Banjo

FolkStreams.net

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Here is a brief excerpt from the film “Homemade American Music” made by Carrie and Yasha Aginsky in 1980, featuring Mike Seeger and Alice Gerrard as they pay a visit to Roscoe Holcomb.   This film follows Mike and Alice as they visit Tommy Jarrell, Lily May Ledford, Roscoe Holcomb and Elizabeth Cotten and recount their own history as musicians and students of the music.

The complete 40 minute film is available for viewing at: http://www.folkstreams.net/film,153

This incredible incredible website features literally dozens of amazing folkloric documentary films, mostly on music but also on other folk art forms.  It is worth it to watch everyone of these films- visit www.FolkStreams.net today!

Interview with Frank Fairfield

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(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.

Twelve Tunes for Two Banjos

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Eli here, you’re trusty Down Home Radio host.  When I’m not on DHR playing records and recording interviews, I’m keeping busy by making records of my own! Here’s an album my friend Peter and I did recently.  We asked ourselves, “can two banjo players play together?”  After some experimentation we were able to answer, “yes!”  Here’s a big ad for our new album:

12x2front by you.
“Twelve Tunes for Two Banjos” is a CD of old-time banjo duets played and sung by Peter K. Siegel & Eli Smith, using mostly 5-string but also 4 and 6-string banjos.

Track List:
(click tune to hear audio samples)

1. The Worried Blues
2. Jesse James
3. Soldier’s Joy
4. Goodbye Booze
5. John Henry
6. Otto Wood the Bandit
7. Marching Jaybird
8. Sweet Betsy from Pike
9. What a Friend We Have in Jesus
10. Poor Boy Long Way from Home
11. Ever See the Devil Uncle Joe?
12. New Prisoner’s Song

To Order:

Go to http://cdbaby.com/cd/siegelsmith where you can order online.  Its also on iTunes.

About the Musicians:

12x2back by you.

These are Peter K. Siegel’s first recorded banjo performances since he played on Elektra’s Old Time Banjo Project in 1964. Says Siegel: “You play this thing long enough, it begins to sound pretty good.”

In the interim, he produced more than 60 albums of traditional and roots-based music. Peter’s productions include albums by Doc Watson, Hazel Dickens, Joseph Spence, Roy Buchanan, Paul Siebel, and Los Pleneros de la 21.

Siegel founded the Nonesuch Explorer Series, for which he produced 15 albums of traditional world music. Folk Roots (UK) called Siegel “one of the earliest shapers of interest in world music.” His Gorô Yamaguchi album, A Bell Ringing in the Empty Sky, continues to make its way spaceward in NASA’s Voyager Time Capsule.

His recent three-CD boxed set Friends of Old Time Music was released by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. The New York Times called the set “a boxed set of awesome and concentrated power” and The Boston Globe called it “a precious, wildly beautiful document.”

Twelve Tunes for Two Banjos by you.

Eli Smith is a banjo player, writer, researcher and promoter of folk music living in New York City. He regularly plays in a string band known as The Dust Busters, as part of the Roots ‘n’ Ruckus show at the Jalopy Theater and hosts the internet radio show Down Home Radio. He also presents Down Home Live, every second Saturday of the month at Banjo Jim’s on the Lower East Side as well as the Brooklyn Folk Festival, scheduled for May 21-23rd, 2010.

See below for our review in the Old Time Herald magazine:

Library of Congress Field Recordings LP

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Here is an early, influential and fantastic album issued by the Library of Congress in 1942.  It was first issued on an album of 78rpm records and then was reissued on this disc early in the LP era.  This record AAFS L2, “Anglo-American Shanties, Lyrics Songs, Dance Tunes and Spirituals from the Archive of American Folk Song,” is the 2nd in the “Folk Music of the United States” series and was edited by Alan Lomax.

There’s some pretty amazing stuff on here.  In fact, all of it is great.  It’s a great record! The field recordings on this album were newly made at the time of the album’s release.  This was the latest hot off the press stuff.  The field recordists who made these recordings, Alan and Elizabeth Lomax, Pete Seeger, Herbert Halpert, Charles Todd and Robert Sonkin are a good representation of the small group of early modern folklorists busy making field recordings of Southern music at that time.

There’s some clutch stuff on here.  These recordings were very influential early on to Pete Seeger, who made several of them, and to the members of the New Lost City Ramblers among others.  Mike Seeger has recorded his own versions of many of the song variants found on this album.

Here’s an unfair question:  How do you think this record, or better this series, of field recordings edited by Alan Lomax and issued in 1942, relates to the Anthology of American Folk Music, composed of commercially recorded 78s, which was edited by Harry Smith and issued in 1952? Contrary to some popular conceptions, there were amazing and influential compilations of folk music issued before the Anthology…
I will continue to post more volumes from this series, but I think this one is my favorite.

CLICK HERE to download the album cut up into tracks.

