Every once in a while someone asks me what the really essential old-time music CDs are. I’m always kind of reluctant to answer, because I haven’t heard all of them, so am certainly leaving some good ones out of any list I might come up with. Besides, any list I might come up with is only my opinion and that’s no better than anyone else’s opinion. Guaranteed.
But, having been pressed to do so again, here’s my latest list of maybe not essential old-time CDs, but ones that I’m listening to a lot lately:
Echoes of the Ozarks, Volumes 1 & 2 from County Records. These really are essential, especially if you’re looking for Missouri and Arkansas tunes.
Lost Indian: Fiddling on the Frontier by Chris Wig and Whitt Mead on the Yodel-Ay-Hee label. Lots of good tunes that I should sit down and learn one of these days.
Fuzzy Mountain String Band on Rounder. This is the gold standard. I never get tired of it.
Bound To Have A Little Fun by the Orpheus Supertones. I think the Mound City Slickers (who I play with) have incorporated almost every tune on this CD into our repertoire. It’s another of those I can listen to any time.
Anything by Tommy Jarrell.
The Humdingers (featuring Brad Leftwich and Linda Higginbotham) on the Chubby Dragon label. This was recorded some years ago and only recently released. Great tunes with high energy and some of the best banjo uke playing you’ll ever hear.
Okay. Go and listen.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Boy Howdy! What A Fine Time
Last night was the regular session at my friend and fellow Mound City Slicker Bob’s house. It reminded me just how great this old-time music stuff can be.
It was a smallish session; only the five Slickers could make it. So… two fiddles, guitar, banjo, and myself on banjo uke. Still, we produced a big sound with that old-time pulse that drives the dancers. Probably half of the tunes we played were ones we’d not played as a group before. Lots of them I’d heard but had never played. But what fun! Tearing through “Mississippi Mud”, “Old Time Sally Ann”, “Sail Away Ladies”, and a dozen others. Picking up a note here and a chord there and just about having the tune figured out by the time it was through.
Between the tunes we all talked about other tunes and songs these reminded us about, times we had years ago, and planning to go to festivals together in the future. A couple of bottles of beer were somewhere in the mix along with the laughs and the talk.
In the kitchen, Bob’s wife, Andrea was making tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes they’d grown in their backyard garden, so as we played, we were surrounded by wonderful aromas of tomato, basil, garlic and who knows what else that went into the pot!
Boy howdy! What a fine time.
It was a smallish session; only the five Slickers could make it. So… two fiddles, guitar, banjo, and myself on banjo uke. Still, we produced a big sound with that old-time pulse that drives the dancers. Probably half of the tunes we played were ones we’d not played as a group before. Lots of them I’d heard but had never played. But what fun! Tearing through “Mississippi Mud”, “Old Time Sally Ann”, “Sail Away Ladies”, and a dozen others. Picking up a note here and a chord there and just about having the tune figured out by the time it was through.
Between the tunes we all talked about other tunes and songs these reminded us about, times we had years ago, and planning to go to festivals together in the future. A couple of bottles of beer were somewhere in the mix along with the laughs and the talk.
In the kitchen, Bob’s wife, Andrea was making tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes they’d grown in their backyard garden, so as we played, we were surrounded by wonderful aromas of tomato, basil, garlic and who knows what else that went into the pot!
Boy howdy! What a fine time.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Gateway Dulcimer Festival 2007 Post Mortem
Boy, I have a good life! What a great (if exhausting!) weekend at the Gateway Dulcimer Festival in Belleville, Illinois.
Thursday night was when all of the early registrants showed up along with the folks presenting workshops and performing at the Friday and Saturday night concerts. There was a pretty good jam session going on and I got to say “Hey!” to many friends that I only see at these festivals; Jack and Mary Giger, Mike Anderson, Aubrey Atwater and Elwood Donnelly, Rick Thumb and lots of other folks. Traveling to the festival must have worn everyone out, though, as the jamming was done by about 10:30.
One of the high points of the evening was getting to meet Shari Wolf, the guitarist for Sweetwater. She’s a real hoot and her guitar playing really helped keep the rhythm going in the big jam! I hope I run into her again soon.
Friday, Dan and I got to the festival around 11:00 in the morning. More “Hi, howyadoin’ ” followed and we shortly sat down to play tunes. We jammed with an ever changing group of people all afternoon, only stopping for dinner and the evening concert.
