New Lost City Ramblers

Best of the 5th Annual Brooklyn Folk Festival Live Album!

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Hello everybody –

Do you have your copy of the “Best of the 5th Annual Brooklyn Folk Festival” live album!?  This is a collection of nineteen incredible live recordings made at the 2013 Brooklyn Folk Festival and issued by Jalopy Records.  Performers include John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers, Jerron “Blindboy” Paxton, The Cactus Blossoms, Mamie Minch and Tamar Korn, Jeffrey Lewis and others…  Order your copy and listen to samples at CDBaby.com.

1. They Sailed Away from Dublin Bay / The Galtee Reel
Joey Abarta

2. Blues Stay Away from Me
Mamie Minch & Tamar Korn

3. Chickasaw Train Blues
Whiskey Spitters

4. When First Unto This Country
Jackson Lynch

5. Catfish Blues
Jerron “Blindboy” Paxton

6. Strawberry Blues
The Down Hill Strugglers

7. The Coo-Coo Bird
John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers

8. Stani Mi, Majchu (Traditional Bulgarian Song)

Some Crazy Magic: Meeting Harry Smith As Told By John Cohen

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Hello everybody, check out this amazing film done by Drew Christie.  Its an animated interpretation of John Cohen’s first meeting with Harry Smith, the experimental filmmaker and animator who compiled the Anthology of American Folk Music on the Folkways label, probably the most influential collection of American Folk Music. Done for Greg Vandy’s American Standard Time blog.

Great job!  John Cohen says this is just how he remembers it…

New Short Film on John Cohen

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Here’ s a wonderful film made by KEXP DJ Greg Vandy and filmmaker Drew Christie in Seattle Washington, interviewing John Cohen, legendary photographer, film maker and musician.  I was out on tour on the West Coast with John and my old time string band The Dust Busters in February, we met up with Greg in Seattle, our fiddler Craig Judelman was able to make arrangements with Greg for filming and it all worked out!  This film was originally posted on Greg’s website American Standard Time, an awesome site, well worth checking out.  Also check out Greg’s radio show The Road House on KEXP radio in Seattle, WA.  Thanks to Greg and Drew for making this very well done and informative film.

Here’s the blurb for the film from the American Standard Time site:

“While mainly known as a founding member of the seminal folk revival group The New Lost City Ramblers, John Cohen is also a musicologist, photographer and filmmaker who is responsible for the documentation and recording of many great appalachian musicians such as Roscoe Holcomb, Dillard Chandler, EC Ball, Frank Proffitt, and Wade Ward among many others. John was photographing Bob Dylan and the Beats in New York in the late 50’s and early 60’s as well as producing and directing the legendary film The High Lonesome Sound. KEXP DJ Greg Vandy and filmmaker Drew Christie interviewed John about many of these topics and this short documentary is the result. The interview spanned 2 hours so much was left out of this cut, however, there will be an animated installment of the interview pertaining to John meeting the infamous Harry Smith- so keep your eyes peeled.”

This Weekend!

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Saturday Nov. 20th at The Jalopy Theater!

My string band The Dust Busters will be playing with John Cohen to celebrate the release of a new book about John’s band entitled, “Gone to the Country: The New Lost City Ramblers and the Folk Music Revival.”  The books author, Brooklyn College Folklorist Prof. Ray Allen will make a presentation about the book and the night will be topped off with a performance by John and the Dust Busters with Peter Stampfel of the Holy Modal Rounders.  Should be fun!
Look out for a full interview about the book with Prof. Allen coming up soon on Down Home Radio…

Gone to the Country: The New Lost City Ramblers and the Folk Music Revival by Ray Allen
Saturday, November 20
Show starts at 8:30pm

“Gone to the Country: The New Lost City Ramblers and the Folk Music Revival,” is a new book by Ray Allen that chronicles the life and music of the New Lost City Ramblers, a trio of city-bred musicians who helped pioneer the resurgence of southern roots music during the folk revival of the late 1950s and 1960s. Formed in 1958 by Mike Seeger, John Cohen, and Tom Paley, the Ramblers introduced the regional styles of southern ballads, blues, string bands, and bluegrass to northerners yearning for a sound and an experience not found in mainstream music. Tonight, Ray Allen will show rare and fantastic photos of the band, while telling the story of the band and it’s impact on music everywhere.

Friday Night at 25CPW Gallery

November 19, 6-9pm We’ll be playing at 8pm with John Cohen as part of this wonderful art opening…

Films-Photographs-Kinetic Sculpture-woodcarvings
Stringband MusicEXHIBITION OPENING AND LIVE PERFORMANCES
On exhibit until November 28th

JOHN COHEN of The New Lost City Ramblers performing with The Dust Busters
BOB POTTS of the Highwoods Stringband
JOHN SPECKER of the Correctone Stringband
with additional photographs and video by Bess Greenberg

25CPW Gallery
25 Central Park West
New York, New York
10023
ph. 212.203.0250

More info below:

Interview with John Cohen

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http://celestialmonochord.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/fullcircle.jpg
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!

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:

Eck Robertson: Famous Cowboy Fiddler LP

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Eck Robertson LP by you.

This is an awesome solo fiddle record of Texas fiddler Eck Robertson, recorded by Mike Seeger, John Cohen & Tracy Schwarz – The New Lost City Ramblers, at Eck’s home in 1963. Robertson was the first person to record and issue country music on vinyl record back in 1922, and as the notes to this late era LP (released in 1991) point out, he may also be the last!  This is really a fantastic record, put out by County Records and as far as I know has not been reissued anywhere.

CLICK HERE to download

See below for the notes to this record:

The New Lost City Ramblers: 50 Years – Interview with John Cohen & Tom Paley

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download


The New Lost City Ramblers (John Cohen, Mike Seeger & Tom Paley) formed as a band in 1958, and this year marks their 50th anniversary.  In fact, this interview, recorded on September 13th, 2008, was 50 years to the day after their first concert, held on September 13th, 1958 at a chapter hall of Carnegie Hall.  On today’s show I speak with John Cohen and Tom Paley about their memories of the birth of the band, how it happened, how they met, began playing together, chose the name, got their sound, made recordings and started touring.  John and Tom don’t remember it quite the same way, but some where in there lies the truth!

Tom left the band in 1962 and moved to Europe where he still lives.  But he and John were both in New York where they played together at the “11th Annual Park Slope Bluegrass & Old-Time Jamboree” at the Society for Ethical Culture.  I was able to catch up with them there and we sat in the basement and talked.

The New Lost City Ramblers have been a tremendously influential band in the folk revival of the last 50 years as well as in the parallel revival of interest in old-time string band music.  Their enthusiasm for and devotion to the old-time sound changed the debate in the folk music world of the 1950’s and 60’s and made musicians and listeners take a much deeper and nuanced listen to the rural sounds they were hearing on records.  The NLCR made urban, non-traditionally schooled musicians approaching the material, aware of not the just songs, but the style and challenged them to grapple with that issue.  This is still a serious question and one that is very relevant today.
(Read the rest of my essay below, plus track information for the today’s show)

Interview with Mike Seeger

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Mike Seeger. Photo by Ron Pen

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.