Richard Shindell – Blue Divide

With this, his 2nd album, Shindell gave the world a genuine folksong masterpiece. The song is entitled “Fishing,” and it does every single thing a story song is supposed to do. It’s perfection. There’s a wonderful live version from 2002 available on a Shindell album entitled “Courier,” and I recommend you listen to that too. But you first owe it to yourself to listen to the original.

Shindell is a wonderful songwriter all the way around, and wonderfully consistent, and in heaping praise upon “Fishing” I don’t mean to disparage his other work. It’s just that I’m really in awe of this song …

If you delve into his career, you’ll have to excuse him for collaborations with the likes of Dar Williams, of whom the less said the better …

Instead, just remember that, thanks to the ongoing contributions of Richard Shindell and a handful of others, there is still hope for the story, for the song, for the folks …