Mac Traynham

I've known Mac's name for awhile, but didn't know much about him or his music, until about a week ago when a couple of his CDs showed up in the mail. One is his CD "I'm Going That Way" on Copper Creek, and the other was a new self-produced re-release CD of music featuring Mac and his wife Jenny.

Well, I look forward to listening to the Mac and Jenny CD, but I have been so captivated by his other CD that I haven't listened to much else over the past week. Mac is a very fine singer and fiddle player, and he is accompanied by wonderful musicians including Jenny. But it's his banjo playing that really, really grabbed me. From the first tune, "French Waltz" (which is not a waltz and probably not French either) he's a wonderful banjo player whose playing is both traditional and very fresh. They say comparisons are odious, but several times I thought that Mac's playing reminded me a bit of Walt Koken's -- not a lot, but a bit -- in case that touchstone helps.

I really look forward to spending more time with these two discs and may write a more comprehensive review once I do. I understand Mac makes banjos and I look forward to learning more about those too. Until then, I will just say:

Highly recommended!!

John

The End of Sugar in the Gourd?

I think you all know about the planned dramatic increases in fees that may go into effect (retroactively!) in less than two weeks.

If not, please go to http://savenetradio.org. David Byrne also has a good post at his journal. (Didja know I'm a big Talking Heads fan from way back?)

Thanks to all who have written to your Senators and Congresspeople.

A lot of people have asked me what will happen to SITG if these rates go into effect. The answer is, I'm not sure. I may try to keep going for another month or two while the dust settles, but I'll probably have no choice but to stop broadcasting. I don't know though. Like Ted Kennedy says, we'll drive off that bridge when we come to it. (Sorry, Ted. I love ya.) I have told people who want to send me promo CDs to hold off for now, as I don't know if this station will be around to play them.

For now, keep your fingers crossed...

John

Crossfades/overlapping tunes

Some of you have no doubt noticed that for the past few days songs are "crossfaded" into one another so that they overlap a bit. Sometimes it works OK, but a lot of the time it sounds pretty graceless, and sometimes it's downright jarring.

There is a reason for it: software now exists that will allow people to "rip" a stream to their hard drive, even breaking the songs into separate files with appropriate file names and tags (artist, title, etc.). I do a number of things to prevent this (one is running a very lo-fi mono stream!). This "crossfading" business is another. Running the songs together makes it impossible for the software to identify when one song ends and another starts. So this is an attempt to thwart people who are trying to "steal" the music. I'm going to continue to try to tweak it to make the transitions less jarring, or I may just do away with it altogether.

John

Stream changes

You may have noticed a couple of changes to the audio streams. One, I no longer have two different bitrates. I've listened to the 32kbps/stereo and 24kbps/mono streams extensively, and where I do hear a slight difference, I often find myself preferring the sound of the lower bitrate mono stream. So that's all I'm running at this point, which allows people who are on dialup to keep listening.

Also, when you click the "Listen" link you will be redirected to a page at loudcity.com from which you can choose to listen by launching your favorite player, or via the built-in player -- this will help the people who haven't been able to listen due to software configuration issues on their PCs. Loudcity is a company that has made it easier for small webcasters to comply with royalty payment requirements -- I pay them monthly based on how many people are listening, what I have played, and what my expenses and revenues are. Loudcity then pays royalties on my behalf to BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, and SoundExchange.

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments about these changes, and as always, thanks for listening, and please remember to support the artists I play by purchasing their CDs and attending their performances.

thanks!

John

Catching up

Anyone who tuned in last Sunday should have noticed that I was playing an awful lot of "Soldier's Joy"! In fact, I played nothing else all day. It was intended as a little April Fool's gag. Back when I started this station, there was another Live365 broadcaster who ran the "All Soldier's Joy Station." So think of it as part gag, part homage to him. But it turned out everyone I heard from really liked hearing all the different versions back to back. Face it, it's such a well-known tune because it's a great tune. But anyway, I'm thinking this may be an ongoing feature -- so look for future playlists lasting only a day or so, which include every version I can find of a given tune.