See below for track information and notes:

The Dust Busters on WFHB 98.1FM- Bloomington, IN

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IMG_3272_0098 by nixellany.
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!

A Walk Around Clifftop 2009

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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!
Jammin' by blueathena7.

Mike Seeger (1933-2009)

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[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

Mike Seeger. Photo by Ron Pen

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:

Banjo Workshop with John Cohen

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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:

Art Rosenbaum & Al Murphy LP 1972

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Apparently this album is still in print and I was asked to take it down.  Oh well, great album.  But it is available for download on iTunes.

Art Rosenbaum & Al Murphy LP front by you.

Here’s a wonderful LP from Art Rosenbaum (banjo) & Al Murphy (fiddle).  Art Rosenbaum has recently been issuing his fantastic field recordings on the “Art of Field Recording” series from Dust to Digital records.  Art Rosenbaum is a musician, field-recordist, painter and professor of painting at the University of Georgia.
Art of Field Recording: Volume I

“Art Rosenbaum likes his music to have roots. ‘As a kid I listened to labor union songs, Burl Ives, Pete Seeger and the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music,’ said the UGA art professor and self-taught folk musician. ‘Fairly early on I realized the most exciting music was that music developed in a style and passed on to the next generation.’

While living in New York City, he and a friend John Cohen, the filmmaker and Beat generation photographer, thought pop music ‘was kind of bland.’ So they and their like-minded friends organized concerts of traditional and folk music. Rosenbaum and Cohen began collecting folk music in the field. In his home state of Indiana Rosenbaum rediscovered blues guitarist Scrapper Blackwell and recorded fiddler John W. Summers.” (This text from below website)

For more information about Art and to view his awesome paintings, check out: www.artrosenbaum.org

“Al Murphy is eastern Iowa’s premier fiddler. He has been playing since he was a teenager, influenced by his Uncle Leo, who was a fine old time fiddle player. Named four times as a Master Artist for the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship program, Alan continues to pass his skills and knowledge along to younger players.” (This text from www.iowaartscouncil.org)

See below for track info and complete 5 page liner notes in PDF format:

Pete Seeger Turns 90, Happy Birthday!

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http://www.dionphoto.com/New/fullsize/PeteSeeger97copy_fs.jpg

On today’s show we honor Pete Seeger on his 90th birthday.  Pete Seeger is a man who in his person has been an incredible force in American music and social movements, both as a performer and as an organizer and well spring of good ideas.   He has been literally everywhere for so many many years, singing, playing and inspiring people around this country and around the world to sing, play guitars and banjos and take part in the social struggles that define their history.  Pete has an off the charts level of talent as a singer, song leader, banjo and guitar player, performer, songwriter, song adapter and folk music popularizer.  He’s also probably the oldest person to ever make a comeback, having won a grammy and played at the Obama inauguration concert.  Pete Seeger is impossible to keep down, I was talking with some people recently and we were recalling that even when Pete was blacklisted in the 50’s the upshot of that was that he started playing for kids at schools and summer camps and thereby played a large part in inspiring the folk music boom of the 1960’s when those kids grew up.  I was at a reunion of people who used to gather to play folk music in Washington Square park back in the 50’s and 60’s here in New York City and I recorded a bunch of short interviews with these folk musicians remembering encounters with Pete Seeger.  So many musicians and lovers of folk music from that generation remember encounters with Pete Seeger that changed their lives.  So on today’s show we’ll hear a bunch of my favorite Pete Seeger songs along with a selection of interviews with people that Pete inspired.

Click Here to listen to the Down Home Radio Interview with Pete Seeger from Oct. ’07

Also included here are the A sides of two obscure Pete Seeger albums available at Smithsonian Global Sound .

Click the 2nd play button above and you will hear:

FW03864_201
Studs Terkel’s Weekly Almanac: Radio Programme, No. 4: Folk Music and Blues featuring Pete Seeger and Big Bill Broonzy, 1956.
Love You Baby/Hush-A-Bye /Crawdad Song / John Henry/ Bach, J.S. – Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring /Lonesome Valley/You Got To Stand in Judgement /The Midnight Special
followed by:
FW05702_101
Pete Seeger Sings and Answers Questions, 1968.
Opinions and Social Justice / Backgrounds to Social Songs in Europe and the USA / Social Songs from the Colonial Times to Today / Songs of the Immigrants

The 3rd play button in this post: Carly Nix interviews Eleanor Walden, organizer of a grassroots campaign to get Pete Seeger nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize via an online petition.  This is the first grassroots attempts to get someone nominated for the Nobel Prize.  Walden also talks about her personal experiences with the Greenwich Village sings, the People’s Songs Collective and the Folk Revival scene and social activism.


Here’s a film, “To Hear Your Banjo Play” from 1947, produced by Alan Lomax and featuring a young Pete Seeger as the narrator.