down home radio show

 

 Interview with Baby Gramps: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

On today’s show I interview blues/jazz/country/everything musician Baby Gramps. Gramps was in NYC on tour from the West coast. I ran into him at the Jalopy Theater and we arranged to meet for an interview the next day at Zebulon, another Brooklyn club where he was playing a show. This interview takes place out on the street. We talk about his early days back in the 60’s hanging out with Furry Lewis, Jesse Fuller and Elizabeth Cotton, hunting for old 78’s at the “Starvation Army,” hear some old records he was influenced by and play a bunch of tracks from his excellent new CD, “Baptized on Swamp Water.”

See below for links associated with today’s program: Read the rest of this entry »

 

 Interview with Dan Patterson: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

On this episode of Down Home Radio, Eli interviews his own roommate, Dan Patterson. Dan is a reporter for the Talk Radio News Service and is an expert on the medium of Podcasting and “Social Media” in general. He hosts his own awesome podcast, The Creepy Sleepy Show - “Independent Music, Independent Politics,” featuring his own amazing reporting from his recent trip to Darfur as well as his on site reporting on the massive flooding in his own home state of Iowa. On today’s show Dan and Eli sit around their apartment, smoke a hookah and discuss the medium of Podcasting itself, its history and its future!

 

 Interview with the East River Strings Band: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week Eli interviews Eden Brower and John Heneghan- The East River String Band about their new CD/LP “Some Cold Rainy Day,” with artwork by R. Crumb. They play some cuts from the new record, and also delve into John’s extensive collection of rare 78 RPM records, playing a bunch of un-reissued records you won’t hear anywhere else!

The East River String Band will be playing this Saturday night, June 14th at my Down Home Live show at Banjo Jim’s on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. No Cover! Come and check it out, should be a great show.

Links: Read the rest of this entry »

 

 Interview with Willy Gantrim: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week I’ll speak with New York based blues/country musician and songwriter Willy Gantrim. We both play as part of the Roots ‘n’ Ruckus music collective, every Wednesday at the Jalopy Theater in Redhook, Brooklyn. Willy’s been writing great songs, and has just returned to New York from New Orleans, where he spent the winter busking as well as playing shows. We had a good interview about his background, and Willy plays some blues and originals live on the air! Read the rest of this entry »

 

 Best of LPs vol. 1: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Hello everybody- well for the past couple months pretty much all I’ve been doing here is digitizing and posting up old out of print LPs from my collection, for what has been known as Down Home Radio’s “Awesome Out of Print Records” series. I’m gonna be doing that in fits and starts from here on out, but I think I’m gonna call this first round complete and start back producing regular episodes of Down Home Radio. I’ve got a lot of good interviews waiting to come out!

On this show I have put together a play list of a bunch of my favorite tracks drawn from all the records I’ve posted up. It was hard to choose which tracks to play, because there are so many great ones on these albums! This show serves as a sampler, and you can go back and download all the records and listen to them in their entirety!

Track list for today’s episode: Read the rest of this entry »

Click Here to Download

Here’s the latest addition to the Down Home “Awesome Out-of-Print Records” series, and I think the last for a little while since I want to get back to producing regular radio shows, I got a lot of good interviews that are waiting to be posted.

This record is great! Its a collection of fiddle, harmonica and vocal music (sometimes accompanied by 4-string banjo and guitar) from central Pennsylvania recorded by Ray Allen in 1979 and originally released by the Union County Historical Society’s Oral Traditions Project. This is not your typical “old-time music;” the musicians represented here are the decedents not only of early Scots-Irish settlers, but also of immigrants from Germany and Italy and the songs and tunes they play reflect that in a wonderful way. Great stuff! And I love that cover photo.

As usual, I have selected this LP from my record collection, played it into my computer, chopped up the tracks, scanned the front and back of the LP, and here it is!

