Fiddle For Breakfast

Back from Springfield & a video

2009-06-21T18:57:00.007-05:00

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.

----------------------------------------

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

2009-06-16T12:53:00.004-05:00

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

2009-06-10T06:36:00.004-05:00

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

Go Here!

2009-05-06T08:05:00.003-05:00

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

2009-04-15T18:02:00.003-05:00

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???

2009-04-14T15:04:00.002-05:00

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

2009-04-13T09:38:00.004-05:00

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

2009-04-03T07:58:00.003-05:00

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!

2009-03-30T14:45:00.004-05:00

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!

2009-03-23T20:22:00.005-05:00

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

2009-03-15T20:02:00.004-05:00

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

2009-03-03T08:40:00.004-06:00

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

2009-02-23T08:28:00.003-06:00

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

2009-02-23T08:18:00.004-06:00

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

2009-02-12T09:09:00.003-06:00

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

2009-02-10T08:18:00.006-06:00

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

2009-01-27T07:40:00.004-06:00

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

2009-01-25T19:31:00.002-06:00

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!

2009-01-19T14:24:00.002-06:00

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)

2009-01-14T07:56:00.003-06:00

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

2009-01-09T08:32:00.002-06:00

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

2009-01-03T09:24:00.002-06:00

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.

What I'm Working On

2008-12-24T14:02:00.003-06:00

"Old Mother Logo" from Uncle Buck Williams, Chirps Smith, Bryan Smyth, and Janet Oriatti
"Yellow Barber" from Buddy Thomas, Geoff Seitz and Gerry Milnes
"Rush and the Pepper" again, from Chirps Smith and probably a bunch of other midwesterners I'm not thinking of right now

And I'm eyeing "Fine Times at Our House" from the Hammons Family through Chirps Smith and Rayna Gellert.

Should be enough to keep me busy the next week or so while I'm away from the office (stinkin' day job!) for a holiday.

Old Mother Logo

2008-12-21T14:58:00.003-06:00

While playing at the Folk School jam session yesterday, we dredged up a tune that I used to play with Janet Oriatti a lot before children and family began demanding so much of her time. Iam looking forward to a time 18 years from now when Helen and Vince will be all grown up and Janet and I can sit down and play "Old Mother Logo" again.

At any rate, someone called for this tune and while we stumbled through it, I remembered how much I liked playing it. Of course, now I have to learn it all over again since I used to play it on guitar with Janet while she fiddled and these days I'm either fiddling or playing mandolin depending n how my shoulder feels -- better and better all the time, thanks for asking. So I went in search of a recording of the tune to relearn it from and found this gem:

Old Mother Logo

It's the now defunct Yellow Dog String Band from here in St. Louis playing "Old Mother Logo" at the Folk School's 2nd or 3rd annual benefit concert at the Sheldon Auditorium. The band from left to right on your screen is Dave Landreth, Rob White, Bryan Smyth, and Andy Gribble. Yellow Dog was one of the best old time string bands to come out of St. Louis and they are missed.

Anyway, here's the tune for me to relearn it. Hope you enjoy it, too.

Special Request

2008-12-11T07:50:00.005-06:00

Played a set at the new space for Craft Alliance over in Grand Center last night. Bill had a real good time.

So, I assume did Colleen and Jim. I know I did.

Bloggity Blog

2008-12-04T14:53:00.001-06:00

Okay, so how lame is this...

I'm blogging about someone else's blog. Go there anyway. It's pretty entertaining if you like banjo music. From Mary Z. Cox: http://banjoquest.blogspot.com/

Odetta Dead At Seventy-Seven

2008-12-03T07:40:00.003-06:00

Here's a link to the NY Times Obit: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/arts/music/03odetta.html?_r=1&hp

Though I never met Odetta, her huge voice, her music and her politics were more influential on the way I hear and play music and the way I live my life than I can say. I first encountered this amazing woman, as I did many of my musical heroes, in the Folk Music section of the Webster Groves Public Library. I was probably about eleven years old and was checking out everything I could from that slim selection of LPs; most of them on Vanguard or Smithsonian Folkways. Now remember, this was around 1966 and my parents thought it was strange enough me bringing home records and holing up in my room with the "weird" sounds of Roscoe Holcomb and The New Lost City Ramblers seeping out under the door. When I brought home a collection of folk songs and spirituals with a picture of a black woman (Odetta) on the cover, that was almost more than my poor dad could take. There was a tense moment or two over whether I'd be allowed to play the record in the house.

But, eventually it worked out. I listened to Odetta's big southern voice singing songs and playing the guitar in a distinctive way. And once again it turned my head around and I've never been the same since.

In the NY Times article referenced above, Odetta is quoted as saying, “School taught me how to count and taught me how to put a sentence together. But as far as the human spirit goes, I learned through folk music.” This goes for me, too. And so many people I call friends and have known through the years.

Thanks, Odetta, for being a part of the folk music that shaped so many lives.

Coffee and Dance This Weekend

2008-11-20T09:38:00.004-06:00

In addition to this being the last chance for people to see the play that I've directed for West End Players, I'm also playing a dance on Sunday night with the Mound City Slickers for The Childgrove Dancers. Details on time, place and cost can be found at their website via the blue clicky letters in the previous sentence. Come on out and getin on the contra dancing fun. The Slickers always have a blast when we play for Childgrove, and this promises to be no different.

I should also mention that my other band, The Hot Baloney Boys will be playing this Sunday morning at The Hartford Coffee Company at the corner of Hartford and Roger St. Louis' south side. Colleen, Dan, and I will be playing old-time tunes and singing some songs while folks open their eyes with cups of joe and breakfast.

And then I'm on vacation!

Good News!

2008-11-13T09:12:00.002-06:00

My life these days is one hugely busy blur! I'm spending time putting the finishing touches on A Perfect Ganesh which opens tomorrow night. My day job has decided that this would be a good week to kick my butt with thirty-four absolute-top-priority-number-one-have-to-get-done-right-now things every day. Dentist and physical therapy appointments keep popping up. And so on and so forth.

But in spite of all of this nonsense, I've been able to find a few spare minutes to sit down and play some tunes. And the really good news is that I got the fiddle down off the wall after not being able to play for a good long while due to a persistent shoulder injury. Hot dog! I found that I can reach all of the strings in a reasonably comfortable way and can play the low notes that have been eluding me for a couple of months. Now I just need to spend some quality time working on getting my bowing back (geez, I sound scratchy and screechy!) and I should be back up to snuff in no time.

Even when all of the other noise in my day is seeming completely out of hand, I can remember that I'm able to play the fiddle again and most of the annoying stuff kind of fades to the background.

It's a good thing.

WA-HOO!

2008-11-05T07:36:00.003-06:00

What a happy day this is!

As I drove home last night from rehearsal, about ten minutes after Sen. McCain had conceded the race, I could hear shouts and cheering all around me. I stood on my porch and listened for a while, then went in, turned on the TV, sat on the futon with Amy, and watched President Elect Obama's speech.

It struck both of us that when we were small children, African Americans could not attend the same schools as white children. We visited places on family vacations where we could not all drink from the same water fountain or use the same public rest rooms. And now there is an African American elected by the people to lead the nation.

It really is a new day.

Election Day Fiddle!

2008-11-04T11:43:00.005-06:00

Get out there and Vote!

I got a couple of emails yesterday from people involved with the Obama campaign here in St. Louis asking if I'd be interested in playing tunes outside polling places to entertain the folks waiting in long lines to vote. They had also contacted the Folk School. Colleen, the Director of the place forwarded the request on to me and a bunch of others.

These Obama guys really have all this stuff figured out. What a great idea! Having live acoustic musicians play for people in line to entertain them and help keep them from getting bored and leaving.

I can't be out there today (stinkin' day job), but I know some of my friends will be.

I wonder which musicians McCain's folks contacted?

Get out there and Vote!

How's the shoulder?

2008-11-03T07:12:00.004-06:00

I've been dealing with a shoulder injury for almost a year now. It's kept me from playing the fiddle for the better part of six months or so, and friends are rightly concerned, I guess.

So, for all who care, it's getting better. Each week I improve some, but it is happening more slowly than I'd like. I've been picking up the fiddle and playing a little bit the past month or so and can now play comfortably on three of the four strings. Just a little more gain in the rotation of the shoulder joint and I'll be able to get that low string. I'm hoping to be back playing fiddle full time with the Hot Baloney Boys pretty soon.

In the meantime, I'm happy playing the banjo uke, lap dulcimer, and mandolin.

Of course, the upside to this whole thing is that not playing the fiddle for so long has allowed my mandolin playing to get a lot better than it was a year ago. So, there's always a silver lining!

Old-Time for Obama

2008-10-30T07:41:00.002-05:00

Those who know me know that I'm rooting for Barack Obama in my own socialist-lefty-leaning way in this upcoming election. Here're some other folks who feel the same way.

For those friends who aren't as familiar with the music, the tune they're playing is "John Brown's Dream". One of my all-time favorites.

Go Vote!

New Live Theater Adventure

2008-10-22T07:51:00.005-05:00

Not a lot of time to post today, but I just got some publicity photos for a play I'm directing and wanted to get them out there. The play is Terrence McNally's A Perfect Ganesh and I'm pretty excited about it. The play is magical and funny. It tells the story of two American womens' journey through India led by the Hindu god Ganesha. On their way they discover themselves, each other, life, forgiveness, and how to be. The actors are working hard and things are shaping up. I hope you'll come see it.

The play opens on November 14 and runs for two weekends.

More information on dates, location, and ticket prices can be had here: West End Players web page.

Okay. I've already spent more time here today than I should. I'm gone.

Now That's A Good Tune

2008-10-21T09:32:00.007-05:00

I happened across a notice on the Fiddle-L list a week or so ago saying that Voyager Records is re-issuing a recording and book of Missouri fiddlers and tunes called Now That's A Good Tune: Masters of Traditional Missouri Fiddling. It was originally released through the University of Missouri about 20 years ago and has been out of print for some years. Well, of course I ordered a copy ($30 post paid for a limited time).

