Malcolm Ford and Jack Byrne of The Dough Rollers were living out in LA over this past winter and in late January/early February Craig and I from The Dust Busters went and stayed with them out there. We had a great time, living down near Venice Beach, beating the New York cold and playing a bunch of shows around the LA area. We even made it up to San Francisco for a gig! One night we ended up playing a house party at Elvis Perkins’ place and happily our set was recorded. Hope you will enjoy… Also, The Dust Busters are out on tour right now on the West Coast, we’re headed to Portland tomorrow and then Seattle. Check out our website for dates.
[Paxton and Fairfield perform "Poor Little Bennie."]
Down Home Radio favorites and past guests on the program Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton and Frank Fairfield have recently been featured in the New York Times, following their appearance last Tuesday at the Jalopy Theater. CLICK HERE to read the NY Times piece by Ben Ratliff.
CLICK HERE for the Down Home Radio interview with Frank Fairfield, and HERE for the interview with Blind Boy Paxton.
Here’s some more footage I shot at the Jalopy show:
While out on tour back in March my old-time string band The Dust Busters appeared on the Woodsongs Old-Time Radio Hour. Woodsongs is a radio/TV show filmed weekly at the Kentucky Theater in Lexington (KY). Thanks to Michael Johnathon and all the folks at Woodsongs for having us, it was a fun show! Here is our appearance on that program:
Radio Unnameable Documentary Trailer from Lost Footage Films
Radio Unnamable on WBAI 99.5fm New York is one of my favorite all time radio programs. Its host Bob Fass (probably arguably) invented “free form” radio with the shows inception in 1963, and continues to be its greatest practitioner to this day. Over the years Bob has had an incredible array of guests on his program, everyone from musicians like Bob Dylan, Skip James, Muddy Waters, Rambling Jack Elliot, The Holy Modal Rounders and Sis Cunningham, to Leftist political/cultural figures like Abbie Hoffman, Allen Ginsberg, Ed Sanders, Timothy Leary, Wavy Gravy and so many others. Radio Unnamable was one of the prime focal points in the media for the 1960’s era counter culture both musically and politically. Luckily many episodes of this amazing program were taped and have survived so there is a large archive that is slowly being digitized, a little taste of which is up here on Down Home Radio. This material will only be available for a couple days, I can’t keep it up indefinitely, so check it out now! –> time’s up on the audio, hope you enjoyed it, and keep checking back to DHR since I will be posting up more Radio Unnamable audio in the future.
The folks over at Lost Footage Films are in the middle of making a documentary about this historic radio show, and they need your help. So check out their fund raising website and help them out if you can so they can finish the film.
On today’s show we hear a few selections from the Radio Unnamable archives, courtesy of Lost Footage Films. The first is Jack Elliott and Arlo Guthrie live on the show. This is a pretty stoned out episode from 1967. Jack sings his talking song about truck driving and then Arlo sings a very different version of his hot off the press Alice’s Restaurant song with a totally different “story.” They’re obviously having a very good time! In the 2nd selection from Radio Unnamable on the show today we hear a remarkable recording that Bob Fass made as reporter. In 1968 he traveled to Chicago to cover the protest of the Democratic National Convention which ended in a major over reaction by the first Mayor Daley’s police department. Bob interviews protesters, gets tear gassed and reports on this now historic day. In the 3rd piece of audio we hear Abbie Hoffman calling in to Radio Unnamable to report on his own trial as a defendant in the Chicago 7 case. This was a landmark case were a number of leaders of the ‘68 protest were charged with conspiracy to incite riot. The trial became a circus, a piece of political theater where counter cultural figures of every stripe paraded through the court room as witnesses and brought the 60’s counterculture more out in to the open, mass media, etc… on and on. Good stuff. This is a departure for Down Home Radio which usually sticks to folk music, but I just couldn’t sit on this stuff. Hope you enjoy.
As a side note- I will be on Radio Unnamable tonight! with Peter Stampfel and The Dust Busters. Bob Fass is still on the air and Radio Unnamable airs every Thursday night from midnight till 3am or so on WBAI 99.5fm and is is archived on the WBAI website.
Here’s the 2nd installment of our new venture into Down Home TV. That same night after speaking with Mamie Minch, Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton stopped by and I was able to film a segment with him. If you’ve heard the interview from a year and a half ago that I did with him (when he was only 19) then you know that he is a truly amazing guitarist, banjoist and stride-piano player as well as an excellent singer. On today’s show Blind Boy plays a few guitar and banjo pieces for us on camera and talks a little bit about his background. For more information, be sure to check out the extended audio interview with him from back in the DHR Archives.
