Down Home Radio Show

 

 Interview with Frank Fairfield: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

(photos E. Smith)

On today’s show I speak with Frank Fairfield.  I was knocked out by his new album on the Tompkins Square label and was glad to finally catch up with Frank at his home in Los Angeles, CA when I was out there back in January.  Frank plays banjo, fiddle and guitar in an old time style and is a really great singer.  We talk about his music and his ideas about music in general, Frank plays some tunes live on the show and also plays several favorite 78rpm records from his own collection.  Frank Fairfield has a rare gift for interpreting what he calls “the American repertoire.”  He gives the music an authentic presence that is very exciting.  Frank has embodied the music he plays.  Although his repertoire is from a different landscape then we see around us today he has found a way inside and expresses it with emotional depth and energy that is very enjoyable to see live as well as listen to on the record.

Frank plays at Tommy’s Loft in downtown LA.

 

 Smokey Joe Miller Remembered: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

On today’s show I’m happy to be bringing out a new addition to Down Home Radio.  Well known field recordist, painter and musician Art Rosenbaum hosts his own weekly 15 minute radio program, “Backroads & Banjos” on AM 1690, WMLB out of Atlanta, GA.  We will be periodically re-airing this wonderful program here on Down Home Radio.  Rosenbaum is perhaps best known for his recent Grammy Award winning collections of his own field recordings, “The Art of Field Recording” on the Dust to Digital label.

On this episode Art Rosenbaum and Phil Tanner remembers their friend, guitarist Smokey Joe Miller who passed on in November of 2009.  Miller played with 4 generations of Tanners – he played with Gid Tanner in the old original Skillet Lickers back in the 30’s, as well as with Gid’s son Gordon, then Phil and most lately Russ Tanner, the latest member of this Georgia musical family.  This 1/2 hour program brings together 2 episodes of “Backroads & Banjos” dedicated to Smokey Joe.

Art Rosenbaum (right) talks with guest Phil Tanner as he tapes a segment of his radio show at AM 1690 in Atlanta, photo from an article about Rosenbaum on AccessAtlanta.com

Art Rosenbaum plays six string banjo in front of one of his paintings.

 

 Interview with Mable Hillary: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Henrietta Yurchenco, 2006.  Photo: Sashenka Lopez.

On today’s show we remember my dear friend, Down Home Radio co-founder Henrietta Yurchenco, who passed away on Dec. 10th, 2007 at the age of 91.  Henrietta was a pioneering ethnomusicologist who starting in 1944, hauled hundreds of pounds of recording equipment on mules through the rugged Sierra mountains and lowland deserts of Mexico to make the very first recordings of indigenous music from that country.  She was also a pioneer in the field of folk music radio, hosting shows on WNYC starting in 1940 and later WBAI and WNYC again through the 1960’s.  She gave Pete Seeger his debut on radio, often had Woody Guthrie on her programs and served as Leadbelly’s producer for his radio program.  Later, in the 1960’s she had Bob Dylan and many other performers and scholars of that era on her show.  Henrietta was Professor Emerita at the City College of New York, where she taught ethnomusicology for many years.

I met her when she was 89 and we had a great time doing this show together and generally hanging out in the last 2 years of her life.   She was a tremendously accomplished person who over a very long career left an amazing musical and historical legacy, some of which has been preserved for us to hear. For a short history of her career read my essay, her obituary from the New York Times, her excellent autobiography, or visit her website.

Every year on the anniversary of her passing I will be bringing out some amazing treasure from her archives for us all to hear as we remember this remarkable woman.  Due to this years fund drive this show is a bit late, but I’m happy to bring it out now.

Today’s show is  an episode of Henrietta’s 1960’s radio show, “Adventures in Folk Music” for WNYC here in New York.  It features Henrietta interviewing a wonderful singer from the Georgia Sea Islands, Mable Hillary (1929-76) who was very involved in the Civil Rights and Peace movements and eventually moved to New York City where she taught in the public school system.  Hillary was an amazing singer and performer of blues and unaccompanied songs, as well as traditional game songs and their dances.  She performed in the Georgia Sea Island Singers along with Bessie Jones and others.  As a side note, I find the contrast of Hillary’s voice and the guitar work of her accompanist to be interesting, beautiful and in several instances quite unique.