The two CD and book set came in the mail yesterday and I'll tell you it's terrific stuff. I've not had time to read much of the book yet, but the CDs are full of plenty of good tunes. Fiddlers represented are Vesta Johnson, Gene Goforth, R.P. Christeson, Nile Wilson, Cyril Stinnet, Carol Hascall, Lyman Enloe, Pete McMahan, Bob Walsh, Howe Teague, Bill Eddy, and young upstart (well, 20 years ago anyway) Charlie Walden. The 52 tunes are top-notch every one.

If you're at all interested in Missouri fiddle styles and typical tunes played in the state, you'll have to have this on your shelves and the CDs in you player.

Now if someone would just re-issue I'm Old, But I'm Awfully Tough and R.P. Christeson's The Old-Time Fiddlers Repertory as CD and book sets. Well, we can wish.

Yeeowtch!

2008-10-20T08:33:00.006-05:00

Beautiful fall weather, good music with friends, and delicious food all conspired to make for a pretty terrific time on Saturday last. I started out the day playing tunes for the Gateway Greening Harvest Fair, mentioned elswhere in these pages. About half a dozen of us showed up with banjos, fiddles, guitars, and mandolins in tow. A few people danced a little and all seemed to be having a great time. If it hadn't been for the bees getting their two-cents in, things would have been about perfect.

About the time that the pot-luck lunch started being served, the bees became very interested in what we humans were up to. Bill, our fiddler got a sting on his bow hand. Not enough of a problem to keep him from playing, but from all reports it stung pretty good for the rest of the day. Then I took a drink of home made cider. It tasted so good! Unfortunately, it had a little extra kick to it; a bee had been drinking out of the cup and took objection to my drinking him! Yeeowtch! A bee sting to the tongue! I don't recommend it.

My tongue hurt like heck for a few minutes, then swelled up to twice its normal size. I couldn't talk clearly, couldn't swallow. Then it got numb for a while. Then the pain came back even worse. Someone mentioned that Benedryl would reduce the swelling, so I traipsed over to the local drug store and picked some up. It did help, but made me so sleepy that I had to follow it with large doses of coffee and a really nasty tasting "energy drink" to stay awake.

Could have been worse, though I suppose. It didn't stop me from playing a real nice gig in the afternoon with the Mound City Slickers and special guests. We played for a church group out at a horse farm in far western St. Louis County. The people were all as nice as could be and they seemed to enjoy dancing. Mac McKeever called the dances. He's an expert at getting people up on their feet and calling dances that are fun and make them want to dance some more. We're always glad to play for a dance with Mac calling.

Again, the weather couldn't have been nicer; sunny, cool, crisp, but not too cold to play comfortably. Here's hoping for a lot more days like this and a lot more time to play fiddle tunes.

Music and Pie

2008-10-14T07:51:00.004-05:00

This Saturday, October 18, I'll be playing old-time tunes with some friends at the Gateway Greening Harvest Fair and Garlic Day. The event takes place from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM at their Bell Garden at 3871 Bell Avenue, just a few blocks north of the Fox Theater neighborhood. As well as our jam session, there'll be activities for the kids and free garlic cloves for planting. They also have a pie contest that has to be tasted to be believed! You can also walk around the Bell Garden and see what's been growing there this year. Very impressive!

Gateway Greening is a terrific organization that works within the St. Louis Metro community to set up community gardens, introduce gardening and green living to city school students, and other gardening/self-sufficiency projects. They're good folks and are doing good work.

A bunch of us from the Folk School of St. Louis played at this event last year and had great fun. The music was good, the people were a lot of fun, and the pot luck and pie contest were amazing.

Come on down and join us this year for what promises to be a real big time.

Musical Earmarks - Updated 2008-10-10

2008-10-09T13:21:00.005-05:00

We hear so much lately about earmarks attached to government spending bills and wasteful use of tax dollars. So, I thought I’d take a quick turn around that new-fangled interweb and see if I could find out where all of that money goes.

A Google search got me to the government Office of Management and Budget website and the section on Earmarks . I looked at a few pages for the U.S.’s FY2009 budget and found the following programs, among many others, that got earmark money. You may think differently, of course, but I thought these were pretty good buys for the price.

$99,000 for the Community Music School of Collegeville, Trappe, PA for music education

$248,000 for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Nashville, Tennessee to support community programs

$72,000 for the Music Maker Foundation, Inc. for acquisition, renovation, and buildout of a facility in Orange County, North Carolina. (These folks are a not-for-profit organization that helps support elderly blues and old-time musicians who have fallen on hard times.)

$99,000 for the Settlement Music School, Philadelphia, PA, to support arts education

$148,000 for the First Congregational Church for conservation of Henderson American Music Archive.

$347,000 for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum for music education programs

$306,000 for the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), NY for juvenile-based services for prevention, control, or reduction of juvenile delinquency

$99,000 for the Mountain Arts Center, Prestonsburg, KY, for expansion of its Music and Arts Development Program

$992,000 for the Yonkers Public Schools, Yonkers, NY, for after school and Saturday academic and enrichment activities, literacy services, music and arts education, and parent involvement activities

$472,000 for an Oral History Program Experience Music Project, Seattle, WA

$887,000 for the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area to celebrate the region's natural landscape, abundance of nationally significant places, cultural contributions of the Cherokee Nation, and mountain culture that shaped the area's distinctive music and crafts.

And don’t forget that some of our tax dollars go to support and maintain the old-time and country music collections (like the the Henry Reed Collection) at the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution (curators of Smithsonian Folkways records). Update 2008-10-10: Per a comment posted by David Horgan of Smithsonian Folkways, they're not actually supported by tax revenues as I had thought. They are instead "based in the national museum, but rely on revenues, grants, private donations, and good will to survive and to carry out [their] mission." Thanks for the correction, David! Keep up the great work.

I don’t care what Sarah Palin and her oil-drilling, ocean-fishing, Alaska-seceding husband say; if my taxes go to pay for the above items as well as maintaining roads & bridges, libraries, Medicare, police & fire protection, public schools for all children, NASA, and scientific research that leads to healthier and longer lives, then I believe that paying them is plenty patriotic.

It was Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes who said, "I like paying taxes. With them, I buy civilization."

Carter Family Comics

2008-09-29T12:42:00.006-05:00

A pretty interesting blog about getting a graphic novel biography together on the Carter Family. Nice pictures.

Here's hoping that Tommy Jarrell, Roscoe Holcomb, and Mississippi John Hurt are next!

Fall Weather / Contra Weekend

2008-09-29T09:23:00.001-05:00

Well, it was a real dance filled weekend. The Childgrove Dancers here in St. Louis and their dance-caller-in-training program teamed up with the Mound City Slickers to hold contra dances at St. Louis Gateway Arch and over in the Grand Center Arts District on Saturday. It kept me and the rest of the band busy running from one place to another to play tunes for the dancers, but was a lot of fun. The weather couldn’t have been more beautiful and it’s always a blast playing with these guys for dancers.

Then Sunday night, there was a reunion of Slickers fiddler, Bill’s old band, The Road Kill Ramblers for Childgrove’s regular weekly dance out in Webster Groves. I headed on out there from stately R-B Manor to listen to the music and watch the dancers (I’m on the injured reserve list for dancing until this shoulder of mine gets stronger). What a good band! They haven’t played together for 20 years and they still sound great.

At a point somewhere in the middle of the evening, I was sitting just outside the contra line with a big grin on my face, tapping my foot and really enjoying the music and the energy and the swirling round of the dancers. One of the women dancing leaned out, smiling, right into my face and shouted, “It doesn’t get better than this!” I couldn’t agree more.

Upcoming Dates:

2008-09-17T08:22:00.002-05:00

You can catch me playing with the Mound City Slickers here:

9/27/08 @ 10:00 AM - Parkapalooza at the St. Louis Gateway Arch
9/27/08 @ 1:00PM - Dancing in the Street at Grand Center in St. Louis (we'll be playing for an all ages contra dance at the Grandel stage in front of the Grandel Theater)
10/11/08 @ 4:00 PM - Hanley House in Clayton, MO for a Civil War historical event
10/8/08 10:00AM 'til 1:00 PM - Gateway Greening Fall Harvest Pot Luck - This is a great bunch of people and a good time. The food is great, too!
10/25/08 - Private party
11/23/2008 @ 7:00 PM - Childgrove Contra Dance in Webster Groves, MO

I'll be holding down the mandolin spot with (and maybe a little fiddle) with the Hot Baloney Boys every other Sunday morning from 10 until noon at the Hartford Coffee Company, corner of Roger & Hartford. Upcoming dates are:

9/28
10/12
10/26
11/2 and
11/16

Hope to see some of you at one of these dates/locations. They'll all be a lot of fun!

In Their Natural Element

2008-07-08T08:04:00.003-05:00

Here's a picture of the Hot Baloney Boys at the Indiana Fiddlers' Gathering a couple of weeks ago. We had a great time. Played a lot of tunes, listened to a lot of amazing musicians, and relaxed in the beautiful Indiana countryside.

Foreground left to right: Dan, Sean, & Colleen

Background: some Nosey Parker

Photo courtesy Dan H. Taken by Alice S.

A Really Good Old Time

2008-06-19T12:48:00.001-05:00

Had a great time last night at friend and fellow Mound City Slicker Bob’s house. For the last couple of years, Bob and his wife Andrea have opened their house once a week for what is advertised as a band practice for the Slickers, but is really an old-time jam session for the band and friends and a great opportunity to spend time with a lot of good musicians and good folks.

I don’t know why, but last night both felt and sounded so good! The bunch of us hit a groove that we sometimes don’t get to. The fiddles were playing remarkably well together and the rhythm section was darned good and tight. My shoulder and arm were acting up, so I didn’t play as much as usual -- maybe why we sounded better! -- and got to listen without being quite so much in the thick of the playing. I was really impressed with the two banjo players: above mentioned Bob and Dan’l, who plays with me in the Hot Baloney Boys. Both of them were playing some terrific licks and supporting what the fiddles were doing. It made me smile a lot to hear it.

Another unusually nice thing about the evening was that Jesse, who plays Irish accordion and played with the band in an early incarnation, had a night off from his usual Morris Team playing and stopped by. It’s always good to see Jesse and his presence prompted us to play a half-dozen or so tunes that we haven’t visited in too long a time; “Far From Home”, “Flowers of Edinborough”, “Temperance Reel”, “Genevieve’s Waltz”. All good tunes that we ought to play more often. Good to be reminded of them.

