The Glory-Beaming Banjo

Last month I ended my 500-day streak of playing banjo and fiddle. I followed that with two and a half weeks of not playing banjo or fiddle. It seems during my break that my fingers have lost almost all of their calluses. They haven't been this tender in a long time.  During the past week, I've been getting myself back in the habit of playing music on a semi-daily basis. I've been focusing on playing for longer stretches, rather just a few minutes to keep a streak alive like I'd gotten used to doing.  It feels good to be out of that rut.  The biggest thing I want to get back to is learning new stuff. I'm continuing to work on Michael Ismerio's online fiddle course , and I've been revisiting Ken Perlman's Clawhammer Style Banjo , the book that helped get my started on old-time more than a decade ago. I'm also thinking of digging out Mike Seeger's Southern Banjo Styles videos.  I've been trying to approach my instruments with a beginner's ...

During these waning days of 2019, I figured I'd give you one last look back at the year that was. The following are the five most viewed posts of 2019.  Review: Mike Seeger's Just Around the Bend . I'm cheating a bit with this one because this Smithsonian release occupied two of the most popular posts of the year. The actual top post by a couple hundred views was my post announcing that Seeger's final project would be released in August . My review of said CD/DVD/booklet set came in a few slots down the list. Remembering the Kent State Folk Festival . A love letter to a once-popular event for old-time musicians like Tommy Jarrell, Melvin Wine, the Highwoods String Band, the Carolina Chocolate Drops and more. And it all happened in my hometown. Remember when I said I was going to write multiple posts on the festival? Me neither.  Review: Anna & Elizabeth, "Hop High"/"Here in the Vineyard." Anna Roberts-Gevalt and Elizabeth LaPrel...

When I pre-ordered my copy of the Allison De Groot and Tatiana Hargreaves self-titled debut album from Free Dirt Records, I also ordered the seven-inch single from Anna & Elizabeth featuring their take on the traditional songs “Hop High” and “Here in the Vineyard.”  The two tracks were released in 2017 and serve as a kind of proving ground for the experimental approach to traditional music the duo would present on the their 2018 full-length, The Invisible Comes to Us , released on Smithsonian Folkways. GBB reviewed that album in May last year .  With the help of producers Alec Spiegelman and Benjamin Lazar Davis (who are members of avant-pop outfit Cuddle Magic), Anna & Elizabeth re-imagine “Hop High” and “Here in the Vineyard” employing their ethereal aesthetics, with haunting and delicate harmonies surrounded by unexpected instruments like pump organ, woodwinds, strings and electronics, as well as banjo tunings that were reportedly inspired by the Indones...

You may have voted with your pageviews which posts you liked best over the past year, but a few of my favorites didn't make the cut. Since we looked back at your favorite posts of 2018 last week, I thought it would be fun to revisit some of my pet projects this week. The following are five of my favorite posts to write in 2018:  1. Sounds of Summer: Beach Boys and the Banjo — My Beach Boys obsession seeped into my banjo addiction with this post. At first I found five songs where they used a banjo, but  I have since added two others I discovered after writing this post in July. From 1968 to 1973, the Beach Boys included the banjo on five of six albums. Al Jardine appears to be the only band member to actually play banjo. 2. Mike Seeger's Final Smithsonian Folkways Project  — In May, I wrote to Smithsonian Folkways regarding an uncompleted documentary that Mike Seeger was working on prior to his death in 2009. After some correspondence with Folkways p...

Warning: The music on this album may take you by surprise. Don’t panic. Anna & Elizabeth will guide you on the journey. The Invisible Comes to Us opens with the duo of Anna Roberts-Gevalt and Elizabeth LaPrelle singing “Jeano” unaccompanied in an echo chamber. As the song moves on, their voices are joined by synthesizers and the sound of chirping birds on a loop. You might think, maybe this is an aberration, as the electronic aural environment falls away and it’s just the voice and guitar of “Black Eyed Susan.” But once again, the plunges into a strange ethereal soundscape. By the time you get to the end of “Irish Patriot,” you’ve been led into a sonic maze built on layers of keyboards, Moog bass, vocoder, mellotron, pump organ and added sound samples from field recordings. Anna & Elizabeth built  their reputation on haunting harmonies and illustrating their music and stories with “ crankies ,” an old storytelling art form where drawings on long scrolls and spools...