The Glory-Beaming Banjo

Last Saturday was Record Store Day. There were a few albums I wanted, so I set my alarm for 6 a.m., which doesn't even seem that early compared to how early some people line up outside local record stores for this annual event. I saw a couple people camped out at one local store at 8 p.m. on Friday, choosing to spend all night in a shopping plaza in hopes of finding that sweet, sweet vinyl treasure.  My alarm went off, and I hit snooze. It went off again, and I turned it off. Getting up early to wait in line for hours is a younger person's game. I didn't leave the house until 7:30. The shop I visited first opened at 8 a.m. There was a line, but it didn't seem too crazy. However, it took almost an hour for me to get my turn to enter the fray to search for the records on my wish list.  There were three albums that I considered "must have," and I knew Big D's Records at Summit Mall, in Fairlawn, Ohio, had at least gotten copies of each of them. There were tw...

Highlights from my vinyl collection have been few and far between recently on this blog. My last entry in this series came back in February last year. Well, I have an exciting addition to share today.  You may recall I had a bit of an obsession a few years back with Ward Jarvis. I dubbed 2017 as The Year of Ward Jarvis . And in that initial declaration, I identified three records I was hoping to track down. I managed to acquire one of them, Visits , by the end of that year. That left two albums on my wish list.  Well, now only one remains. This week I received the long sought after Rats Won't Stay Where There's Music , released in 1979 by the Ohio Arts Council and featuring recordings of Ward Jarvis and his sons, collected by the late David Brose .  I was so happy to find a copy of this album. I was starting to lose hope after a series of near-misses and then seeing some copies being listed online for as high as $200. However, patience paid off. I had set an alert on eBay...

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 ...

The latest issue of The Old-Time Herald is out now, and my writing appears in the form of two reviews in the magazine. They are for the LP Clarence Ashley,  Live and In Person: Greenwich Village 1963  and for the book, Building New Banjos for an Old-Time World , by Richard Jones-Bamman. You may have noticed I've written more  reviews  on this site over the last year, and I wanted to expand my writing portfolio a bit more. Last fall, I answered a general Facebook request by editor Sarah Bryan to recruit new reviewers, and these are my first to appear in the quarterly magazine. The spring issue also includes the annual festival guide, so you can plan your summer. Clarence Ashley,  Live and In Person   was released by Jalopy Records in April 2017. This is a vinyl-only release, compiled from two concerts at Gerdes Folk City in Greenwich Village in October 1963. He is accompanied by Tex Isley on guitar and autoharp. The LP includes an essay on the backcov...