As fiddler David said a few weeks ago, “I just feel sorry for anyone who doesn’t play old-time music.”

Where I've Been & An Arm/Shoulder Update

2008-06-12T08:20:00.003-05:00

Okay. Right off the bat, I'll say I pretty well stink at keeping current on this blog thing. No question. I get busy with other stuff and I forget to write anything here for weeks on end. That's life. Hopefully when I do post something, it's at least mildly interesting reading.

Since the last time I wrote here, I took a weekend trip up to Chicago with Amy, our daughter China, and her boyfriend/partner/whatever-the-heck-you-call-a-guy-you've-been-living-with-for-something-like-five-years, Tom. We had a great time. Saw the sights, took in a show at Second City, ate great food, and generally enjoyed ourselves a whole bunch. I'll post belated pictures here soon.

Last week, Amy and I took off for Memphis and further south for a few days. Again, a great time. We stayed downtown in Memphis about two blocks from Beale Street. Spent a day at the Memphis Zoo, which isn't as good as St. Louis' zoo, but is darned nice. They have some outstanding displays. They also have a pair of giant pandas that we stared at for a long time. You always hear how cute these creatures are, and the pictures seem to confirm it. But there's just nothing like standing a few feet away from a panda and watching it play. No wonder people are working so hard to save them from extinction.

We also toured Graceland. If you're in Memphis, you have to do it. And let me tell you: it's everything you would imagine it to be. I walked through the mansion and grounds with a constant mix of feelings of awe, irony, sorrow, and thinking "this guy was just nuts". The jungle room alone is worth the trip.

Had barbecue at the Rendevous. I don't know if it's the best slab of ribs I've ever eaten, but it was as close as counts.

We also drove down to Clarksdale, MS and visited the Delta Blues Museum. Pretty cool stuff. I spent a lot of time drooling over the guitars in the display cases. Amy liiked all of the flashy suits and dresses they had from blues notables. Then we drove around the delta for a couple of hours. It's beautiful country. And seeing a lot of the old farm houses, falling-down barns and shacks against the trees and green fields was like stepping into a time machine. Of course, there's some crushing poverty, too in that part of the rural south, and we saw that, too.

**********

Wow. This is getting longer than I'd expected. So, wrapping up....

I haven't been playing the fiddle much lately. I wrote in an earlier post that I have a messed up left shoulder. Well, it's gotten worse in the last couple of weeks. I don't know if I was being too aggressive with the exercises from my physical therapist, or if it's just a continuum that the injury has to go through on it's way to recovery. But it's quite a bit worse. Fortunately, playing the mandolin and uke are still doable for short periods of time. So, I'm not losing my mind completely.

I'll be seeing a new orthopedic surgeon next week to talk about new treatment strategies and will let you all know what happens with that. I'm hoping that he'll recommend a cortizone shot or two and I'll be well on my way. We'll see. I'm also thinking about acupuncture as a possibility. But, I'm keeping as positive an attitude as possible and am sure this is going to be fine soon.

Friday Night Plans

2008-05-15T07:43:00.007-05:00

The weather is finally looking like it's going to be nice for a couple of days in a row. So this Friday evening The Hot Baloney Boys

(me on fiddle, Dan on banjo, and Colleen on guitar) will be out busking in the U. City Loop. Look for us between about 7:30 and 9:30 PM; usually in front of the Star Clipper Comic Shop (Hi, Ben & AJ!) . Come on by and hang out on the street for a while.

Bring cash dollars, please.

Fiddling Pioneers

2008-05-14T08:09:00.003-05:00

On this day in 1804, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, set out from St. Louis on their expedition up the Missouri River to explore the Pacific Northwest. Jefferson wrote to them,

"The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river, and such principal stream of it as by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean whether the Columbia, Oregon, Colorado or any other river may offer the most direct and practicable water communication across this continent for the purposes of commerce."

They took along with them fiddler Pierre Cruzatte who entertained both crew and Native Americans they encountered on the way. Apparently, he wasn't much of a hunter though:

"I was in the act of firing on the Elk ... when a ball struck my left thye about an inch below my hip joint... I instantly supposed that Cruzatte had shot me in mistake for an Elk as I was dressed in brown leather and he cannot see very well..."- Meriwether Lewis, August 11, 1806.

Makes me proud to be a fiddler somehow!

MySpace Boy

2008-05-13T07:47:00.003-05:00

Well, I've taken the leap into the new century with both feet. I've set up a MySpace page. I have no earthly idea what the purpose of these things is supposed to be, but it I had some time on my hands and seemed like the thing to do at the moment.

You can go there now: myspace.com/seanrb

I was amazed by the number of people, organizations and bands that already have pages on MySpace. Some of them pretty entertaining. Looks like I'll have to re-think my belief that this is just a spot for junior high school kids to post embarrassing photos. It's a place for everyone to post embarrassing photos!

Great Saturday!

2008-05-12T08:18:00.006-05:00

I got to spend Saturday afternoon with my Mound City Slickers pals celebrating our fiddler, David's birthday. That's him in the picture. David's wife Donna set it up as a suprise for him. And a nicer afternoon you couldn't ask for.

Three of us old boinkers drove out from the city to David and Donna's place in Jefferson County; a beautiful spring day on their large back deck off the side of a ridge. Birds chirping, turkey buzzard flying over head, nuthatches flitting around.Mostly blue, sunny skies and pleasant temperature.

David came strolling in about fifteen minutes after we got there. The smile on his face was priceless. Donna provided cold beers and sandwiches and left us to our own devices.

We spent the afternoon playing tunes, swapping stories, and laughing a lot. I even got my first sunburn of the season!

I can't imagine a better Saturday afternoon!

Fiddling Monkeys!

2008-04-18T08:11:00.003-05:00

Today is Clarence Darrow’s birthday. He defended both John Scopes in the famed Tennessee Monkey Trial and successfully kept Leopold and Loeb from getting the death penalty.

I laughed out loud this morning when I read this quote from Darrow: "I never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with a lot of pleasure."

Some days I know how he felt.

Our Town

2008-04-17T07:43:00.003-05:00

Today is the birthday of novelist and playwright Thornton Wilder, born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1897 and died in 1975. He's best known for writing Our Town (1938), a play about a woman who grows up in a small New England town, dies, and gets a chance to look back on her life and realize how much she failed to notice. How good that small life really was.

Our Town been my favorite play script for many years. I get it off of the shelf and read it every couple of years and always laugh and cry at the same spots. I've always wanted to play the role of the stage manager. One of the great roles in American theater.

I've also wondered for years why productions of this play, or at least any I've heard of, don't use live New England contra dance music for their background music. It seems like that music would do so much to reinforce the small-town "American-ness" of the script.

Maybe someday.

Why Computers Are Tools Of The Devil

2008-04-07T07:41:00.002-05:00

Despite my best efforts at spyware-defeating software, virus scans, and firewalls, my computer at home got a virus or something and is now at the repair shop doing its impression of a door stop. I'm writing this on my work issued laptop before starting my wonderful and fulfilling work day.

At first I was pretty bothered by the home computer crash, since all of my lesson plans and tab for both my dulcimer students as well as some notes for a new dulcimer book I'm working on are all on the hard drive. Fortunately, I've got most of that stuff backed up on CDs, so it's not a total loss.

On the positive side, it was a beautiful weekend! And since I didn't have any reason to sit in front of the computer I spent time bicycling and sitting outside playing music.

Dan, Colleen W. and I spent time working on some new material for the Hot Baloney Boys on the porch over at her place and drew a nice crowd of neighbors.

All in all, I think my life was better this weekend without the computer. Maybe I'll keep it that way.

It's Muddy Waters' Birthday!

2008-04-04T08:17:00.006-05:00

Born April 4, 1913 (or 15) in Issaquena County, Mississippi

Passed April 30, 1983

Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield) was instrumental in bringing the sound of the delta to Chicago and transforming it into the electric blues that we know today. I can't imagine my teenage years without Muddy's music.

When others of my peers were listening to Led Zepplin, or the Rolling Stones, I was being called by the sources of the music.

Even today, twenty-five years after his passing and forty years or so since I first heard this stuff, when I hear Muddy's recordings of "Mannish Boy" or "I Can't Be Satisfied" I get a chill.

Get your mojo workin'!

Best Joke I've Heard This Week

2008-04-03T08:44:00.006-05:00

Thanks to Rich Hibbs for this at last nights' old-time session:

Fork says to Spoon, "Who was that ladle I saw you with last night?"
Spoon: "That was no ladle, that was my knife!"

It's been that kind of week.

Great Weekend for Music

2008-03-31T08:32:00.004-05:00

As some of you reading this may already know (and some probably don’t, or don’t much care), I’m out of commission for playing the fiddle for a while. The result of some messed up muscles in my shoulder is making holding the fiddle is pretty painful. My doctor and physical therapist have recommended I lay off of it for a while. I’m not, of course, obeying the medical establishment completely; still playing at the Hartford Coffee Company on alternate Sundays and when I have a previously scheduled job with the Baloney Boys. But mostly, I’m being good.

In the meantime, I’m getting out and hearing music.

This weekend I got over to The Folk School of St. Louis on Friday evening to hear Skip Gorman play a concert of cowboy songs and fiddle tunes. He was in town to do some school programs, mandolin and fiddle workshops, and this concert. Much thanks to Colleen, Don, and Ellen over at the school for putting this weekend of events together.

I wasn’t familiar with Skip before Friday night, but was glad I heard him. He played and sang for a couple of hours and it couldn’t have been nicer. The Folk School is a small, intimate space for a concert. I hope the shows there are successful enough to continue since it’s such a good place for this kind of music. The space comfortably holds about 50 people. No sound equipment needed, so no microphones to get between the singer and the audience.

Skip’s a fine fiddle player and played some fine tunes, even getting guitarist Jim Nelson up out of the audience to back him on a few of them including a pretty rendition of “Midnight on the Water” as a last waltz for the evening. His singing of cowboy songs is just right. Among the songs were a few I hadn’t heard in a long time; “Blue Mountain”, "Tom Sherman’s Bar Room”, “Spanish is the Loving Tongue” and others. All of them sung with a smooth style, good humor, and an obvious love and knowledge of the songs, history, and life.

