Back from Springfield & a video

We (the rest of the Mound City Slickers and I) made it back from our road trip to Springfield, MO in the heart of the Ozarks, where we played a dance last night. Had a real good time having Chinese food for dinner and playing for a small, but enthusiastic crowd. Of course, having Debi Harp call the figures for us was a treat! Debi's called for us a couple of times before and we always enjoy working with her.

With as much good fiddling as they have in that part of the state, I can't imagine that the Slickers would be anything special. But they all seemed to enjoy the tunes and the playing. One of the nicest parts of the evening was that they asked for a polka. We don't get a chance to play polkas often at dances, but love to do. So, we gave them "John Short's"

Can't wait to go back in October to play for them again.

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The band has a regular practice on Thursday evenings. Though, to be honest it's never as formal as a "practice" and usually winds up being more like an open session where friends stop by to play a few tunes and have a beer or two. This last Thursday, Jessie Evans and his wife Connie stopped by with Connie's new toy; a little digital flip camera and shot the footage I'm including below. It turned out pretty well, I think.

The players are Lindell Blackford, Mike Banvard, and Bill Stewart on fiddles, Bob Clark on banjo, me on the banjo uke, Roy Farwell on guitar, and Jessie Evans on button accordian. The tunes are an odd version of "Little Sadie" that Lindell got from the late, great Steve Mote, and "Setauket", which we think is an East coast tune that folks around here learned from either Mark Rennard or Mike Banvard. Hope you enjoy!

Slickers in Springfield & St. Louis, MO

This coming Saturday night, June 20th, I'll be playing with the Mound City Slickers for a contra dance in Springfield, MO for the Traditional Music and Dance Society. The dance will be held at the Franciscan Villa, 620 W. Scott off Main St. in Springfield. They'll be dancing and we'll be playing from 7:30-10:30 pm. Should be a great time. Come on out and shake a tail feather.

And don't forget that next month, July 10th, we'll be playing at the the Focal Point in St. Louis for a benefit barn dance for the beloved Folk School of St. Louis. A small $10 donation will get you a whole evening of hot contras and squares called by Deborah Hyland and played by the Slickers. Mark it in your calendar.

Folk School on TV

Here's a video clip that ran on our local St. Louis news station about the Folk School where I teach. Enjoy!

Go Here!

Surfing around the interwebs, I recently found a terrific blog that anyone reading this might be interested in. It's Lisa Johnson's Appalachian Dulcimer Noter and Drone Blog. Lisa (aka: Strumelia Harmonia) is a great player in the old-time traditional noter style of dulcimer and has given a lot of thought to what she does with the instrument and why she does it. While all of the posts on the blog are good, a few of the most interesting are:

A Race to the Finish, Part One

A Race to the Finish, Part Two

and some much needed commentary on

Jamming Etiquette, Part One

and

Jamming Etiquette, Part Two

Go read these posts. Then browse the rest of what Lisa has put up there. It's all fun, thoughtful, and worth looking at whether you play dulcimer, fiddle, banjo or don't play at all, but are just interested in music and creativity.

Slickers @ Childgrove This Sunday Evening

The Mound City Slickers old time string band, Bill Stewart and Lindell Blackford on fiddles, Roy Farwell on guitar, Dan Higgins on banjo, and Sean Ruprecht-Belt on banjo uke will be playing for the weekly Childgrove dance this Sunday 4/19. 327 Maple in Webster Groves. Open to the public and all are welcome, especially beginners! A workshop to teach beginners the steps starts at 6:30 PM and the band starts to play around 7:00.

We love playing for these guys and they seem to like having us play for them. Should be a real big time.

More info here: www.childgrove.org .

Led Zeppelwha???

Does anyone else besides me find it really strange that Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones both formerly of Led Zeppelin have become big players in the old-time/bluegrass/roots music scene? Last year saw Jimmy Page recording with Alison Krauss for a not bad foray into something that might have been decent bluegrass if not for the big bass and Page’s wailing. But for an experiment, it wasn’t gawd-awful. Your mileage may vary.

Also in the recent past, John Paul Jones produced a very good CD for Uncle Earl. I was surprised when I saw his name on the producer credit, as there wasn’t anything even resembling big sound production or epics like “The Battle For Evermore”. The production seemed to show that Jones has at least an intelligent interest in old-time music of the festival/neo-hippie sort that Uncle Earl plays and was willing to let the band do what they do best.

Then I began hearing about Jones showing up and hanging out at some festivals; Merlefest and (though this could be apocryphal) Mt. Airy.