The concert was top notch. It was great hearing performances by Jack and Mary, autoharpist Alex Usher, the lovely and charming Princess Harris (I think she’s my favorite hammered dulcimer player), beautiful songs by Katie Waldren and Candace Kreitlow, and Atwater/Donnelly to close the show. Probably the highlight of the concert was an eight or nine minute unaccompanied clog dance and story performance piece that Aubrey Atwater did seamlessly slipping between different clogging styles from different parts of the U.S. and Canada and who taught her each. She finished it up by clogging singing a French Canadian song while frailing the banjo all at the same time. The whole thing was sort of like the folk music equivalent of a drum solo. Sort of like the Grateful Dead’s Rhythm Devils in one pair of feet!
After the concert it was back to fiddling for me at another big jam session. Played a ton of tunes until around 12:30 or 1:00 a.m. Friend Neil showed up with his button boxes and added a whole different feeling to the tunes. A fiddle, an accordion, a mandolin, a couple of banjos, a harmonica, a couple of guitars, three or four hammered dulcimers, and maybe twenty mountain dulcimers. What a racket! Beautiful!
Saturday I had the great pleasure of playing guitar to back my good friend, terrific fiddler, and the director of the Folk School of St. Louis, Colleen Heine for the evening concert. Our set was great fun and seemed to go over pretty well. We played about a half hour of old-time fiddle tunes and songs. I hope we get to do more of it.
Others on the bill that evening were Barb Ernst, the aforementioned Sweetwater (who did a great set of funny songs with beautiful vocal from all three of the members), Mike Anderson, and Rick Thum.
After the concert it was back to jamming with the big bunch of dulcimers again. This time it broke up (pr at least I pooped out) around 1:00. By then my fingers had had about enough punishment and I was starting to forget which tunes I was playing. Sure signs that I’d been having far more than my share of fun over the last couple of days.
So, today (Monday), I’m still running on fumes, my hands are less sore, but there’s a smile on my face. Can’t wait ‘til next year!
Thursday night was when all of the early registrants showed up along with the folks presenting workshops and performing at the Friday and Saturday night concerts. There was a pretty good jam session going on and I got to say “Hey!” to many friends that I only see at these festivals; Jack and Mary Giger, Mike Anderson, Aubrey Atwater and Elwood Donnelly, Rick Thumb and lots of other folks. Traveling to the festival must have worn everyone out, though, as the jamming was done by about 10:30.
One of the high points of the evening was getting to meet Shari Wolf, the guitarist for Sweetwater. She’s a real hoot and her guitar playing really helped keep the rhythm going in the big jam! I hope I run into her again soon.
Friday, Dan and I got to the festival around 11:00 in the morning. More “Hi, howyadoin’ ” followed and we shortly sat down to play tunes. We jammed with an ever changing group of people all afternoon, only stopping for dinner and the evening concert.
The concert was top notch. It was great hearing performances by Jack and Mary, autoharpist Alex Usher, the lovely and charming Princess Harris (I think she’s my favorite hammered dulcimer player), beautiful songs by Katie Waldren and Candace Kreitlow, and Atwater/Donnelly to close the show. Probably the highlight of the concert was an eight or nine minute unaccompanied clog dance and story performance piece that Aubrey Atwater did seamlessly slipping between different clogging styles from different parts of the U.S. and Canada and who taught her each. She finished it up by clogging singing a French Canadian song while frailing the banjo all at the same time. The whole thing was sort of like the folk music equivalent of a drum solo. Sort of like the Grateful Dead’s Rhythm Devils in one pair of feet!
After the concert it was back to fiddling for me at another big jam session. Played a ton of tunes until around 12:30 or 1:00 a.m. Friend Neil showed up with his button boxes and added a whole different feeling to the tunes. A fiddle, an accordion, a mandolin, a couple of banjos, a harmonica, a couple of guitars, three or four hammered dulcimers, and maybe twenty mountain dulcimers. What a racket! Beautiful!
Saturday I had the great pleasure of playing guitar to back my good friend, terrific fiddler, and the director of the Folk School of St. Louis, Colleen Heine for the evening concert. Our set was great fun and seemed to go over pretty well. We played about a half hour of old-time fiddle tunes and songs. I hope we get to do more of it.
Others on the bill that evening were Barb Ernst, the aforementioned Sweetwater (who did a great set of funny songs with beautiful vocal from all three of the members), Mike Anderson, and Rick Thum.