Then Sunday afternoon I headed over to the The Schlafly Tap Room where a benefit for two local musicians was held. Both Fred Gumaer and Bob Breidenbach lost their wives in the last several months and the St. Louis music community came together Sunday to raise money to help them out with medical and other exepenses. It was so good to see so many people crammed into the room to support these guys. Some of the best musicians and bands in town all performing short sets and some of the best music fans in the world there to enjoy it all. I’m sure that a fair amount of money was raised. But even better was the amount of good will that was contained in that upstairs room at the St. Louis Brewery. It’s a great thing to know that I belong to this musical community that is so talented and so generous.

Seminal Fiddlers and Tunes?

2008-01-10T09:04:00.001-06:00

This morning I ran across a blog entry a blog entry over on the Fiddle Hangout site that got me to thinking about essential fiddle tunes and seminal recordings and whatnot. I think the list at this link is a good one for anyone who is interested in highly influential fiddlers and their playing. As you'd expect with any kind of list like this, I have some disagreements with the author. For instance, I’d have picked other tunes than “Rattlesnake” to represent Bob Holt. And maybe would have picked a couple of other fiddlers to represent the Ozark style. But anyone who thinks so highly of Pete McMahan’s playing is okay in my book. (If you don’t have the 2005 (?)collection of McMahan’s recordings, 50 Old Time Fiddle Gems on Voyager Records, you need to pick it up. It’s some of the prettiest fiddling you’ll ever hear.)

My one big gripe about the above list is that it omits some Mississippi fiddlers/bands that I think have been highly influential on current old-time fiddling. Guys like The Mississippi Possum Hunters, Floyd Ming’s Pepsteppers, and Willie Narmour of Narmour and Smith. G. B. Grayson -- though he was from North Carolina and Virginia, not from Mississppi --also comes to mind.

Another take on this (sort of, but well worth taking a look at) is Charlie Walden’s list of 100 Essential Missouri Fiddle Tunes. As the title suggests, it’s tune-oriented rather than player-oriented. And the list is pretty limited by geography and Walden’s preferences. But it’s a good starting point for discussion.

And now.... back to stinkin' work.

Banjo Conversation

2008-01-07T20:47:00.000-06:00

I recently had a woman acquaintance tell me that hearing the banjo really turns her on. And has since she was young.

I've never had anyone tell me that about the fiddle.

I think I need to start playing the banjo in public more often.

New Ink

2008-01-06T18:45:00.001-06:00

Pictures of the latest addition. I had this done by Melissa at Cheap Trx last Sunday, 12/30. Right shoulder. She did a fine job on the lap dulcimer, I thought, seeing as she didn't know what one is. And the color turned out well, too. You'll have to forgive the poor photo quality as I took it myself.

Next up will be the peg head and neck of my Ramsey banjo along the right side of my back to go with the fiddle peg head and neck that's there now.

Eureka! We've found Bluegrass!

2008-01-06T18:16:00.000-06:00

Friday evening saw Uncle Dan'l and me out at the MABC Bluegrass festival in the Eureka, MO Holiday Inn. We had a pretty good time hanging out at the fiddle and banjo contests and jamming in and around the bar/swimming pool area.

There were several Folk School of St. Louis teachers and students roaming the halls and jamming.

We hadn't known that Hot Baloney Boys bandmate Colleen and her sister were going to be there, but ran into them anyway. The were having a great time as seen in the photo below.

The Bluegrass Party Twins!

Colleen had her mandolin with her and was trying it out on all kinds of new tunes. It was the first time she'd let Dan and me hear her play it. Here's hoping we can get her to play it a lot more often! She sounded pretty good.

Later on, we ran into Steve and Crystal Craig and Mike Hall of Miss Crystal and the Codgers. They invited us to jam with them and we spend a couple of hours sharing tunes, including a spirited (and we had the spirits to prove it!) "Booth Shot Lincoln", "Grasshopper Sittin' on a Sweet Potato Vine", and a zen-like "Sandy Boys" that went on for quite a while. Old-Time trance music: my favorite!

UncleDan'l and Colleen with her new mandolin

Steve and Crystal Craig with Dan

It was the first time I've had chance to play tunes with Mike Hall, though I've heard him play a few times. It was a terrific experience. He's a good player and a heck of a nice guy.

Mike Hall cools his fingers after a hot fiddle tune!

All in all a good night. Dan and I drove home around midnight with that pleasant buzz one gets from playing tunes (and a helping or two of Budweiser's finest).

First Night Four Days Later

2008-01-04T13:09:00.001-06:00

Had a real good time playing for First Night in St. Louis New Year's Eve. We had a big crowd and a whole lot of dancers. The band (Mound City Slickers) sounded great and Mac did yeoman's work calling the contras for a bunch of folks who'd never danced before.

If you're wondering what you missed, we'll be playing for another dance on Sunday evening, January 27 for Childgrove Dancers at the Monday Club in Webster Groves, MO. For more info, click on the Childgrove link in the previous sentence.

Christmas Shopping. Eeek!

2007-12-20T08:39:00.000-06:00

So, here it is December 20 and I still have tons of Christmas presents to buy. Usually, I have everything in hand and most of it wrapped by now. But this time around was different. My day job (stinkin’ work) has been unusually busy the last few months; I waaaay overcommitted my spare time for music gigs and directing a play for a local theater company; a lung infection slowed me down for two months; and the Folk School, where I do some work and am on their Board of Directors, has been in the process of moving to a new space with all of the attendant lunacy and headaches. Not that I’m complaining or making excuses!! Most of the stuff I’ve been involved in (well, except for the lung thing and stinkin’ work) has been a lot of fun. And it has had some terrific side effects and benefits. But it has gotten in the way of my taking part in the crazy seasonal consumerism. Which, now that I look at it, may actually be another one of the benefits.

Now time is short and I’m stumped. Presents for wife Amy and daughter China are pretty easy to decide on. I know their likes and needs pretty well. My brothers and sister and I don’t much exchange gifts anymore. We just get together to celebrate the day – Mom’s birthday is also December 25 – so there’s a lot to celebrate.

But then there’s the stumper: What to get for my musician friends? A new fiddle or guitar is a little out of my price range. Flat picks, even the hand carved specialty numbers, seem like they’d be too chintzy. Instructional books or DVDs might send the wrong message. I don’t know what CDs they already have on their shelves.

So I guess a trip to my local music shop is in order. Maybe I can even sneak over there on my lunch hour today. I just hope I don’t come home with more goodies for me than presents for others!

Christmas Winds and a House Party

2007-12-17T10:00:00.000-06:00

Friday night was music start to finish. I can't think of a better way to spend it.

I started out going to a concert by the St. Louis Wind Symphony at St. Anthony of Padua church on the south side of town. A friend plays flute with the symphony and I always enjoy supporting her. The church is beautiful. Huge, high ceilings. A very impressive altar area. Lots of statues of religious figures, paintings of Bible scenes on the walls and ceilings. It’s a great place to hear music. Though the acoustics aren’t the best.

The concert started out with a few vocal numbers by the Carondolet Sisters. They’re all nuns from the nunnery that adjoins the church, though for tonight they were all dressed in holiday style with red sweaters and jackets. All singing their hearts out.

Then the wind symphony took over and played a dozen or so pieces of holiday themed music. Nice big sounding stuff. And my friend Andrea had some good moments to show off her piccolo playing.

After the concert, Andrea’s husband Bob and I headed over to a moving out house party given by my friend and fellow fiddler, Megan. She’s moving to another state to be with her fella. Good for her! Seeing as she had moved all of her furniture already, she invited friends and acquaintances in for a final party at the house. It was pretty great! A hot session going in the dining room and square dancing in the adjoining living room. I played a lot of tunes (some of which I’d even played before!) for hours. Some of the highlights of the session were playing tunes with a Japanese fella, Aki (sp?) who’s visiting St. Louis for a while. He’s a fine fiddler and plays a lot of squirrelly, crooked tunes. Which, of course, I can never get enough of. As well as Aki, some of the best old-time players in town were there. What a pleasure to play with those folks.

Good-natured ribbing was the order of the evening, too. In honor of Aki’s nationality, we changed the names of tunes to “Whale [Ham] Beats All Meat” and “Whale [Squirrel] Hunters”.

Later on a cute young lady sat down next to me with her cello and played for an hour or so. The sound of a cello in an old-time string band setting is a beautiful thing. It did cause me to wonder why at any old-time music gathering, there always seems to be an over-abundance of good looking women and funny-looking men. Just the way of the world, I suppose.

When my fingers wore out around 1:00 AM, I managed to wander around the other rooms of the house and run into many friends and acquaintances; catch up with their news and have some laughs (as well as some beer, whiskey, and a truly historic egg nog! All in moderation, of course.). By the end of it, as I was driving home and the snow was starting to flurry, I had really gotten the old Christmas spirit. It doesn’t get much better.

I've got to start taking my camera with me more often so I can share pictures of this stuff with all of you.

Five Rules for Happiness

2007-12-12T07:54:00.000-06:00

I have a printed card stuck in the mirror in the room where I meditate in the morning. The mirror is over the shelf onto which I dump everything out of my pockets at the end of the day. So, even mornings when I don't find the time to meditate (which seems like every morning lately -- must do something about that), I see the card and read what's printed on it. I also that I think about what's on the card frequently even when I'm not looking at it. Maybe it's become kind of a mantra for me. Certainly it's become a touchstone.

I can't take credit for this. The card was given to me by John Grimaud, who helped me a lot in getting through a very rough patch a while back. He said something like "Follow these rules and you'll always be happy." I'm was pretty skeptical at the time, but on reflection, it has seemed to work pretty well for me. See what you think.