Now there’s a new Jones produced CD from Sara Watkins, late of Nickle Creek. I’ve only heard one track from the CD, but it was enjoyable.

I’ve got to say, though that the whole “We used to be real big time rockers, but now we want to be folkies” thing makes my head hurt.

I know that when I was a young sprat in the early 1970’s it was pretty obvious that the guys in Zeppelin were pretty well versed in the blues; copping things from Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, and others. So, is this present fascination with rural southern fiddle music and its contemporary forms a sign that the Zepps are mellowing in their geezer-hood, or was this interest always there?

What do you think?

Kim and Jim Lansford's New CD

Late last week the mailman dropped a copy of Kim and Jim Lansford's latest recording, Keep Your Eye Upon The Sparrow, into my mailbox (thanks, Kim!) . I've only had a chance to listen to it a couple of times, but I can say, it's pretty durn good. Kim and Jim's harmony singing is top notch as always and the selection of material is, as always, full of little heard gems. And, of course, Jim Lansford remains one of the best multi-instrumentalist string players around.

So far, stand out tracks for me are "Sal's Got a Meatskin", which I've heard them perform a few times and am glad to have it committed to CD; "Your Saddle Is Empty Old Pal" from the Stanley Bros. catalog; and "Rare Up", a fiddle tune from George Reves -- a fiddler I've never heard of before -- be sure I'll be sitting down to learn this tune soon.

To be honest, there's not a tune on the whole CD that isn't a winner.

And the very handsome package design is by the Folk School of St. Louis' director, Colleen Heine.

To order this fine CD, read the liner notes, or to hear sound clips from selected tunes, surf on over to http://www.kimandjim.com/sparrow.htm . There's a PayPal link on the page as well as snail mail ordering info.

Highly recommended.

Slickers Go Downtown Saturday

Five geezers captured in an unguarded moment while playing fiddle tunes.

I'll be playing with the Mound City Slickers for a contra dance at on Saturday afternoon 4/4 at the brand-spanking-new Old Post Office Plaza at 8th and Locust in Downtown St. Louis. We'll be playing from 3:00 - 4:00 and will have dance caller Mac McKeever with us to get the crowd up on their feet and dancing.

I understand that the NCAA Women's Basketball Final Four tournament is also happening in downtown St. Louis and that it's supposed to be a beautiful day in the weather department. So, come on down get a case of happy feet and hear some old-time string band music. It will be a big time!

Heck, maybe that Clooney guy will even show up and hand out some Dapper Dan pommade.

Nose To The Grindstone!

Well, I'm back for my first day at the office after spending three weeks recovering from shoulder surgery. And wouldn't you just know it, there were more than 700 emails to wade through. Other than my shoulder feeling better and my being rested after my time away, nothing much has changed at Dog Food Central.

I'm looking forward even more than usual to sitting down with the fiddle and relaxing with some tunes tonight!

You Need This!

Ozarks Fiddle Music by Drew Beisswenger and Gordon McCann

This book, published by Mel Bay Publications is really something. Transcriptions of more than three hundred fiddle tunes common to the Ozarks from some eighty fiddlers, some living and some passed on. It also comes with a CD of thirty-seven of he tunes so you can hear what they sound like and what the regional style is made up of. Many of the tunes, like "Fort Smith", "Sugar in the Coffee", and "Chinky Pin" will be familiar to those of us acquainted with Ozark tunes. Many of the titles in this book, like "Around the World on a Dime" and "Hold Old Bald While I Dance" though, were new to me and, I suspect will also be new to you.

The transcriptions of tunes seem clear and accurate. My reading of standard notation is hesitant and clunky at the best of times. But I was able to get through a few of these at a sitting and they all sounded right to me. But as good as the transcriptions seem to be, the accompanying text, attributed as mostly by Mr. Beisswenger, is equally valuable. Each tune has information about where it comes from, alternate titles, and most importantly, source recordings available commercially so those, like myself who are more comfortable learning tunes by ear can find them. Reading the text is almost as entertaining as playing the tunes!

Beisswenger and McCann have done a bang up job on this book. Thanks to Mel Bay Publications for getting it out to the public. Now find a copy of it for yourself and dig in!

Score One For Medical Science

Well, it's been a little over a week since the surgery to correct my frozen shoulder and I couldn't be happier about the whole thing. I went into the hospital last Friday, came home with three holes in my shoulder and considerably less damaged tissue on Saturday and was playing the fiddle relatively pain free by Tuesday. Since then, I've been keeping up with an amazingly (for me anyway) disciplined regimen of seven times daily exercises to keep the joint loose and to increase the range of motion even further and three-a-week visits to a physical therapy clinic to get even more stretching and strengthening under a watchful eye and a strong pair of hands.