In other news, just got a nice email from someone letting me know of a recent article in the Austin Chronicle about Old-Time Music, which includes a link to this site. The piece was written by Mark Rubin of the Bad Livers, the Bing Bang Boys, various klezmer conglomerations and who knows what else.

I'm proud to have even a small mention in a print piece, and especially one written by Mark, for whom I have a lot of respect.

Another cool item just crossed my desk. This is "Internet radio" but let's not forget that in a few areas of the country, there are still good actual old-fashioned radio stations (terrestrial is the word in vogue to describe them these days). WNCW in Spindale, NC comes to mind (you can listen online Sundays from 3-6pm ET to hear John Fowler's terrific show of old-time music, This Old Porch). Another great station that normally can't be heard outside a small area of NC/VA is WPAQ, the famous station from Mount Airy, NC. Well, it looks like that is about to change. From an email I received yesterday:

ROBBIE ERNHART writes:

I'm trying to get the word out that we will actually be going global, beginning around Easter Sunday. So, if you want a full dose of the Southland, we'll be at WPAQ740.com.

Hard to believe, I know. We still have stuff running on tubes and if you turn on the microwave after someone leaves on the coffee pot, the circuits blow. But here we go.

Going global. Yikes.

Cheers -
Robbie

Change of plans: We actually start to stream at 1pm on thursday [April 5]! When the station first signed on the air in 1948, Benton Flippen played for it with his band at that time. So, we've got Benton to come play live along with Richard Bowman and the Slate Mountain Ramblers and Kevin and Trish Fore and who knows who else will show up. Should be fun. Plus, I just found out we'll be streaming the entire fiddler's convention, not signing off at sundown, so anyone can hear the entire band contest, live, anywhere! Gosh, I just love this technology. You'll be able to get
the real feel of extremely southern radio.

love-
Robbie

That's great news, and I look forward to listening!

Best wishes,

John

New in the forum: Post & discuss YouTube videos

I've added a new forum called "YouTube Videos" and also added some code to make the videos easily embedded on the forum pages.

I posted two videos of "Sally Johnson" to get things started: one from Clark Kessinger and one from George Ainley.

Enjoy!

John

New Old-Time Musicians' Directory

There's been a lot of conversation on the Topica oldtime list about the need for an online, searchable directory for old-time musicians, similar to what Donald Zepp used to manage for Banjo-L, or the great directory on banjohangout.org, but for old-time musicians of every stripe: fidddlers, guitarists, banjo players, etc.

David Lynch has a directory on his site at oldtimemusic.com but it is sorely out of date -- he has to make additions/updates manually and apparently doesn't have the time. (My entry is 10 years old and hasn't been updated despite numerous requests.)

Anyway, I decided to take a stab at this and you can see the result at http://otdirectory.sugarinthegourd.com -- please take a look, and if you're so inclined, add an entry for yourself! Or, once we get some more names in, look for neighbors to jam with: it's searchable by state, country, etc.

Please let me know if you have any suggestions on how I can make this work best for the OT community.

Best wishes,

John

Stay the Course?

Iraq for Sale

This has nothing to do with Old-Time music, but I saw Robert Greenwald's latest film, Iraq for Sale last night. It was a very disturbing film that I recommend all concerned citizens should see. It's being screened around the country, DVDs can be ordered inexpensively from the website, and if you'd like to, you can sign up to host a screening in your town.

You can watch the trailer here:



I don't normally talk politics here, but sometimes I feel it's my duty.

John

New Links

Finally found some time to update my links page, and add links to two sites I've been meaning to link to for a long time now: Juneberry78s, and 5-String Productions. Go over to the Links page & check them out.

John

John HartfordDecember 30, 1937 - June 4, 2001

Today is the 5th anniversary of John Hartford's passing.

We will be playing his music all day.