Grimaud's Five Rules for Happiness:
1. Don't sweat the small stuff.
2. It's all small stuff.
3. You can't always get what you want. (Jagger's theorem)
4. Nothing lasts forever.
5. Nothing is as bad as it seems. (Dad's Rule)

Thoughts The Weekend Brought With It

2007-12-02T08:49:00.000-06:00

A couple of days ago, I was exchanging emails with a good friend. During the course of the conversation, she mentioned that she had always wanted to put together a cabaret act and perform it here in town, but that other commitments like raising two kids and a husband, having a day job, and the rest of life have got in the way of doing the work on the act. Now, she's a terrific actress and singer. And a cabaret act would seem like a natural thing for her to do.

I wrote back saying so and offered to help out with putting it together or filling a director's role when it was ready for that, or whatever. I even suggested that a group I work with has been talking about a fundraiser and maybe this would be a good opportunity for her to perform an evening of cabaret to raise money for them. Mostly, as soon as I read that she'd been wanting to do it, I wanted to hear it. Suddenly, though, with the prospect of actually having a place to do the act and some help pulling it together -- as vague as the deadline(sometime) and the offer of help (whatever) were -- this possibility became frightening. And I can see what she means. This is something important to her that she's been nurturing the idea of for a long time.

When you're acting, there's that sort of invisible fourth wall that the playwright builds between you and the audience. No matter how raw or exposed you may seem to be on the stage, there's always that thin, invisible barrier to hide behind. But in a cabaret act, you're right there with the audience mere feet away. And you have to relate directly to them. And what if they don't like you or the songs aren't any good, or the voice isn't as good as you thought it was, or... or... or...

Yesterday afternoon, I went to hear Ellis Paul at a club here in St. Louis. Bear with me, here. I'm actually going to make a point soon.

Anyway, I went to hear Ellis Paul at a club here in St. Louis. Now I'm not much of a fan of singer-songwriters, preferring my folk music to be played on fiddles and banjos and to be a hundred or so years old. But Ellis is one of those few singer-songwriters that I really enjoy. I do my best to catch him whenever he plays here in St. Louis. His songs are generally uplifting, even when they're about loss or sorrow. I go to his live shows and always come away feeling better. There's just such an exuberance and energy that fills the stage when Ellis is up there. For me, anyway, one of his concerts is a way for me to get my reserves of happiness and hopefulness refilled.

So, I'm sitting there watching this guy up on the stage smiling and singing at the top of his voice, strumming the guitar like this may be his last chance to do it and he wants to enjoy every chord. And a light bulb clicked on in my head for me. If people walked around with thought ballons over ther heads like in the comics, right then, mine would have had a light bulb in it with wiggly lines radiating from it to show how bright it was. I mean, this was one of those real "light bulb: moments you hear about. I thought,
"This is what it's about. This guy is standing up on a stage and singing about such personal stuff with such a positive attitiude. He's in front of a whole crowd of people he doesn't know, doing something that could be hugely embarrassing. But he's fearless. He's having the time of his life."

And you know what? So were all the people in the audience.

And I knew at that moment that there really aren't any excuses. We're all meant to be having a good time and doing what we love; trying things we usually only think about. Sure, stuff gets in the way. Yeah, we might not be good at it the first time out. We probably will have to put some sweat and time into it. But when you get there.... when it finally happens for you... Wow.

Doesn't matter if it's learning the fiddle in middle age, or playing in a really good old-time dance band. Or acting, or writing poetry or that novel you know you have in you. If it's painting still lifes or pictures of tree tops and clouds in the sky, starting a garden in the back yard, losing weight, making new friends, learning to tap dance or to do magic tricks. And keeping at it until it feels right and you know you're good at it.

Or putting that cabaret act together, rehearsing it, and taking it out in front of people.

Whatever it is that you know you need to do to let you be the happiest person in the room, it's time right now to do it. As one of Ellis Paul's songs goes,

"You gotta get going,

Hey, the world ain't slowin' down

For no one."

Fine Times At Bob’s House

2007-11-28T09:15:00.000-06:00

I had the great pleasure of spending Tuesday evening at friend and fellow Mound City Slicker, Bob’s house rehearsing with the rest of the Slickers as well as Baloney Boy Uncle Dan H. Really, it was just the bunch of us playing tunes, telling stories, having a few beers, and laughing a lot. But, we’re supposed to be getting ready to play for a couple of dances coming up in the next few weeks, so we call it a rehearsal.

Some of the tunes we played were:
"Angeline the Baker"
"Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss"
"Jump in the Well My Pretty Little Miss" (She gets around, huh?)
"Old Dubuque"
"Kitchen Girl"
"Cold Frosty Morning"
"Upper Lehigh"
Valiant attempts at "The Jenny Lind Polka" and "Lowery’s Quadrille"

"Sara Armstrong's Tune"
"Nancy Rowland" (which I hadn’t even thought of in a good ten years)
"Needle Case"
"Stay All Night"
And a bunch of others I was having too good a time to remember playing.

I’ve said it many times before, but I just have to repeat it: Getting together with friends to play old-time music is about the best time I have every week.

The Mound City Slickers playing for Childgrove Dancers earlier this year

Mark your calendars now for upcoming Mound City Slickers dates:
December 31, 2007 – First Night St. Louis. We’ll be playing for a contra and square dance from 6:30 to 8:00 PM in the Grand Hall, upstairs at the Grandel Theater. Mac McKeever calling the dances. This event is extremely family friendly and kids of all ages are encouraged to come by and dance.

January 27, 2008 – Childgrove Dancers Weekly Contra Dance at the Monday Club in Webster Groves, MO. 7:00 to 10:00 PM. No idea who’s calling that one yet.

True Story Story Swear To God *

2007-11-27T08:06:00.000-06:00

No really.

I was in a book store the other day and had my fiddle case on my shoulder, because I never leave it in the car. It’s usually a conversation point for folks and this was no exception. The very young girl (19 or 20?) behind the counter asked what it was and…

ME: It’s a fiddle.
HER: What do you play?
ME: Old-Time music, mostly.
HER: What, like the Beatles?
ME: A dumbfounded sort of stare.
HER: What?… They’re pretty old.

I laughed pretty hard.

* I copped the title of this installment from the title of my current favorite comic book, True Story Swear To God . It’s funny, romantic, and involving. Independent and black and white. No superheroes at all. It's about the relationship of Tom Beland, the artist and writer of the book with Lily, his now wife, from the time of their meeting. Not only is it a great read, Tom is one of the nicest guys in the world. A year or two ago when I started reading the book, I sent him an email telling him how much I liked it. A couple of weeks later, the phone rings at home and who should be on the other end, but Tom Beland calling from his home in Puerto Rico to thank me for the email and have a conversation about the book and comics in general. What a surprise!

So, go click on the the blue clicky linky thing above and check out his website. Then go over to Star Clipper Comics on Delmar (where they let Dan and me busk in front of their store and actually seem to like it!) and pick up a copy of the comic. I think you’ll like it.

You know, it’s just occurred to me that the explanation of the title is longer than the original post. Weird.

Zen and the art of performance art

2007-11-14T13:44:00.000-06:00

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the similarities between acting and playing music. One of the things I’ve noticed is that for either of these to be any good, the person doing the playing (in both senses) has to be both open and in the moment. The more they can be, the better the result.

Being open starts with stopping one’s mind from spinning about other things. That Buddhist “monkey mind”. One has to not be aware of “where do I put my fingers next” or “what’s my next line”. Those things only get between you and the enjoyment of what’s happening around you. If we can focus on what our acting partner is doing right now, or what’s happening in the music right now, and notice that these things are simply and unselfconsciously just happening, it becomes an invitation to relax, breathe, slow down your perceptions and give your full attention to enjoying the moment. Pause, relax, breathe. It doesn’t matter if the moment is being engaged fully with another actor on the stage or with the sounds surrounding you. It’s time to take a deep, unhurried breath and go with the flow.

Once you’ve done that, you can really start playing. Time becomes irrelevant because there’s only right now! And you’ll find that the scene is over before you realize it or that you’ve been playing the fiddle for half an hour when it seems like only a couple of minutes.

This has only happened to me a couple of times on stage. Though it happens more frequently (still not as much as I’d like) when playing tunes. But it’s pretty much the best thing there is.

Not Much Fiddle or Dulcimer Content Here Today...

2007-11-13T18:07:00.000-06:00

...But I do want to plug Skylight, the play I've just directed for West End Players Guild. The play opened last Friday night and I couldn't be happier with it. A powerful script, beautifully acted, it's something I'm really proud of. Here are a few photos taken at a dress rehearsal.

Ain't she gorgeous, folks!

So, come on out and see it if youre in the St. Louis area. Friday and Saturday 11/16 & 17 at 8:00 and Sunday the 18th at 2:00. West End Players in the theater space at Union Avenue Church, 733 North Union (1 block from Delmar).

Obligatory fiddle/dulcimer content: You know, I think Kitchen Girl sounds good on either instrument and is equally fun to play.

Other Players, Other Sounds

2007-10-31T13:37:00.000-05:00

It's amazing to me how different people can take the same set of notes and the same instruments and make a tune sound so different. I was reminded of this the last few days while playing with different sets of musicians.

The first was last Saturday evening. I got hired to play fiddle for a barn dance in The Middle Of Nowhere, Illinois with a band I've never played with before. Their regular fiddler couldn't make it and their mandolin player is a friend of mine. It was a fun time! The band is a little more bluegrass-y than I usually play with and their approach to the tunes is different. I think we sounded fine, and the people at the dance (both those who danced and those who sat by the bonfire outside) seemed to like the music just fine. But some tunes I've played for years came out sounding pretty interesting with this combination of players. One of the things that struck me was the guitar playing. This guitarist wasn't really familiar with most of the tunes and is much more used to playing flatpick leads and solos based on scales and chord patterns than he is with just chunking the rhythm behind a fiddle for square and contra dancers. Still, his playing was rhytmically solid though pretty much unornamented.

Then last night, Dan and I played with our friend Brandt; running through some of the more oddball tunes that we play together. The Hot Baloney Boys have been asked to be the opening act for a band playing at Pop's Blue Moon next Saturday evening (Nov. 10) and Colleen, our regular guitar player can't make it for the gig. So, Brandt has volunteered to sit in with us.