Thanks go once again to filmmaker Chris Low and his crew for shooting and editing this footage.
Down Home Radio has stormed the citadel of visual representation, thanks to the great work of filmmaker Chris Low. On this first installment I talk with the wonderful blues guitarist, singer and songwriter Mamie Minch. We sat down in the room above the Jalopy Theater just before she took the stage at the Brooklyn Folk Festival Preview and Benefit show a couple of weeks ago. Mamie speaks about some of her influences and plays some tunes, live on Down Home Radio (TV)! Many thanks go to Chris for making this possible.
Treasures of the Archive of Folk Song at the Library of Congress – a lecture by Joe Hickerson at the Jalopy Theater, Brooklyn, NY 1/16/10
Greetings from California. I’m out on the West Coast playing some shows with my band The Dust Busters and our friends the The Dough Rollers. But I’m still on the job, bringing out Down Home Radio shows! Here’s a recording I made at the Jalopy Theater just before I left town.
Joe Hickerson was the librarian and head of the Archive of Folk Song at the Library of Congress from the 1960’s-90’s. This is a very cool “lecture-demonstration,” where Joe talks about the Archive of Folk Song/Culture, plays great examples from its collection and also plays and sings some of his favorite tunes from the Archive.
Got more stuff in the can waiting to come out, plus I’ve been making some great recordings as I’m traveling around, so look out for more great stuff here on Down Home Radio!
Joe Hickerson’s appearance at Jalopy was sponsored by:
Joe Hickerson records Mississippi John Hurt for the Library of Congress, 1960’s.
Robert Winslow Gordon, first head of the Archive, with wax cylinder recordings and recording equipment, about 1930. Library of Congress Photo.
While on tour in early August, my old-time string band The Dust Busters made our first radio appearance. Here we are on Mike Kelsey’s program on WFHB 98.1FM, community radio in Bloomington, IN. We play live, talk with Mike and promote the show we played in Bloomington that night. It was a great tour! Met a lot of really great people (many thanks to all those that put us up, fed us and helped us out along the way), played a lot of music and got quality time in the car!
I went down to the Clifftop Appalachian String Band Festival just a couple of weeks ago with my band The Dust Busters. We had a great time, met and played with a million different people and played a set on Saturday afternoon with our friends John Cohen and Tracy Schwarz of the New Lost City Ramblers. The old-time music never stops at Camp Washington-Carver in Clifftop, West Virginia, so about midnight on Saturday I broke out my field recording device and made a round of the different campsite jam sessions that were in full swing.
This broadcast is a just a straight 45 minute recording of my midnight wanderings through the grounds of Clifftop. I walked from one great group of musicians to the next in rapid succession. Each campsite had its own huddle of musicians playing fiddles, banjos, guitars, doghouse basses, harmonicas and singing away at the old-time tunes- no matter which direction I turned, it was hard to go wrong!
Here’s the first bit of audio I’m posting from the Brooklyn Folk Festival - John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers leads a banjo workshop focusing on different tunings and styles used by a number of banjo players he has learned from either directly or studied through their old recordings. Banjo player Wade Ward describes tunings as “different atmospheres.” Each banjo tuning carries its own set of possibilities and its own feeling. In 1965 John Cohen encountered Ward and many other banjo players as he journeyed through the South finding musicians, making field recordings, discovering banjo tunings and lots more along the way. Many of these field recordings were released on his wonderful album “High Atmosphere”. John discusses and demonstrates these many styles, sounds and techniques in this workshop from May, 17th, 2009.
The first play button plays a banjo music mix tape of all the original recordings of songs John covers in this workshop. The second play button plays the audio of the workshop itself. This is for banjo players only! (Unless you’re really interested)
John begins with a bit of Pete Seeger up picking, then a bit of frailing and thumb lead 2-finger picking, then more up picking (the same rhythm as clawhammer but picking up instead of hitting down on the string), Charlie Poole style finger picking banjo, Bascom Lamar Lunsford / George Landers style up picking (the workshop focuses a lot on this style, where in the first finger picks the melody and also then brushes up over the strings and the thumb picks the fifth string and drops down to some of the other strings. There are no downward motions in this style.) Sydna Myers style clawhammer, Dock Boggs finger picking and finally Pete Steele finger picking
Funding for Down Home Radio is provided in part by The Puffin Foundation and by 