[L] Henrietta in Mexico, 1940’s.  [R] Henrietta Yurchenco (right) and an unidentified woman, near Zion Methodist Church, St. John’s Island, South Carolina. March 1970.
(Henrietta Yurchenco Collection. Photo by David Lewiston)

HEAR! more from Mable Hillary and others at a 1965 concert in Central Park courtesy of the Association for Cultural Equity.

READ! more about Mable Hillary at the Association for Cultural Equity’s website.

And don’t forget to check out the Down Home Radio advert in the Old Time Herald Magazine – www.oldtimeherald.org – lots of great articles, reviews and more!

 

 Save Down Home Radio!: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Hello everybody,

The show’s been going on now for more than 3 years.  Its been a great project; a quick look through the archives will show you the depth and scope of what has been aired on Down Home Radio – dozens of in depth radio interviews with well known elders of the folk scene as well as many great new performers you won’t hear about anywhere else, articles, archival materials, tons of amazing old recordings drawn from obscure sources, plus lots of hard to find out-of-print LPs, digitized and posted for your pleasure and convenience, all for free.

But I can’t continue to do the show without your support.  Increasing demands on my time from other projects and the rigors of getting along in New York City make it hard to find time for Down Home Radio anymore.  If you value this show/archive, recognize it as something unique and much more than just a blog, please support what I’m doing.  Down Home Radio needs funds to replace broken equipment, to pay for all the technical, logistical and office expenses involved with the program and to continue to bring you the coverage only DHR can.

With your support DHR can not only continue but will be able to expand its programming and produce new shows of all kinds on a regular basis, as well as pay for ads in magazines and generally increase its profile and listenership.  I have not set a specific monetary goal for this fund drive, but rather hope that listeners will show their appreciation for the shows already produced and donate an amount that will offset to a significant degree the cost of its continuing production and progress for a years time.

Check out today’s show to hear music from some of the awesome new performers I would like to have on the show in the future, plus live recordings from the 2009 Brooklyn Folk Festival, sponsored by Down Home Radio and organized by yours truly.  I also have a number of great interviews already recorded that I can’t find the time to get to, including Jack Elliott, Del McCoury, Peter Rowan, Jody Stecher, Larry Hanks, as well as Archie Green, Harold Leventhal and Jim Longhi – very important figures in folk music history who are now deceased.  That’s why I have staged this fund drive, in an effort to muster the resources to continue this unique voice in the media and add this important material to the public archive that is Down Home Radio.

Down Home Radio is live from the grass roots of the folk revival that’s going on right now.  If you appreciate this kind of coverage, please make a tax deductible donation to Down Home Radio, and receive any or all of the 3 awesome premiums listed below.

Thanks.  Your host,

Eli

“Eli Smith is the only young musician I know who is single-handedly reporting on the present scene and documenting its continuity with the past.”
– John Cohen, New Lost City Ramblers

Down Home Radio offers innovative coverage you won’t find anywhere else.  An excellent program.”
– Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!

“Keep on!  The people who listen to you really depend on you.”
– Pete Seeger

“Down Home Radio compensates for the lack of traditional folk music of the Americas in both mainstream and niche media by serving as the only national or international resource consistently offering in-depth long form radio interviews with a variety of established figures of the folk music landscape.  But even more importantly, the program provides a platform for emerging folk artists who have no alternate outlet for this kind of discourse, giving them a chance to tell their story and perform their music live on the show.  As a journalist and fieldworker who is also an active performer, Eli is in a unique position to relay grassroots and cutting-edge coverage of the folk music scene, much like Broadside or Sing Out! magazines did in their early incarnations.”
- Lynette Wiley

The Stuff:

For a $25 pledge, receive a Down Home Radio bumper sticker.  For $50 receive the fabulous “Best of the Brooklyn Folk Festival” live CD, 15 songs totaling more than 1 hour of music, only available right here right now.  Check out selections from the CD on today’s show!  For $75 receive the awesome Down Home Radio Show t-shirt, modeled here by our executive producer!