When playing with Brandt, he changes the whole tone of the Baloney Boys. Good rhythm, of course, because he understands the function of the guitar in old-time music. But with Brandt, there's a whole different chordal sensibility than what Colleen brings or what I would play in his place. Definitely not bad, but different. He'll hang on a chord a half a beat or a beat longer than I would expect or he'll try a G-chord where I'd use an E or an E-minor. And his bass runs often go to unexpected places. What's really surprising is how much Dan and my playing changed adapting to the different sounds we were hearing.

Two different guitarists (three if you count Colleen) and each brings a different sort of underpinning to the tunes. How cool is that?

Go See This Play!

2007-10-29T08:50:00.000-05:00

When I'm not exercising my creative muscles with music, I do some work with local theater companies. The latest is directing David Hare's Skylight for West End Players. We're a little less than two weeks from opening and, so far, I have to say it's the best thing I've worked on. The script is one I really care about, the actors (Renee Sevier0Monsey, Robert Ashton, & Jared Nell) are doing some of the best work I've ever seen from them. I think we're headed in the right direction with this piece, and I couldn't be happier with the production overall.

The play is funny, sad, romantic, sexy, and disturbing all at the same time.

Directing this, I've seen it a couple of dozen times now and haven't been bored yet! What more could you want?

I really hope that all of my friends and those of you who read this and are in the St. Louis area will come out and see this.

BTW: Thanks to Marjorie Williamson for the great graphic above.

You Need This!

2007-10-26T07:56:00.000-05:00

I was lucky enough to run into Jim Nelson while listening to Jim and Kim Lansford at Sqwires a couple of Sundays ago and found out about the recently released Bear Family CD focusing on Cousin Emmy that he was instrumental (along with Mike Seeger) in getting put together and released.

Some of you know Jim as a teacher and board member of the Folk School of St. Louis. Others know him as one of the best old-time guitarists in the country and a member of the Ill-Mo Boys string band or for his contributions to the Old-Time Herald magazine. And, of course, Jim's just a heckuva nice guy.

But he’s also a well respected folklorist and music historian. In this case, Jim contributed to the excellent and extensive liner notes in this package as well as having unearthed some of the radio recordings that make up a good portion of this CD.

There’s some information on Cousin Emmy here that I’d known before. My granddad was a country fiddler and guitarist in the St. Louis and Southern Illinois areas and had introduced me to Emmy’s music many years ago. There’s also a St. Louis connection since Emmy was based in the St. Louis area for a number of years and had a daily radio program on KMOX before it went to an all talk format. Even so, much of the biographical information on her contained in Jim’s fine essay was brand new to me.

The music here is great stuff. Thirty-eight tracks in all with Emmy on banjo (she taught Grandpa Jones to play claw-hammer), guitar, fiddle, and harmonica with vocals. Tracks include “Bowling Green”, “Johnny Booker”, “Chilly Scenes of Winter”, “Ruby”, “Milk Cow Blues”, “Free Little Bird”, “Groundhog” and many others. The sound has been remastered from the older recordings and radio acetates and is clear and remarkably free of extraneous noise.

Altogether, this is an impressive package and I can’t recommend it highly enough for fans of old-time music, early country, or Cousin Emmy.

I understand that Jim has a few copies for sale. Ask him about it next time you see him.

Current Tunes

2007-10-25T08:20:00.000-05:00

Here's a short list of the tunes I've been working on getting into my fingers the last week or so.

Old Mother Flannigan (a squared up version that can be played for dancers)
Jump In The Well My Pretty Little Miss
Bonaparte's March
Hobart's Transformation
John Short's Tune
Jenny Lind Polka

Lately I've been in a polka kind of mood, which accounts for the last two titles. If this keeps up, I imagine it'll be "Red Hills Polka" next.

I've also promised some dulcimer players that I'll write out the tablature for "Bonaparte's March" for them. So, I guess I'd better find time for that in the next little while.

A Day At The Garlic Fair

2007-10-23T13:48:00.000-05:00

I had a real nice time this last Saturday playing with some friends at the Gateway Greening
garden headquarters. They had their Garlic Day and Harvest Fair and wanted some Old-Time music for the occasion. We got together a pickup group for the occasion: Bill Stewart and myself on fiddle, Bob Clark and Uncle Dan’l Higgins on banjo, and Alice S. on guitar. The tunes were pretty good, the weather was beautiful and the setting couldn’t have been better.

These are such great folks to play with! When Bill and I get a head of steam up, it’s off to the races, buddy! But Bob, Dan and Alice were pretty good natured about it, even if we did strain their strumming arms a little keeping up with the tempos.

They had us play in a covered pavilion in the middle of their couple of acre big community garden. We were surrounded by raised beds of flowers, broccoli, okra, lettuce, cabbage, Italian sage, and lots of other crops. Greens, blues, purples. Really something to see and smell.

And the mix of folks sitting around listening and enjoying was good, too. I have to admit I felt good to have people of all colors, ages and economic rungs; inner city (where the garden is located) and suburban folks too, all sitting together listening to these old tunes. Maybe we’ll get over this ridiculous polarization that our government seems to foster yet with enough good music and good food to help us get through it.

The gardeners also had a table set up so folks could bottle their own herbed/flavored vinegars, which was great fun. I stuffed some garlic cloves, chili peppers, basil and thyme into a jar and covered it with red wine vinegar. Now, I gather I wait for about a month while the alchemy takes place and start using the vinegar to cook with. My mouth is watering already!

Things finished off with a pot luck barbecue and a pie contest. Unfortunately, I was so intent on playing “Squirrel Hunters” for Alice that I missed out on getting a piece of the prize-winning sweet potato pie. The pulled pork and all of the fresh home-made salads were enough to content me, though.

The day was capped for me (as it often is) by an older woman coming over as we were packing up our instruments to go. She said she had moved to St. Louis years ago from rural Alabama, but that our music took her right back there to where she’d grown up. She hadn’t heard that music in years and so much enjoyed it.

Pretty good day, if I must say so myself.

What I'm Essentially Listening To

2007-08-27T09:43:00.000-05:00

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.

Boy Howdy! What A Fine Time

2007-08-22T10:46:00.000-05:00

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.

Gateway Dulcimer Festival 2007 Post Mortem

2007-08-20T14:22:00.000-05:00

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!

Dulcimer Playing Weekend!

2007-08-17T09:52:00.000-05:00

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.

What is "Jeopardy", Alex?

2007-08-10T08:34:00.000-05:00

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?

Too much stuff in too small a bag

2007-07-26T12:08:00.000-05:00

Wow. Once again, my life seems to have exploded. Way too much to do and not enough waking hours in the day to do it. As a result, my time playing fiddle and dulcimer has gotten slimmer and slimmer and my time thinking of things to post here has gotten non-existent. I mean, I like to be busy... but geez... there’s a limit, y’know.

I think there’s light at the end of the tunnel, though.

Of course, the day job is still pretty hectic and that doesn’t look like letting up any time soon. Not ‘til sometime in 2012 anyway…

But next week looks pretty commitment free outside of work. And I’m determined to start taking a yoga class during that lull. Then the first few days of August will be taken up with a trip to Chicago with Amy for her to audition for Jeopardy, which should be fun. So, maybe that’ll all help me to de-stress and find more time and energy for making music and learning new tunes.

And as I'm reading this, I'm thinking, "That last paragraph sounds pretty action-packed for a guy who's trying to shed commitments and simplify his time." And I've got to shake my head and laugh.

More later...

I. D. Stamper: Ozarks Dulcimer

2007-07-19T08:41:00.000-05:00

If you haven't come across it already, let me point you towards the Digital Library of Appalachia. It's a terrific resource providing online access to the archives of about a dozen special collections of Appalachian College libraries relating to southern and central Appalachian culture. Of special interest to me are the collection of mp3 files of I.D. Stamper playing and talking.

Stamper was a dulcimer player who was born in the Ozarks of Arkansas in 1904 and moved with his family to eastern Kentucky when he was young. His dulcimer playing is just terrific with a drive and energy that one hears in the Appalachian styles, but tempered by the (to my ear) less rhytmic and more melodic playing of the Ozarks. I love his playing and can't get enough of it. I hope you enjoy it, too. As well as the rest of the gold mine of music and information in these archives!

What Is It With These Cheap Skates, Anyway?

2007-07-15T20:00:00.001-05:00

This past Friday night, Dan (we perform together as The Hot Baloney Boys) and I spent a few hours playing busking on the corners of St. Louis' Central West End district. It's a very hip area of town with a lot of galleries, bars, restaurants, and clubs. The weather Friday was beautiful and there was a lot of foot traffic on the streets. Even so, we made very little money. People seemed to enjoy the music, and we had one woman who spent a considerable amount of time taking photos of us and telling us how great we were. Then she left us a dollar.

Now, I'm not in this for the money. Dan and I get out and busk as often as we can, mostly because it gives us a chance to play together and gets us out into the fresh air. Usually we make enough to buy a couple of beers when we're done, and that's just fine. But for gosh sake, show a little love, people! What I noticed on Friday was that people who sat at nearby sidewalk cafe tables and were obviously enjoying the music; tapping their feet, talking and nodding or pointing to us, waving at us would then get up from their table and walk past us even averting their eyes in an attempt to pretend that we were no longer there, not even throwing a single into the fiddle case at our feet.

We had one guy stop and talk for a while to let us know that he thought it was great that we were playing on the street, that it really adds something to the life of the neighborhood. Said he couldn't figure out why there wasn't more of this going on in an area with such great night life. Shook my hand and then walked away without tipping at all.

Don't these folks make the connection that maybe there aren't more musicians on their streets because they don't tip the ones that are already there??? Come on, people! Give a little more and you'll get a lot. It's a basic rule of things. Art and music aren't free, no matter how much you'd like for them to be. Musicians are not all hippy-dippy artists with no need for cash. They're working folks just like you with families to support and mortgages and rent to cover every month. They spend hours and hours learning new tunes and practicing to constantly get better on their instruments. But, if the local residents and folks spending time in the arts and cafe districts don't make it worthwhile for local musicians to get out and busk and contribute their talent to making St. Louis a vital, hip, living city, they're not going to do it. You're at least half of the equation.

A Dream Returned

2007-07-13T07:39:00.000-05:00

During a lesson I was teaching a few months ago, I noticed that the tuner for the high string on my main dulcimer was slipping. By the end of the lesson, it was completely gone and wouldn't stay in tune at all.