Friday evening I spent a couple of hours at The Folk School pot luck and jam. Took my fiddle along and played tunes with folks for a couple of hours. By the end of it, I was feeling better about my bowing, after nearly a year away from it. Still needs work, but by the end of Friday's session I felt a lot more in control, more relaxed, and I was able to get some rhythm into my bowing, too. So, all in all, not a bad start.

Now, I just need to spend the next couple of weeks making sure that I keep to the program and I should be good as new!

"Old Joe" And Other "C" Tunes

I spent some enjoyable time playing tunes the other night with my friend Janet. She's a terrific fiddler and probably my favorite fiddler to play with. We have the same kind of sensibility about when to play off the beat and when to play straight on the beat. It comes from both of us having spent time being taught by the late Steve Mote. Or at least, that's what we decided over a couple of beers on Saturday. Unfortunately for my opportunities for playing with her, Janet is also a young mother of two young children, which cuts into her fiddling time pretty dramatically.

While playing Saturday evening, we hit all the usual G, D, and A tunes. And we both talked about how we neither of us really play any tunes out of C. Why is that? The C scale isn't all that much different from D or G. The finger positions aren't any tougher. I just haven't concentrated on playing anything much out of that key.

So, Sunday afternoon I spent some time with "Old Joe", a tune that's always kind of intimidated me before. This time, though, I think I've got it. And it's great fun to play. It rattles along like an old motor car on a rutted dirt road.

Up next: "Melinda" in C! And once I've nailed C, no key will be safe!

Surgery Date Set

The work on my shoulder I mentioned in a previous post has been scheduled for Friday, March 6. Should be a pretty easy procedure and will only require one night in hospital and a couple of weeks of no playing to recuperate.

Atomic Cowboy Tonight

Late notice, I know.

I'll be playing a short set with the Hot Baloney Boys tonight at the Atomic Cowboy, 4140 Manchester in the Grove district between Vandeventer and Kingshighway.

We're supposed to go on about 9:45 and play for twenty minutes or so. But you know how those things go.

Hope to see some folks we know there.

Finally Getting My Shoulder Fixed

As many of you who've been reading this blog know, for about a year now, I've been dealing with an injury to my left shoulder that has made it difficult to impossible for me to play the fiddle. It's been okay, because it's forced me to substitute the mandolin, and the increased practice and playing has made my mandolin playing 1,000% better than it was a year ago. So that's been an okay thing.

But after a year of this nonsense, my physical therapist suggested that the shoulder will not likely get any better without surgical intervention. So, a consult with an orthopedic surgeon was in order. That happened Wednesday and the outcome is that sometime in the next three weeks or so, I'll have a couple of holes cut into the shoulder and some obstructions cleared out of the ball joint. Then two weeks of enforced no playing tunes. After that, I should be just about good as new and able to do all the things I used to with my left arm, like getting a book off a shelf over my head, tucking in my shirt tail, and playing the fiddle.

I can't tell you how I'm looking forward to it.

I'll update my progress in this space. Stay tuned.

A Shameless Dodge

I haven't had time to post much lately. Things have been crazy and I haven't been playing nearly as much as I'd like to. Or working on picking up new tunes, either. So in a shameless attempt to get something up on the blog while not having to think about it too much, here's a video found on YouTube. The tune is "Half Past Four", an Ed Haley tune that I've been carrying around in my head for the last week or so.



Watching the video is also getting me juiced about going to the Clifftop festival this year. And believe me, in these weird days of February, I need the promise of August on a mountaintop in West Virginia.

Anyway, enjoy. It's great stuff.

Winter Day in Mound City

It's a snowy day here in St. Louis. Wish I could have stayed home and played tunes. But a paycheck called and here I am at my desk. So far, the only person in my office to show up!

Maybe I should have brought the fiddle in with me.

Mound City Slickers @ Cape Girardeau

I mentioned in my last post that I played a dance with the Mound City Slickers last week. Here's some video from the dance.



The Band, left to right: Bob Clark - Banjo, Bill Stewart - Fiddle, Lindell Blackford - Fiddle, Roy Farwell - Guitar, Sean Ruprecht-Belt - Banjo Uke
Enjoy!

Great Weekend!

Wow! What a great weekend for my ongoing romance with old time music! I played so much this weekend that my calluses have calluses and my hand seems locked in a position that looks like grabbing a mandolin/ukulele/fiddle neck.