See below for track information: Read the rest of this entry »

Click Here to Download

While looking through my record collection the other day, I realized that this had to be the next addition to the Down Home “Awesome Out-of-Print Records” series. This record is awesome. I first heard it coming over the PA before a show my band was playing at the Palace of Culture in Warsaw, Poland in 2004! All I heard that day was Big Bill’s version of “The Glory of Love,” but I was blown away. Eventually I found out that it was from this record and tracked down a copy. What a revelation. This is possibly my favorite Big Bill. Maybe that’s because his set at this live show is kind of a greatest hits of folk music, so he does a bunch of favorites. But he does them so well! There’s great versions of songs you might not think he had covered like “Take This Hammer,” “Midnight Special,” “I Get the Blues When It Rains,” and even “Sixteen Tons”!

See below for notes from the back of the record and more track information. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s another record in Down Home Radio’s continuing “Awesome Out-of-Print Records” series. This is a collection of field recordings made in Tennessee in the 1970’s by folklorist Bobby Fulcher. Included here are volumes 1 & 2. If anybody has vol. 3, send it along!

CLICK HERE to download

These are incredible records, and very hard to find. They were digitized and sent to me by Norm over at www.juneberry78s.com, an awesome website which is well worth checking out. Huge Thanks to Norm!

I first heard brief selections from these records while listening to a podcast of an interview with Bobby Fulcher.
When Bobby played a bit of one of his field recordings of Retta Spradlin, I was completely floored and had to find the record as soon as possible! She sings and plays banjo and is incredible.  The whole record is great but she really hit me hard.

Another of my favorite musicians is banjo player Virgil Anderson, also recorded by Bobby Fulcher.  Anderson appears on three cuts in this collection.  Fulcher released a full LP of Anderson which is really great.  I have posted it here: Virgil Anderson - On The Tennessee Line.

What follows is a review of the book, “American Folk Music & Left-Wing Politics 1927-1957″ by Richard A. Reuss and completed after his death by JoAnne C. Reuss. This is an awesome book, the best book on the subject. I discovered it while doing research in my college library, I found it in its pre-book form, as Richard Reuss’ doctoral dissertation (unindexed!) and then to my delight discovered it had recently been published. This book is remarkably lucid, the stuff he says makes sense (as opposed to many other books that try to deal with music and politics, which do not make sense). Reuss was a gifted researcher and in the course of reading the book you realize that he has uncovered and written down the real interactions that characterize the relationship between the musicians in the scene and political events that played out in more or less the Popular Front period surrounding World War ll. This was certainly a seminal time, making possible the careers of many great artists including Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Leadbelly (as well Henrietta Yurchenco). This excellent book review was done by Mat Callahan, author of another great book on music and politics called, “The Trouble with Music.”

- Eli Smith (Host- Down Home Radio, etc.)

Book Review by Mat Callahan, musician and author of the book, “The Trouble with Music.”

American Folk Music & Left-Wing Politics: 1927-1957
Richard A. Reuss with JoAnne C. Reuss

Richard A. Reuss came to folklore studies by way of his interest in music. He led a folksinging group while a counselor at summer camp and as an undergraduate student at Ohio Wesleyan University. He earned his Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1971. He taught at Wayne State University in Detroit, broadening his studies to labor lore and music. Read the rest of this entry »

This is an incredible Leadbelly record, which he did for a mainstream commercial recording company, Capitol Records (as opposed to Folkways), out in Hollywood, CA in 1944. These were his last sessions for a major label and he really seems to have put everything into the recordings he made here. They’re great! This might be my favorite Leadbelly. He plays 12 string guitar, piano, and is accompanied by Paul Mason Howard on what is supposed to be zither, but seems to in fact be a Dolceola, a very small piano like instrument seen below. This record was loaned to me by a friend and as with all the records I post here I fed it into my computer, chopped it up into tracks, and here it is! Hope you enjoy.

CLICK HERE to download Leadbelly on Capitol Records
If you have problems downloading this leave a comment
or email me at DownHomeRadio@hotmail.com .

See below for the back of the record / notes / song list

Dolceola:

Read the rest of this entry »