Modern Mountain Dulcimer Dream Model
Walnut w/Spruce bottom and Ebony fretboard

I was bummed.

This was my main player. Sure, I've got other lap dulcimers. And I like them fine, to varying degrees. But this is the one I love playing the best. It's got a beautiful, tight, woody sound; the action is perfect for me; it just feels good under my hands. It's a Dream model made by David McKinney of Modern Mountain Dulcimers like the one pictured above. According to David, he had a dream about making dulcimers upside down, with the holes in the bottom and he just did it. He made this one a few years ago and it's just gotten better and better over time. I love it and am so glad that this one found its way to me. (Another story entirely, but a good one.)

After the lesson, I got home, put the instrument away and then got busy. So busy that for the last couple of months, I haven't had time (or made time) to get the dulcimer to Andy Gribble to get it repaired. I think about it every time I pick up a dulcimer to play or teach a lesson, but life and work and meetings all have gotten in the way.

Well, finally, last week, I made the time. Took it over to Andy and explained the problem. We looked in catalogs for replacement tuners, talked about what needed to be done and agreed it would take a couple of weeks for him to get the repairs done.

Andy called me night before last to let me know he'd gotten it done. It turned out that there was a set screw on the end of the tuner that had gotten loose and just needed to be tightened up. Had it been a banjo, that's the first thing I would have done: tightened that screw. Somehow, because it was a dulcimer, I didn't even think of it. Dopey me.

I picked that big ole, upside down dulcimer up from Andy last night, sat it on my lap and played it for a long time. I'm sure I had a big grin on my face. It sounded so good! At first I thought it was new strings, but no, it wasn't. Just the feel and sound of getting reacquainted with an old friend. It reminded me how much I really do like that instrument.

I guess it is true what they say about abscence making the heart grow fonder.

Another Old-Time Weekend

2007-07-09T08:25:00.000-05:00

It was another one of those transcendent weekends of old-time music. The Folk School of St. Louis brought Dan Gellert to St. Louis for a couple of day-long workshops on playing banjo and fiddle. Dan’s one of the modern masters of old-time music (kind of an oxymoron there, eh?) and a one of the nicest guys you could hope to meet, as well. His banjo and fiddle playing is pretty unique these days, incorporating Round Peak styles of playing and a very heavy influence from African-American players like Dink Roberts. It’s glorious, rhythmic, danceable stuff that you just don’t hear very often. Along with the workshops there was a house concert with Dan at my friend Andy’s loft down on Washington Street on Saturday evening and then Dan, Andy and Dave played for the Childgrove dance.

I didn’t have a chance to sit in on the banjo workshop on Saturday afternoon, but everyone I talked to who did was glowing about it. To a person, they said Dan’s teaching changed and improved the way they think about playing the banjo and felt it would make them better players. You can’t get better than that.

The house concert was wonderful in every sense. I need to thank both Andy and Colleen for all they did to make this happen. There were around fifty people there in Andy’s big loft apartment to hear Dan play. Many new who he was and many had only the vaguest idea, but had heard that he was good. The sense of community among the people and the good will floating around the room was beautiful. You couldn’t be there and not feel welcomed and part of something very fine. Even beyond the music, that’s the thing that I love most about the Folk School and what it does: this bringing together of people of different backgrounds and ages and providing new, positive experiences for a community of people.

For about forty-five minutes, people arrived; milled around; greeted old friends and met new ones; found places to sit; settled in with beer, wine, pop, water. Then Dave Landreth introduced Dan Gellert to the crown and the concert began.

Listening to Dan play in such a close setting with such rapt attention was really magical. There’s something about his playing and his commitment to his sources that transported the whole bunch of us to another place. The music could have been old 78’s played on an ancient machine, a rent party in the 30’s, or a hot summer evening on an Appalachian front porch. Everyone in the loft was held rapt by the sound of the fretless banjo and tapping of this man’s foot. And everyone had a big smile or a look of amazement on their face as they sat happily entranced.

After about an hour, there was a break for everyone to socialize some more and share their thoughts about what they’d just heard, which more often than not, amounted to “Wow!” For me, even though I couldn’t have enjoyed it more, I was left thinking (as I often do, if I’m honest with myself), “every time I think I’m getting to be a half-way good fiddler, I hear someone like Dan Gellert and realize how much further I have to go.”

Then another set of banjo and fiddle tunes. A few songs thrown into the mix.

When it was all over, most of the people left happy. After so much laughing and talking and hugs and handshakes, how could you not? A few of us stayed and broke out our instruments to play, talk and drink some more before heading out into the hot St. Louis summer night.

Gosh, I’m lucky to live in a time and place where this kind of thing can go on and I can be a part of it.

No Music Related Content At All... Just Books Today

2007-07-05T09:01:00.000-05:00

Here's hoping everyone had a big time on Independence Day. For me, it was a good chance to sit with a good book in the morning, spend some time at a barbecue with friends in the afternoon, and listen to my neighborhood sounding like Beirut in the evening.

I had high hopes for getting out in the yard and doing some much needed clearing of weeds and vines by the fence, but it just didn't happen. I'd started reading Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert the evening of the 3rd, and went right back to it over breakfast in the morning. As a result, nothing got done in the yard, and I expect to see tigers prowling that jungle any day now.

Ms. Gilbert had also written The Last American Man, which I read a couple of years ago and really enjoyed. I'm liking this latest book even more. It has food writing, a search for spiritual awakening, and some pretty funny (ha-ha, not funny peculiar) and maybe pretty insightful thoughts on love and relationships. All good stuff for a summer read.

Speaking of books, I don't read a lot of fiction, but I finished a novel a few days ago that I want to recommend. It's Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. Just a terrific book that I raced through in only a couple of days. Again, highly recommended.

That's it for now. Next time, I promise more on old-time music.

Another Old-Time Stringband for Peace

2007-07-03T07:14:00.000-05:00

I've been playing with Dan and Colleen as The Hot Baloney Boys for a while now. We've got a regular Sunday morning thing at the Hartford Coffee Company. A few weeks ago, we sat in the coffee shop window and took the picture below for the American Friends' Friends for Peace campaign.

This is an online campaign to show the faces of the pro-peace majority in the U.S. who are committed to ending the war in Iraq, and we were proud to take part in it.

Click these links to go to the find more information on the Friends For Peace campaign, and more info on the American Friends Service Committee. They're a good organization and well worth supporting in times of war or peace.

Get active. Stay aware.

Pictures from Sunday's Dance

2007-06-28T13:27:00.000-05:00

Here are some pictures from the dance we played Sunday night. Thanks to Paul Stamler for taking the pictures while we were busy playing and thanks to Bill Stewart for putting them on a CD and giving a copy to me.

Hope you enjoy seeing these as much as I enjoyed playing there!

The band (with caller's foot)

The first contra of the evening

Dancing to "My Own House Waltz"

The view from the bandstand

A closer look at the Mound City Slickers:

Roy

David

Bill

Bob

Sean (your humble author)

This all looks like a lot of fun, doesn't it?

Big Fun at the Dance

2007-06-25T09:43:00.000-05:00

The contra dance band that I play with, The Mound City Slickers, played for the Childgrove Country Dancers last night. I can’t tell you how much fun it was. This was the first dance we’ve played for with our current lineup of two fiddles, banjo, guitar, and ukulele, and with all due modesty, I want to say we were hot. I think we impressed the callers, too, since we took requests and didn’t have any trouble changing up the set list to accommodate the dances that the callers wanted to call.

It was interesting (and fun) that there was a different caller for each dance last night; something that I’ve not run into before. Each caller had a different level of experience and a different style. But we got through them all without a train wreck and had a blast doing it. I think mixing up the callers kept us interested as well as the dancers because of all the differences.

Other excitement for the evening was that there was a casting crew at the dance for some reality show called The Farmer’s Wife or something like that. Apparently, they’re going to film this TV program in or around St. Louis (a hotbed of farming and rural life…. Yeah. Right.) where ten women from L.A. try to get a farm boy to pick them to marry and win a lot of money. One of the “tasks” that they’ll have the women do to prove they’re worthy is go to a square dance. Likely, the point will be to show how goofy and humorous folks who square dance are. Anyway, we had a group of heavily tattooed, very hip young women from Hollywood running around with cameras filming the dance and getting people to sign up to possibly be dancers when they film the actual dance for the show. Which I understand they’re going to film under the Gateway Arch. Yes, it makes no sense to me either. But we all had a good time watching them film the band and the dancers and the five of us agreed that if they asked us to play for the dance on TV and gave us a lot of money, we’d be more than happy to do it.

Of course, as always, the big fun of the evening was getting to play tunes and watch the dancers having so much fun moving around the floor. It’s what the music is all about. It just doesn’t get any better than playing good music with friends for a bunch of appreciative dancers. I don’t know how long I’ll keep smiling about last night. Probably a long time.

Battle Ground

2007-06-24T15:29:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm back from the Battle Ground festival and I'm soggy, but not much worse for wear. Even though there was a lot of rain and my brother and I drove back Saturday afternoon instead of Sunday morning as we'd intended to do, we had a real good time while we were there. Saturday was beautiful. Mild temperatures and sun without a lot of humidity. No problems putting up our tents, and the new pop-up canopy I'd bought since getting back from Mt. Airy worked like a dream, giving us shade and a good place to sit, play tunes, and drink a few beers.

Picture actually taken in 2005.

I forgot to take any this year!

The evening concert was good, though too long. Afterwards, we wandered the campground, greeted old friends and new friends, and eventually found our way back to our tents and played tunes until about 2:30 in the morning. Several folks from St. Louis joined us as well as a couple of friends I'd never met before. The big surprise was seeing Bruce, who'd camped next to me at Lanesboro the last two years walk up with his fiddle. He said he hadn't been to Battle Ground for seven years! But he was walking past our campsite and heard good music and decided to sit in for a bit. We neither of us knew the other would be here! When we recognized each other it was hugs and how-ya-doin's all around. Then a few more tunes.