Things started well with a jam session Saturday afternoon at the Folk School of St. Louis, where we played a ton of tunes that don’t normally get played there. But the students were game and most of them, even the real new kids, did their best to pick up the new tunes and hang in with the dance tempos that were being played. It was definitely one of the best sessions I’ve been to at the school in months.

Then it was a quick 100 mile jaunt down to play a dance in Cape Girardeau with the Mound City Slickers. We stopped and had dinner together – loading up on pasta and salad to make sure we had plenty of energy to play those long dance tunes! The band played great! The small, but enthusiastic crowd of dancers seemed to love the music and have a real big time. I can’t wait to get down there again. Someone had a video camera and someone else was taking still photos of the band. If I can get hold of any of that, I'll post them here.

Another quick 100 mile drive back to St. Louis and we were able to stop by a party at our friend Michael B.’s where we jammed into the early morning with a fresh set of old time pickers.

Then I finished it all off on Sunday morning with the Hot Baloney Boys, playing our regular set at the Hartford Coffee Co. I don’t know if it was getting some new tunes into our set or what, but we seemed to play extra well, had fun, and got all coffee’d up into the bargain.

Though exhausting, it couldn’t have been a better weekend.

What I've Been Up To Lately (Fiddle-wise)

Mostly working on learning a few new tunes and getting back to some I used to play a lot, but haven't in a while. It's funny how a tune that I'll be so hot for for a while seems to fade away. I'll play it all the time and then pffft! Nothing. It's not that I don't like the tune anymore or anything like that. It just seems to go missing when I'm thinking about what to play next. Then months or years later, it'll resurface and I'll want to play it all the time again. The last week or so, I've been into

• Booth Shot Lincoln
• Cornbread, Molasses and Sassafrass Tea
• Jenny Ran Away in the Mud in the Night

I need to work on "Setauket" as well. It's a great tune and I about had the first part, but got distracted.

I'm still working on getting my bowing technique back after not playing for nearly a year (!) and am pretty pleased with how it's going. I still don't have as much rotation in my shoulder as I'd like, so reaching the G string is still an issue. Still a stretch every time I play. But, it's coming along and now that I've started using a shoulder rest and have somewhat adjusted how I hold the fiddle, I'm getting there.

This weekend I'll be traveling down to Cape Girardeau to play a contra dance with the Mound City Slickers. Should be a big time!

Another good session

Another great session at Bob’s last night. Only one fiddler in attendance, but also had banjo, two guitars, two mandolins, and one banjo uke (me!). There was some fine playing going on. I can't tell you how many times someone would throw in a different lick or subtly change a rhythm and hearing it would cause me to smile. Stand out tunes, for me anyway, were “Laughing Marj” -- which is rapidly becoming a favorite in the group-- “Setauket”, “Sheep Shell Corn”, “Walking in the Parlor”, and “Marmaduke’s”. We played through several other tunes, but I’m not calling them to mind this morning. Maybe after another cup or three of coffee.

These weekly sessions are certainly the highlight of my week. It occurred to me on the drive home, that I’m one of the luckiest guys around to have this opportunity every week.

Since finding the Folk School of St. Louis and making connections with, and getting more involved in the local old time music scene, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some of the finest, friendliest people around. There’s no other art, theater, or music community or scene that I’ve ever encountered that is as welcoming, supportive, and invested in everyone having a good time and doing well than the old time music community in St. Louis. And this seems to be the case as well with this music and those who play it throughout the country. Those few people I’ve met from other countries who play this music: David Crossley, Mike Fenton, Aki, a fellow from Sweden whose name I can’t remember – are also just terrific folks.

Thirty years ago I’d gotten tired of playing rock and country music, couldn’t find anyone who played the blues and southern rural music I wanted to play and had pretty much given up playing at all. If anyone had told me then how much fun I’d be having and what a blessing playing old time music and the friendships I’ve made through it would be, I wouldn’t have believed them. But here it is 2009 and it’s all true. Wow.

Back from the Holidays

Well, it's been a glorious week and a half of loafing around, playing tunes, and getting a couple long-put-off household projects done - or at least started. The week between Christmas and New Years is always nice since I can take the time off from the day job. Now it's the Saturday before I have to go back to work and that deadline is looming large.

In other catching up type news, I've also found Facebook over the last few days. It's pretty neat. The connections between people is fascinating to watch. Through a friend here in St. Louis, I made a link to someone I hadn't seen in nearly 30 years. So, that's interesting.

Went to a jam at Bob's house last night, which was just about the best way I can think of to start 2009 out. Three fiddles, four banjos, one guitar, one mandolin, and one banjo uke. Quite a ruckus! Too many tunes were played to remember them all. It was great fun.