And the special holiday deal of the century! For $100 receive all three, the bumper sticker, “Best of the Brooklyn Folk Festival” live CD and the t-shirt!  What a deal!  That’s fully 33% off!

All donations are tax deductible.

[L] DHR T-Shirt                                       [R] CD of live recordings from the festival!

Bumper Sticker

Donate online with a credit card:

Make an easy, secure tax deductible donation to “2nd Mind Music,” my business name, via the Fractured Atlas website.
Click below:

If you would like to donate by check, please make donation checks payable to: “Fractured Atlas” with “2nd Mind Music” in the memo section of the check. 2nd Mind Music is my business name and “Fractured Atlas” is the non-profit that sponsors my getting tax deductible donations.  Email me for the mailing address:
DownHomeRadio@hotmail.com.

Once you have made your donation,
please email me at DownHomeRadio@hotmail.com
with your mailing address and what you would like to receive for your money .

Thanks go to Ernesto Gomez and Maria Flores, without whom this fund drive would not have been possible.

 

 Interview with John Cohen: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

On today’s show I speak with musician, photographer, filmmaker and folk-musicologist John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers. At the time of this interview, conducted in the summer of 2008, John had just come out with a new CD of old recordings called “Berkeley in the 1960’s” on the Field Recorders Collective label. This is a great record label, definitely check them out.

On the show we discuss this excellent new album, but also range over topics including his earliest field work in Kentucky and Peru, his influences as a guitarist, favorite photographers and his advice/anti-advice to students, stemming from his experience as a professor of art. John also demonstrates Hobart Smith’s piano style, which I’ve never heard anyone else tackle before and offers his reflections on his friend Roscoe Holcomb.  Recordings John mentions are played throughout.

Apparently whenever the New Lost City Ramblers would go to Berkeley, CA through out the 1960’s, they would have a big jam at a house on Colby Street.  John was so impressed by this gathering of musicians at that place and time that in 1970 with the help of Vanguard Records he flew to California to record this sound.  They used the left over tape from the Grateful Dead’s Working Man’s Dead sessions at Pacific High studios and recorded some great stuff, but one thing and another it didn’t come out, until now! Musicians on the record are Jody Stecher, Larry Hanks,  Sue Draheim, Holly Tannen, Hank Bradley, Sue Thompson, Eric Thompson, Kenny Hall and Bob Potts, Mac Benford and Walt Koken who would later form the Highwoods Stringband.

I’ve been trying to bring this interview out for over a year! Many thanks to Carly Nix for volunteering to edit this interview for airplay, otherwise it might have never got done. Thank you!

Sadly, I would also like to note the recent passing of Field Recorder’s Collective founder Ray Alden.  He was a great guy who did really important work.  I him met on a couple of occasions, but only briefly and without time to really talk or do an interview.  Now its too late, but I hope to do a piece about him as soon as possible.

And – Thanks go to the Old Time Herald magazine for being super cool and running our advertisement.  Check it out in the magazine! (more…)

 

 Interview with Josh Rosenthal of Tompkins Square: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

On today’s show I speak with Josh Rosenthal, the founder of the New York based Tompkins Square Records.  This is  a great record company that has been putting out really interesting CDs, Lps and 45s over the last few years.  There latest is “I’m Going Back to North Carolina: The Complete Recordings of the Red Fox Chasers [1928-31].” Its a wonderful 2 disc set remastered by Chris King who made the old records sound real good!  The Red Fox Chasers are a classic era old-time string band that I hadn’t really checked out before.  Turns out they’re great!  On today’s show we draw from that set as well as a number of other Tompkins Square releases, the brand new soon to be released Frank Fairfield self-titled album, the Cd of 100 year old amazing recordings by Polk Miller and His Old South Quartette, Spencer Moore, Charlie Louvin and more!