Thanks for listening,

John

New Bruce Molsky CD

Just bought Bruce Molsky's latest, Soon Be Time, and while I haven't listened in-depth yet, what I've heard is really great. If it weren't enough that he's a great fiddler and banjo player, and a fine singer, he's also a really skilled fingerpicking guitar player.

Which reminds me: When Poor Man's Troubles came out, I spent a lot of time figuring out Molsky's guitar arrangement of Henry Thomas's "Fishin' Blues." I actually ran out of steam after transcribing the opening instrumental verse. I keep meaning to come back to it & transcribe the whole thing but who knows when I'll get 'round to that. Anyway the instrumental part has most of what you need to play the verses. So it's here if anyone's interested.

And the new Molsky disc is in rotation along with a bunch of other good recent additions.

thanks for listening,

John

Back From Vacation

We are back from vacation now. Visited family, did a lot of fun stuff with the kids, and had a generally great time. The Sugar in the Gourd streams were down most of the time we were gone -- for some reason my home PC decided to reboot itself & didn't restart correctly. I was unable to resolve that remotely. So apologies for that, but the music is back online now.

Here's a short (silent) video of our son Will playing peek-a-boo in Florida. (It's not the highest quality -- was shot with my digital camera.) You can see a bit of a laughing Jake (our eldest) at the end.



Best wishes,

John

Slide Guitarist Who Uses His Mouth and a Teaspoon

Check out this great video of an African guitarist, apparently named Hannes Coetzee, who plays slide with a spoon held in his mouth. [direct link to the video: 6 MB, mpg format]

Not only is it a neat technique, I think it's a really great song. I must have watched this clip 50 times since I first saw it around a week ago via the Fretboard Journal blog. (FJ is a great new mag for stringed instrument enthusiasts -- check it out if you haven't done so.)


John

Update: here's another means of viewing, via ifilm.com:

Possible downtime this week

I am switching DSL providers and it seems likely that my connection may be down at some point this week, in which case the audio streams will be unavailable. No idea yet if there will be an outage or if it will last for minutes, hours, or days, but it does seem likely.

So if you have trouble tuning in this week, this may be the reason.

thanks,

John

Inspired by Uncle Dave

Old-Time Music Gets Political (Again)

Norman & Nancy Blake have a new track out called "Don't Be Afraid of the Neo-Cons." Read the lyrics and listen to the song.

And John Lilly, another SITG favorite, who recently won the "Ghost Writers In The Sky" songwriting contest, has a new song called "W" which you can listen to here.

Nice to see that the genre that spawned songs like "The Battleship of Maine" and "Breadline Blues" hasn't completely forgotten its populist roots.

John

How many of you use the 24k stream?

Hi all,

I'm looking at ways of bringing the costs of running the site in line with what I get from ad revenues, etc. One obvious thing I am looking at is the 24kbps stream. Before I get rid of this I want to know how many people there are out there who can only listen through this connection.

I can tell that at any given time there are anywhere from 4-12 or so listeners on this channel. What I don't know is if those listeners are all unable to listen on the (somewhat) higher-speed 40k stream.

So, if you are a listener who is able to listen at 24k, but not at 40k, please let me know.

UPDATE 2/15: I am linking the 24k stream button on the front page to this news entry. If you were expecting music, and have been sent to this page instead, please read the item above & let me know if you need the 24k stream. Once you've done that please click this link to listen to the stream -- in a few days I will move the link back to the front page, but for the timebeing, I want to make sure 24k listeners see this message.

thanks,

John

New Old-Time Discussion Forum

Just for fun, I have added an old-time music discussion forum to my website at sugarinthegourd.com. You can get there by clicking on "Forum" in the menu at left (well, duh) or going to: http://forum.sugarinthegourd.com.

There's not much there yet, but maybe it'll be something folks find useful...

Season's greetings, etc.

John

Great Bumper Sticker

I'm going to have to get one of these for my banjo case. Order yours here.