Again, 2005

Unfortunately, the rain came about 4:00 AM and kept it up all morning. I managed to get in another couple of hours of playing under the canopy before it, too, got waterlogged and started leaking at the seams. Then word came that there would be thunderstorms rolling in later that afternoon. So, Kevin and I packed up and headed for home. There'll always be next year!

Not A Bad Afternoon At All

2007-06-19T07:49:00.000-05:00

As some of you probably know, I teach mountain dulcimer lessons at The Folk School of St. Louis. Sometimes teaching can be just awful. Students don’t show up; you don’t get paid on time; students don’t practice or their minds are elsewhere during the lesson and sitting there listening to them fumble through a tune is just painful.

Then there are days like yesterday, when I had three students who were so much fun I didn’t want the lessons to end.

My first student of the day came back to lessons after about a month off full of energy and wanting to learn. It was great. Then my second student of the day was even better. She’s been struggling since she started coming in a few months ago. But something seems to have happened recently and she’s now really “getting it”. She’s picking up the tunes faster and seems to have a much more responsive attitude to learning how to play.

Last student of the day was a new one. And what fun! She really seemed happy to be there and we both laughed a lot and had a real good time. I think she’s going to be a good one.

After my regular lessons, I got some time before packing up to sit with a student who’s taking one of the school’s ensemble classes and go over a tune (“Possum On A Rail”) she’s learning on the fiddle with her. Jill’s fairly new to fiddling and was feeling a little unsure of her playing on the tune. I was able to sit and play it for her a couple of times so she could hear that she is remembering/playing it correctly and that it’s not really a hard tune at all. She beamed when she realized that she can play it for the class.

Quite a day. Three good teaching experiences in one afternoon. It makes the more difficult ones all worth doing.

"Marmaduke's Hornpipe" and Me

2007-06-15T14:03:00.000-05:00

Imagine my surprise! I was sitting around at the Folk School of St. Louis one day earlier this week, waiting for one of my dulcimer students to show up and happened to pick up an old copy of The Devil’s Box to read. The Devil’s Box was a now defunct magazine about fiddling and fiddlers that ran for a few years. There was an article in this particular issue written by Dr. Howard Marshall (whose Fiddling Missouri CD on the Voyager label is well worth having, by the way) on the tune "Marmaduke’s Hornpipe". Now, this is a tune I really enjoy playing, so the article was a much welcome time-killer.

Right at the beginning, Dr. Marshall remarks that the tune is probably named for John Sappington Marmaduke, whose maternal grandfather was Dr. John Sappington, a pioneer in the use of quinine as a treatment for malaria and resident of the Little Dixie area of Missouri. Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I literally had to gasp when I read that.

You see, my great grandfather on my mother’s side was Eugene Sappington, son of John Sappington of Sappington, Missouri just outside of St. Louis where I live. Our John Sappington was a close relative of the Little Dixie John Sappington. Or so the family lore goes. Possibly a son, though our family history is vague on this point. Eugene was the original owner of one of the fiddles I play today. Or maybe it was his father, John. Again, it's kind of vague.

Over the years, I’ve heard many stories at family gatherings about our old John Sappington and his accomplishments. My grandmother often talked about him. I’ve toured the Sappington house in what is now Crestwood, MO knowing that this was his house and having my grandmother tell me of playing in it when she was a child; heard stories (true or not, I don't know) about how the house was a stop on the underground railway during the Civil War; heard stories about how his son, my great grandfather, had a barbershop in the Crestwood/Afton area and how he and my great grandmother Rose got married. I’ve always had a spot of pride for that branch of the family. But now that I know I’m related through old John to the fellow for whom “Marmaduke’s” is named, I could about burst with pride.

And that I play that tune on that fiddle! I wonder; did old John ever listened to his son play that hornpipe on that fiddle? I wonder if J. S. Marmaduke ever sat with his kinfolk over a cup of coffee at the Sappington house and listened, as well.

And had my student not been caught in traffic on that Tuesday afternoon, I might never have known about this. Wow! Life is indeed stranger than fiction.

I suppose that there is some genealogical work in my future to run down the facts of my kinship to Marmaduke and his hornpipe.

Tattoo!

2007-06-14T20:46:00.000-05:00

Because you demanded it. Well, one of you anyway. A photo of the tattoo I got last Thanksgiving.

I had wanted to get one for years, but could never decide what I'd want permanently affixed to my body that I wouldn't change my mind about later. Then I saw the cover of R. P. Christeson's The Old-Time Fiddlers Repertory and I knew this was it.

Wednesday Night Session

2007-06-13T22:39:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was a mess. The day job was hectic and stressful... headaches in other areas of life hitting me all at once... hadn't had time in the morning to meditate... had a development committee meeting for the Folk School in the early evening... yearghh!

Then I went over to Bob's house (that's Bob in the picture below) for the Wednesday night old-time music session he hosts.

(Bob at Bluff Country Gathering '07)

Sat down. Tuned up the banjo uke. The first tune we played was "Sheep Shell Corn By the Rattlin' of His Horn". With the first couple of notes, all of the stress and bother of the day slid off me like water off a duck. By the time a few others showed up with fiddles, upright bass, banjos, and guitars I had a smile on my face that wouldn't leave until the tunes were over and it was time to drive home.

There is just nothing in this world like old-time music played with enthusiasm and friendship to put the day's cares in perspective.

Pictures from Mt. Airy

2007-06-12T21:34:00.000-05:00

So, my friend Renee mentioned to me her disapointment at my not posting anything yesterday. Busy day at work... too much to do... blah, blah, blah... It's forced me to return to the Mount Airy well and post some photos of people playing tunes. Hope you all enjoy them. If I get time in the next couple of days, I'll post some of the pictures I took a few weeks ago at The Bluff Country Gathering. 'Cause, of course, you can't ever have too many photographs of people playing fiddles and banjos.

Above is a picture of Woody McKenzie playing fiddle and Jack (didn't get his last name) with a banjo on his lap. Woody is one of the nicest fellows I've yet met and a heck of a fine fiddler. Jack is a lot of fun as well and loves to sing those old-time songs.

Later in the afternoon, Woody took the time to teach "Spotted Pony" to a young girl who is just starting out on fiddling. His patience, skill at explaining, and enjoyment at seeing her picking it up were a great thing to watch.

Mark Twain and the Banjo

2007-06-11T07:55:00.000-05:00

Nothing to do with fiddling, old-time music, or dulcimers today. But I like Mark Twain and I like banjos, so when I ran across these quotes, they seemed a good couple of things to pass along.

"When you want genuine music--music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whisky, go right through you like Brandreth's pills, ramify your whole constitution like the measles, and break out on your hide like the pin-feather pimples on a picked goose,--when you want all this, just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo!"- Mark Twain, San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle, 6/23/1865

"A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo and doesn't." - Mark Twain

New Tunes

2007-06-08T07:47:00.000-05:00

Like many fiddlers, I have a goal of learning a new tune every week. Most of the time, it happens more like one a month. But that's okay, too.

Tunes I'm currently working on getting into my repertoire are:
Georgia Row
Joys of Quebec
Run Down Boot
La Grande Chaine
and Grand Picnic

Most of these are tunes I heard folks play while at Mt. Airy last week and just enjoyed so much I want to be able to play them whenever the mood strikes.

"Run Down Boot" is an Illinois tune that I had heard Chirps Smith play and was reminded of last week in a jam session in Mt. Airy. Then, playing with my friends here in St. Louis on Wednesday evening, it came up again. It's fate. I have to sit down and learn it.

"Grand Picnic" is a tune I originally heard Joe Politte play on (I think) the great I'm Old But I'm Awfully Tough LP that the Missouri Friends of the Folk Arts put out many years ago. The early 70's, unless I'm mistaken! It never made much of an impression on me until yesterday when I heard a recording of my friend Lois Hornbostle playing it with a contest band at Union Grove. Played at a moderate speed, it's a beautiful tune! Here's a link to a You Tube clip of them playing it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB-XfD9hoMQ. Now I'll have to dig out the CD copy friends Janet and Mark made for me of ...Awfully Tough and see how Mr. Politte played it.

Back from Mt. Airy

2007-06-07T13:26:00.000-05:00

Well, Amy and I got back Sunday this week from the Mt. Airy Fiddlers Convention out in the mountains of North Carolina, but this is the first opportunity I've had to put my thoughts together about it. It was a much needed and appreciated trip. We had nice weather, met some good folks, heard lots of fine old-time music and shared a lot of tunes.

The drive out was pleasant. We rented a car, packed it full of tent, sleeping bags, cooler, Amy's knitting, and my instruments and headed east. The countryside was beautiful and we gawked at old farm houses, barns, cows, horses, goats, and pigs the whole way out. And, of course, the mountains are always good to see. Driving through the tunnels in the mountains in West Virginia tickled Amy no end.

Once we got to Mt. Airy and set up camp, we introduced ourselves to those camped around us. They made us feel awfully welcomed and we started playing tunes right away. Thanks so much to Dave, Woody, Banjo Marsha, Art, Kathy, Sherry, Linda, Dennis, Frank, Dulcimer Marsha, Sandy, Jeff, Anna from Vermont, Bryant and all the rest for treating us like they'd known us forever even though this was our first time (though, not the last, I'm sure) there. Old time music is all about community and good times, so it's not surprising that we formed our own small community so quickly.

Thanks also for turning me on to new tunes that I hadn't heard before or hadn't thought of in a long time. "Georgia Row", "Joys of Quebec", "Run Down Boot", and "La Grande Chaine" are all on my list to learn now, thanks to the bunch of you!

While I played tunes like there was no tomorrow, Amy spent time reading, knitting, talking with new friends and relaxing. I think we both needed it!

Friday night brought the band contests and Amy and I walked over from our camp to listen. There were over 100 bands competing and we heard something like 30 of them, including The Roan Mountain Hilltoppers, which was a great treat for me.

Of course, before the contests and during breaks in the action, Amy and I wandered around the vendors area for fresh lemonade, home made ice cream and to check out the instruments for sale. Also had to look at (and buy a couple of) the CDs for sale at John Hatton's Clef'd Ear booth.

So, we're back. And glad to be sleeping in our own bed, home with the kid and the cat. But we're missing Mt. Airy, too. Good thing it's only a couple of weeks until Battleground!