I will be hosting two CD release events for the “I’m Going Back to North Carolina” album, one in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn.  The Manhattan event is Sat. Sept 12th and Banjo Jim’s on the Lower East Side and will feature The East River String Band, The Whistling Wolves, and Peter Stampfel of the Holy Modal Rounders playing with my band The Dust Busters.  The Brooklyn show will be held at the Jalopy Theater on Thursday Sept. 17th and will feature Dom Flemons of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, the Strung Out String Band and Peter Stampfel with the Dust Busters.  Gonna be great shows!  Hope to see you there if yer in the New York area.

 

 A Walk Around Clifftop 2009: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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!

 

 Interview with Mike Seeger: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Mike Seeger Live at Oberlin Folk Festival May 2003: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

[Mike Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival 1966]

With sadness we mark the passing of one of the real true greats of American music in the last half century.  Mike Seeger was a master of the banjo, guitar, fiddle, autoharp, mouth harp, jew’s harp, quills, mandolin and essentially any instrument he laid his hands on as well as being a great singer.  He died at his home in Virginia on Friday after a long battle with cancer, he was 75. 

I’m writing from the road, out on tour with my old-time string band.  We’re here in Cincinatti, OH today, listening to Mike’s “Second Annual Farewell Reunion” album, a wonderful record he did with a number of friends back in 1973 and remembering this man who brought us so much amazing music both as a member of the New Lost City Ramblers, a solo performer and  as a promoter/field worker.  Mike Seeger’s influence on American music is untold.  He was an inspiration to nearly everyone involved in the field of traditional music in this country for the past 50 years and consistently brought to light amazing songs, musicians, musical styles and histories which we might otherwise never have heard about.  Although he had cancer for a number of years his final passing was quick and he left the world still busy performing and documenting the music that he loved.

I’m reposting here an interview I did with Mike Seeger back in 2003 and first posted on DHR back in 2008.  It was my first real radio interview!  Also included (the 2nd play button) is a recording of the live set that Mike played when I booked him at the Oberlin College Folk Festival in 2003.  Below are links to a lot more information about Mike Seeger and his work.

Here is a link to a nice obituary and rememberance done by Mike’s friend and fellow musician Paul Brown for NPR

Obit from Mike’s local newspaper

Reposted from 2008:
This week I’ll be drawing from my “archives” for an interview with Mike Seeger, multi-instrumentalist, field-recordist, record producer and 1/3 of the New Lost City Ramblers. This interview is from a tape of one of my old radio shows from college. It was conducted in May 0f 2003 at WOBC, the radio station of Oberlin College in Ohio. This was my first real radio interview! I had booked Mike to come and play at the Oberlin Folk Festival and while in town he appeared on the weekly radio show I hosted with my friend Jacob Groopman. We talk about his parents Ruth Crawford and Charles Seeger, Elizabeth Cotton, Dock Boggs, Josh Thomas, Henry Thomas, Alan Lomax, the current state of folk music and more, and Mike plays some gourd banjo and jaw harp live on the air.

Included above are the interview with Mike, and a recording of his appearance at the Oberlin College Folk Festival, May 2003.
Special thanks to Tom Reid of Oberlin College for providing the live recording of Mike Seeger at the Oberlin Folk Festival.

Links: (more…)

 

 Banjo Music Mix Tape (All the original recordings of songs taught in the workshop): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 John Cohen Banjo Workshop: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Banjo Tunings and Styles Workshop with John Cohen

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

Links:
Film about John Cohen on FolkStreams.net: Remembering the High Lonesome
Down Home Radio Rufus Crisp Feature Episode – playing recordings of Crisp, a banjo player very influential to John Cohen and the early folk music scene in New York.

Tunes included in the workshop: (more…)