The Glory-Beaming Banjo

My head had a hole in it. I replaced it in July. Now, it has an even bigger hole in it. And it's nobody's fault but my own. I had replaced the Fiberskyn head that came with my banjo in the summer of 2011. I installed a thin goat skin from Mid-East Mfg. (now EnSoul Music ), which served me well for eight years. This time, I wanted to try calf skin to see if I noticed a difference. Let me tell you how I screwed up a new banjo head. There was a little spot on my old head where my thumb wore through to the tone ring. It still sounded good, so no big deal. The bigger problem was that the tension hoop had bottomed out, and I could tighten the head no further. I ordered a calf skin head from Elderly Instruments and let it sit around for a couple weeks. Finally, my six-year-old son urged me to get on with it, promising to help with the replacement. That lasted all of five minutes, and so I was left to finish the job on my own. I have to admit I wasn't in the mood to

During a fit of lunacy, I ordered a stack of albums from Jalopy Records , the in-house record label for the Jalopy Theatre and School of Music , located in Red Hook, New York. My first experience with the Jalopy catalog was last year when I reviewed Clarence Ashley, Live and In Person: Greenwich Village 1963 for The Old-Time Herald . Jalopy is one of the few labels today that is publishing old-time music on vinyl. They have a fairly robust catalog of new releases and reissues, as well as its  7 Inch Series that was originally available as subscription service.  The 7 Inch Series was pretty unique. Each month, Jalopy pressed a new record for subscribers. Performances were captured as live takes, mixed to a tape machine on location. The music was kept analog all the way through the process of making the vinyl record, and only at the last phase were they digitized for download. This series was produced in 2017 and funded through a Kickstarter campaign to aid in the high cost of p