from ‘All Music Guide’, claiming that the song was a “thoughtful and pointed commentary on the state of the Union in 2012”.
American Jerusalem was first covered by the Canadian singer-songwriter Garnet Rogers on his album The Outside Track in 1986, but by far the most impressive reinterpretation was delivered by Shawn Colvin on her 2012 album All Fall Down, where it boasted some beautiful harmony vocals from no less than Emmylou Harris and was considered by many to be the outstanding track from the album. Among the many critical plaudits received, ‘Performing Songwriter’ magazine called Colvin’s version of Americana Jerusalem as “stunning”, while Colvin herself would admit to having included the song in her set list back in the early 1980s, performing in Greenwich Village at the Cottonwood Café, and stating that the song was “reminiscent of the New York that I, for want of a better phrase, grew up in”.
So, whether you are familiar with McDonald’s pièce de résistance, and trust me, he has written many great songs that are all worthy of further investigation, or this is your first introduction to this fantastic song, watch the two attached versions below and prepare yourself to be blown away.
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