My 15 Minutes

I was interviewed yesterday by our local CBS affiliate, KYW-3, for a piece they are doing on the Sony DRM fiasco. I am told the piece will air tonight on the 11:00 news.

The producer seems to have really done her homework on this, so I'm hoping it will be a good piece. While the online world has been abuzz over this issue for the past several weeks I haven't seen much coverage in the print or TV media.

John

Twilight Zone

OK, this is weird.

I knew there was a 1942 novel by Evelyn Hanna called Sugar in the Gourd, but I had no idea that the title on the cover would look so much like my logo:

 

Very weird.

John

Interesting article on contemporary Black string bands

The Independent Weekly: To catch the music

Picture this: Three young black men, two on banjo and one on fiddle, are playing music at a square dance in Orange County. The music is driving and raw and at the same time melodic, joyful and fervent, inspiring the mix of dancers on the floor, black and white.

"Frolics" was the term for these gatherings, according to Odell Thompson, one of the banjo players in the above scene. The young man on fiddle is Odell's cousin, Joe Thompson. The other banjo player is Joe's brother, Nate.

Now jump ahead some 70 years to two Fridays ago. Four African-American musicians--three of them in their 20s--with banjos, fiddles and guitars coming alive in their hands, are playing string band standards for a black and white audience gathered at a Greensboro church. The players are from Sankofa Strings and the Carolina Chocolate Drops, two new bands at the vanguard of a revitalization of music styles and traditions slowly forgotten over time. Joining them for "Georgia Buck" and several other tunes is 86-year-old fiddler Joe Thompson, who rode up with the quartet from his home in Mebane. When Sankofa Strings founder Rhiannon Giddens' banjo meets Joe Thompson's fiddle and his voice wanders in, as much chanting as singing, there's the feel of something if not quite ancient, at least the product of an era long gone. You start seeing things in sepia tones and even though the music's being played right in front of you, you expect to hear crackles and hisses as if the sounds were being torn from a salvaged 78.

Read the rest...

Milliner-Koken Fiddle Tune Project

I just saw this posted on BFOTM's website. Sounds like a very, very worthy cause if any of you are feeling philanthropic.

John

Site costs

Nick Halbrook asked a question in the Guestbook about what my costs are in running this site.

Since he asked: I pay $15/mo for web hosting, $39/mo for stream hosting, and around $40/mo for my DSL connection. So I guess the site costs me something like $94 per month to run. I do take advantage of the DSL connection for other things, but the site makes it a necessity.

I'm getting some ad revenues and some donations here and there that help to offset these costs. (In case anyone's wondering, I've never turned a profit, except for one month when I got a very generous anonymous donation -- but whatever profit I made that month was eaten up in the next month or two.) I could probably be more aggressive in terms of looking for ads or sponsors, but I'm happy with things the way they are. Also, my life being what it is (full-time job, 3 young kids, grad school on hold) I don't have time to update as often as I would like.

So, as I have said before, while donations are certainly greatly appreciated, the idea is that this site should be free to listen to, and no one should feel that they're under any obligation to donate.

If I ever turn a profit (yeah, right!) I'll have to figure out how to get the profits back in the hands of the artists whose music I play.

If anyone has any questions about this, please let me know.

Best wishes,

John

Great new playlist additions

I haven't been doing enough of this lately: outlining which CDs have been added to the rotation. Some of these are brand-new additions, others are things I've added within the past few months but not drawn suitable attention to. Mixed into the current playlist, along with the albums below, are some older favorites -- most but not all are players falling under the "Young Fogies" heading.