After the concert it was back to jamming with the big bunch of dulcimers again. This time it broke up (pr at least I pooped out) around 1:00. By then my fingers had had about enough punishment and I was starting to forget which tunes I was playing. Sure signs that I’d been having far more than my share of fun over the last couple of days.
So, today (Monday), I’m still running on fumes, my hands are less sore, but there’s a smile on my face. Can’t wait ‘til next year!
Friday, August 17, 2007
Dulcimer Playing Weekend!
This weekend, I'm spending a lot of time over in Belleville, IL at the Gateway Dulcimer Society's festival. It'll be a weekend of catching up with freinds from all over the country who I only see at this festival, meeting new friends, and playing a [i]lot[/i] of tunes.
I'll let you in on all the details when it's over and I've caught my breath.
I'll let you in on all the details when it's over and I've caught my breath.
Friday, August 10, 2007
What is "Jeopardy", Alex?
Amy and I spent the last couple of days up in Chicago where she was going through the second round in her journey to appear on the Jeopardy TV quiz show. Even though I had to spend most of those days plugged in to the laptop and cell phone (^&*&*%@%$^^*@ day job!), we had a real nice time.
The hotel we stayed in, The Tremont, was an old building in the middle of the Gold Coast neighborhood down town. The room was nothing special, but comfortable. The lobby was small, but beautiful and the hotel staff was friendly and helpful. We got a good rate, too by using Expedia for booking the room.
I wish I'd taken pictures, but as usual, I was kind of a pin head and forgot to pack the camera.
Amy had a blast at the audtions/testing/whatever you want to call it. And she thinks she did pretty well. Took a written test, played a mock game with podiums and clickers to ring in... the whole shooting match. She said it was so much fun, she was sorry when it was over. So, now she's on a waiting list of possible contestants and could be called out to play the game in LA for real at any time.
After she got done with her day of auditions and I got done with my day of meetings and other work, we took a good, long walk down by Lake Michigan. It was hot, but there was a nice breeze from the lake, so it was pleasant. We walked down to Navy Pier and all around it. Neither of us had ever been to the pier before, and I can't see us going back again. It's sort of like a big mall with tons of stuff for tourists to buy, but not much else worth noting.
Still, the lake is beautiful and the walk along it was worth the trip. It was a shame we didn't bring our swim suits, as the water looked so inviting.
Then we hopped on a free trolley back from Navy Pier towards our hotel. Stopped by Pizzaria Uno for dinner. I'm not normally much for pizza, but Amy loves it, so.... Anyway, I can heartily recommend this place. The pizza is about an inch and a half thick with a good crust, plenty of cheese and a tasty tomato sauce. The atmosphere is good, too. Kind of grungy and crowded. A real city place.
Anyway, that's what we did with ourselves the last few days. How about you?
The hotel we stayed in, The Tremont, was an old building in the middle of the Gold Coast neighborhood down town. The room was nothing special, but comfortable. The lobby was small, but beautiful and the hotel staff was friendly and helpful. We got a good rate, too by using Expedia for booking the room.
I wish I'd taken pictures, but as usual, I was kind of a pin head and forgot to pack the camera.
Amy had a blast at the audtions/testing/whatever you want to call it. And she thinks she did pretty well. Took a written test, played a mock game with podiums and clickers to ring in... the whole shooting match. She said it was so much fun, she was sorry when it was over. So, now she's on a waiting list of possible contestants and could be called out to play the game in LA for real at any time.
After she got done with her day of auditions and I got done with my day of meetings and other work, we took a good, long walk down by Lake Michigan. It was hot, but there was a nice breeze from the lake, so it was pleasant. We walked down to Navy Pier and all around it. Neither of us had ever been to the pier before, and I can't see us going back again. It's sort of like a big mall with tons of stuff for tourists to buy, but not much else worth noting.
Still, the lake is beautiful and the walk along it was worth the trip. It was a shame we didn't bring our swim suits, as the water looked so inviting.
Then we hopped on a free trolley back from Navy Pier towards our hotel. Stopped by Pizzaria Uno for dinner. I'm not normally much for pizza, but Amy loves it, so.... Anyway, I can heartily recommend this place. The pizza is about an inch and a half thick with a good crust, plenty of cheese and a tasty tomato sauce. The atmosphere is good, too. Kind of grungy and crowded. A real city place.
Anyway, that's what we did with ourselves the last few days. How about you?
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