Songs They Send Us: Mac Wiseman is a National Treasure (and He Loves his Mother)

People send us songs. We pass them on to you. Because we love you. I’m wearing a Velvet Underground shirt and have to pee. Enjoy!

Legendary country musican Mac Wiseman, who began working in music right around the time your grandparents conceived your parents, has recorded more than 60 albums, and forgotten more about music than you’ve even dreamed about, recently releeased one of his most interesting projects to date.

Songs from My Mother’s Hand, which was released late last month on Wrinkled Records, finds the Country Music Hall of Fame inductee exploring his roots, but not in the “I’ll just record an album of covers to help fulfill a contract” way in which most artists explore their roots. Instead, Mr Wiseman, who once toured with Hank Williams – not Hank Williams Jr, the real Hank Williams – has recorded an album of songs written down by his mother from radio programs broadcast generations ago, the good old days, I believe they’re called.

From the press release:

“The Wisemans had the first radio in their valley, and Mac and his mother, Ruth, would listen to radio in the 1930s. Ruth wrote down the words to songs they heard – they were the hits of the day at the time; now they’re old folk songs – in composition books. Mac pored through those books, and sat at the kitchen table, singing…Today, Mac Wiseman brings his life full-circle, releasing Songs From My Mother’s Hand, an album that finds him revisiting the songs his mother wrote down in her notebooks. He brought those notebooks – aged, worn and well loved – into the recording studio and sang from their pages. The books may soon be under glass at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, but for now they are wellsprings, soulful postcards from a long-gone America. His mother gifted them to him, and now he has gifted their words and their spirit to us.”

You owe it to yourself – and your mother, who loves you and hopes you’re wearing clean underwear and eating enough and would love to receive this record as a gift (unless she is this woman) – to check out Songs From My Mother’s Hand.