Recent addtions:

Hilarie Burhans - Put On The Skillet
The Devil Makes Three - Longjohns, Boots, and a Belt
Thomas Fraser - You & My Old Guitar
Thomas Fraser - Long Gone Lonesome Blues
Rayna Gellert & Susie Goehring - Starch & Iron
The Hog Hollar Stringband - The Great Compromise
Hotpoint Stringband - Steppin' on Cords
Hotpoint Stringband - The Road to Burhania
Hotpoint Stringband - Hotpoint Special
The Humdingers - The Humdingers
Mississippi John Hurt - D.C. Blues: The Library Of Congress Recordings, Vol. 2
Dave Landreth - Chairs
Elizabeth LaPrelle - Rain And Snow
R.D. Lunceford - Cottom Blossom
Run of the Mill String Band - Steal Aboard
John Morgan Salyer - Home Recordings 1941-1942 Volume 2
Hobart Smith - In Sacred Trust
The Stairwell Sisters - Feet All Over the Floor
Trevor & Travis Stuart - Mountaineer
Troublesome Creek String Band - Fast as Time Can Take Me
Various Artists - Mountain Blues: Blues, Ballads & String Bands, 1927-38
Various Artists - Sounds Like Jimmie Rodgers

Enjoy.

Streaming problems

I'm having some kind of problem with the streams, but I won't be able to investigate until I get home from work this evening. Until then, you may not be able to listen.

Sorry for the inconvenience...

John

...Update: 5:30 PM Problem resolved. The player was stopped for some reason...

Fingers crossed

I think/hope the problem with dropouts when listening is resolved. Please let me know if you have any problems when listening.

thanks,

John

Listening problems

There is something wrong at the moment but I'm not sure what. The streams play for a minute or two, then stop for 30 seconds or so, then start again. Not sure where the problem is and I won't be able to look into it fully until I am home tonight.

In general, if you have a high-speed Internet connection and you have problems listening, please send me an email to let me know. I often don't know there's a problem until I hear from one of you.

thanks,

John

Ari Eisinger's new CD is great!

It's not old-time music, but I wanted to put in a plug for my friend Ari Eisinger's new CD, titled That Will Never Happen No More. Not because he's my friend, but because this CD is just so darn good.

Our friends at Weenie Campbell have a review of Ari's CD that nails it:

One of the more impressive things about him, aside from sheer virtuosity, is he doesn’t just master individual songs but takes on the entire stylistic vocabulary as well, allowing him to interject his own musical ideas into a tune without breaking the spell of painstaking authenticity and a real '20s vibe. His additions to Lemon Jefferson sound right at home, his liberties with Blake are things Blake himself would likely have played. Some contemporary players of country blues dismiss such an approach as too curatorial and insist the music needs a modern or personal imprint to stay vibrant and keep moving forward. But That Will Never Happen No More proves Eisinger’s method is completely viable as well: the music is very much alive in his hands, bringing new insight into the guitar styles of the '20s and '30s and the original masters of the music in a way that is just as exciting, if not moreso, for the listener. What he calls "the golden age of the blues" comes streaming back for the all-too-brief 45 minutes you'll spend with this CD in the player.

I think that anyone who enjoys my site and the music I play would find Ari's new CD a great addition to their collection. You can order it from him via his website at http://www.secondmind.com or from Elderly Instruments.

John

Back online

As of earlier this afternoon, the station is back up. The upgrade went well, and means that I should be able to do more on my computer without robbing Winamp/Shoutcast of processing power, which results in dropouts or "skipping" in the streams.

For you geeks out there, I have a new MSI motherboard with an Athlon 64 3000+ (Venice) processor, a gig of DDR2 RAM, and some other fun stuff like a new case, DVD burner, and new graphics and sound cards.

If anyone wants an inexpensive sound card that really does produce much better quality sound that your motherboard's onboard audio or SoundBlaster cards, check out the Chaintech AV-710. I'm really pleasantly surprised at how much better the computer sounds vs my old Soundblaster (which cost more).

Everything seems pretty stable -- I'll probably have to restart a few more times but hopefully any outages will only last a minutes or two. If you do experience any listening problems please let me know!

thanks,

John

Site will be down a bit this weekend

Starting on Friday night, I'm going to have to take the streams down while I rebuild/upgrade my computer. The station will probably be down most of Saturday, and possibly longer, depending on how things go.

Hope everyone enjoys their holiday weekend. Our thoughts are with the people in New Orleans and elsewhere on the Gulf Coast.

John

New listening slots added

I just added 20 more slots on the 40k stream, so I can now handle 60 concurrent listeners: 40 at 40kbps, and 20 at 24kbps.

Some of you may have gotten dumped when I made the change a couple minutes ago -- I had to briefly restart the server. If so, sorry for the brief interruption. You should be able to reconnect now.

John

Welcome Visitors from BoingBoing!

As a longtime BoingBoing reader, I welcome you! Glad to know where all these hits are coming from. I also see that a couple dozen of you have added del.icio.us bookmarks today.

If the audio isn't working for you, it's because all the BoingBoing traffic has consumed all my listening slots. If it doesn't settle down soon, I'll try to add some more slots.

Thanks for checking out the site...and come back soon.

John

Wow...why so many listeners?

Someone just emailed & said they weren't able to listen. I checked & saw all slots are full. I pay for 40 simultaneous connections: 20 at 40kbps, and 20 at 24kpbs. All are currently in use. Normally I have 20-30 people listening concurrently. Today I've hit 40 and people are apparently getting turned away.

What happened -- is this a post-Clifftop thing? Was someone talking up SITG down there?

I'd love to add more connections, but it costs me $$$ -- maybe I'll put up a tip jar or something.

Any thoughts/suggestions/explanations would be appreciated.

thanks!

John

Subtle improvement to this site

Folks may or may not have noticed, but last week I made a long-wished-for technical change that hopefully has improved both the stability and functionality of the site.

The process I was using previously to update and upload the "now playing/recently played" html file was causing the program that runs the stream on my computer to crash periodically. I had been trying to figure out a fix for some time, but finally gave up and last week put a new process in place. This new method is proving to be far more stable (no crashes in about 5 days, knock on wood) but also has another advantage.

The previous process used ID3v1 tags to update the page. The problem was, these tags truncate fields (e.g. song title, artist name, album name) after 30 characters. The new process uses ID3v2 which holds longer fields. So longer album names like The Legacy of Tommy Jarrell Volume 2: Rainbow Sign now come through intact instead of being truncated to The Legacy of Tommy Jarrell Vo.

All of which makes me very happy.

John

More twins pics

I haven't been taking enough pictures -- one of the things you discover pretty quickly when you have twins is that there's not much time for anything else! Not that I'm complaining, mind you...

Anyway, these are from a couple of weeks ago but they're nice pictures of our boys asleep in our arms on the front steps.

James:


Will:


You can't see it here, but James has very long, delicate fingers. I'm thinking fiddle...

John

Twins update

As you might have guessed, we've been a little busy. Melinda and the twins came home on Friday and everyone's doing great.

The boys' names are James Cartwright Salmon and William Hill Salmon, named after their grandfathers James Cartwright Salmon and William Buren Hill.

Here is a quick snapshot I took this morning. Bad lighting & no flash (for obvious reasons) but you can see what the little guys look like. That's James on the left and Will on the right.



Proud papa,

John

The twins are here!!

My wife Melinda delivered two beautiful twin baby boys last night. Mom and babys are doing great, and Dad and Big Brother Jake are proud and delighted (and a bit tired).

Details/pics/names will follow in a few days...

John

OK, spammers: you win

The Message Board was quickly deluged with literally hundreds of posts from spammers promoting little blue pills that I'm sure are not needed by us old-time fans.

So I took it down.

Oh well.

The alternative is to use a more robust discussion forum system that requires a login, etc. But that's not something I have time for right now, and it's kind of beyond the mission of this site anyway. There are already several good mailing lists and usenet forums for discussing old-time music -- let me know if you need any help finding them.

John

Message Board is back

I get a lot of questions via email about what banjo tuning a certain song is in, who's playing the banjo on a certain track, etc. I usually just reply directly but I figured why not share the answers more broadly, as they often come up repeatedly.

So I just turned the "Message Board" back on. This was something I had put up when I first built the site -- it never saw much use so I took it down. But if folks are interested in using it to discuss tunings of songs I'm playing, or anything else related to old-time music, please feel free! I'll leave it up as a trial for a little while to see if it's getting any use & then re-evaluate.

Click the "Message Board" link on the lower left of the main screen to get in.

I've also added a little "Search" feature that allows you to search Google from here. You can also use it to search sugarinthegourd.com, although not all the pages seemed to be indexed yet -- I am working on fixing this.

While I'm on this topic, this site really requires a screen resolution of 800x600 or (preferably) higher. At 640x480 resolution it looks pretty lousy...but so does much of the Internet, so hopefully folks are using a higher resolution. If any of you are having trouble viewing the site please let me know.

thanks!

John

Long time, no entries

Yikes, I look back & see the last post I wrote was back in November...time sure does fly. My wife and I are expecting twin boys (!) in April which is one reason I've been extra busy (getting ready) but not half as busy as I'm going to be!

Anyway, the last post referred to an upcoming "Young Fogies" playlist -- that was put up and updated a few times and there have been many, many playlist updates since then.

You may notice I've started running a few ads on the site, in an effort to recoup some of my operating costs. I'll try to strike a good balance: to make the ads effective for the advertisers, but not overly obtrusive for my visitors.

I'm also running a few ads of my own using Google AdWords...already I've gotten quite a few new visitors, and I've only spent 75 cents!

I've noticed that the number of available listeners on the 40kbps channel has been exhausted quite a bit lately. If this happens to you, just click on the 24kpbs stream and hopefully you will be able to listen. I hope to add more concurrent listeners in the future, as well as possibly a higher-bitrate (this won't be anytime soon) but of course all these things mean added expense. We'll see how the ad revenues add up and take a look at these options.

That's about all for now -- let me know if you have questions, or if there's anything in particular you'd like to hear. The next major playlist update will probably be another banjo-centric show.

Thanks to all for the kind emails & Guestbook entries -- if you haven't signed the Guestbook, please do so!

Enjoy!

John

Happy Thanksgiving

I'm off to Ithaca, NY today to spend a few days with family for Thanksgiving.

Hope everyone has a happy and safe holiday. I think Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. Being with family, eating too much, and being appreciative for all we have: what's not to like?

I was hoping to have the "Young Fogies" set up before I left but I have just been too busy. So hopefully I'll finish it up on Sunday. I do have a lot of great new CDs ripped & ready to go.

In the meantime, I have thrown up a "kitchen sink" list that's a pretty wide collection of stuff without much in the way of theme. So give a listen & have yourselves a happy holiday!

John

New Playlist Coming Soon...

Sorry for the lack of updates, folks. I've been really busy & have spent a lot of time over the last few months working on the election. Without getting too far into politics, I'll just say I'm pretty devastated by the outcome.

But what better way to drown my sorrows than in the deep, wide river of old-time music?

Look for a new playlist soon. I think the theme will be, to borrow a phrase from Ray Alden's CDs, "Young Fogies." Should be some good stuff.

Thanks for listening...

Got my fingers crossed...

We've had some technical difficulties over the past few days, with one of the servers that relays my Shoutcast streams. I've moved onto a new server, and everything seems to be OK now.

Thanks for your patience...

New playlist is up

I put up a new playlist last night, focusing on rags & blues. What do these words mean in an old-time context? I'm not even sure how to define it, except that you know it when you hear it. The beat is swing-ier, you'll hear lots of I-VI-II-V changes, and there's more of a noticable African-American influence evident. I've also included a few blues proper, including some from the great new Mississippi John Hurt reissue, many of which I've juxtaposed with other similar tunes to try to draw out connections between the blues & old-time traditions.

In a sense, these playlists are my attempt to learn more about this music. (I listen to Sugar in the Gourd too.) When I put several versions of "Lost Indian" back-to-back it helps me figure out which versions are different and how others may be related. I've often tried to figure out why certain tunes have "rag" or "blues" in the title. After listening to this playlist for awhile, I hope to have a better idea, and hopefully you will too.

There are also some tunes that have nothing to do with "rags and blues" -- just things that were new to my collection or that I thought were worth playing for one reason or another. As always, this initial playlist is a work in progress, and I plan on adding to it and moving things around over the next few days. If there's anything you'd especially like to hear, just let me know.

thanks,

John

Thank you, whoever you are!

On Saturday, the mailman brought a wonderful, totally unexpected, surprise: a very generous contribution, in cash, accompanied by a kind letter -- but with no name or return address.

The individual suggested that I use the donation to offset my costs in running this site, to buy some more CDs, or to buy my wife a nice bottle of wine when we go out to dinner. As much as my wife likes the third choice, I think I'll take her out to dinner & buy a nice bottle of wine from my own funds, and funnel this donation back into the station. And how can I resist a few new CDs?

So I just picked up Mississippi John Hurt's D.C. Blues -- The Library Of Congress Recordings, Vol. 1, which is really wonderful and highly recommended. It will likely form a cornerstone of the new playlist I am now working on. I have ordered a few other discs as well: one from Roger Cooper, one from Snake Chapman, a Roane County Ramblers reissue, and a collection of Kentucky Old Time Banjo. I look forward to hearing these, and you should too.

While the costs of running this site are not overly burdensome, they do add up. Donations like these are totally surprising, mind-blowing, and very kind. They also serve as a nice reminder that people appreciate what I am doing.

I wish I knew who to thank but I guess you want to remain anonymous. So whoever you are -- thank you!

John

What do you want to hear?

I'm hoping to get a new playlist going in the next few days.

Aside from the current Ed Haley playlist, I've recently had shows focusing on banjo, on West Virginia & Kentucky tunes, and several with less defined themes. I'm thinking the next playlist will feature "rags and blues" (in the old-time sense) -- but I thought I'd throw it out to the listeners -- what do you want to hear?

Other than the "rags and blues" idea, I've thought of doing a show focusing on balladry, or on African-American old-time musicians, or gospel-themed stuff, or I can do mostly "old stuff" from 78s, mostly current stuff -- you get the idea. So post a comment here (see link at the end of this post) or let me know via email -- what do you want to hear?

thanks,

John

Ed Haley

Mac Benford just sent me a wonderful new CD of Ed Haley tunes played on clawhammer banjo. A day earlier, I had received a great new CD from Rhys Jones, Jeff Miller, and Jim Nelson, which also features exciting renditions of a few Haley tunes. So I figured it's time for an Ed Haley tribute playlist.

This new playlist features a lot of Haley's recordings (warning: some are of very poor sound quality -- if you find these too hard to listen to, just let me know), as well as tracks from the above two albums, John Hartford's two Haley tribute albums, and other versions of tunes Haley played from simpatico artists (not necessarily the Haley versions, but interesting as points of comparison).

I'm still monkeying with the track order, so what's playing right now isn't quite final, but please give a listen and let me know what you think. (You can use the "comments" link below if you'd like to post a public comment.)

Best wishes,

John

Tune in, turn on, drop thumb

I'm currently running a playlist featuring mostly banjo players and tunes with prominent banjo. Plenty of fiddles and guitars thrown in for good measure, but the focus is on banjos.

Enjoy!

John

New news format

In the past, I was updating this news page with some regularity, in particular when I put up a new playlist. Now that I have moved from Live365 to a Shoutcast stream, I update the playlist much more frequently (I can update it on my home PC rather than having to do time-consuming uploads to a server).

One result is that with more frequent incremental updates, I haven't taken the time to post notices to the news page. To make this process less time-consuming for me, rather than editing & uploading new html files by hand, I am using Blogger.com to post updates online.

This shouldn't look any different to you -- it just makes the process quicker & easier for me, so I will hopefully be posting news updates more often.

See the link at the lower-left to read older SITG "News" postings.

Best wishes,

John