The Glory-Beaming Banjo

This year's Lake Erie Folk Festival dedicated a whole track of its free daytime program to Ohio-centric folk music. Two workshops, presented by Columbus-based old-time musician Henry Barnes , focused exclusively on fiddle tunes from the Buckeye State.  Seeking out Ohio-based old-time tunes has been a subject near and dear to my heart, as I've attempted to identify a common fiddle tune repertoire , uncover uniquely Ohio tunes and seek out my state's most influential old-time musicians .  Barnes is much more accomplished in all of these areas, so it was exciting to meet and learn from him at the Lake Erie Folk Festival on Saturday, Feb. 2, at the Thwing Center on the Case Western Reserve University campus in Cleveland.  Barnes presented three workshops during the festival:  Learn Ohio Fiddle Tunes Fiddle Bowing Exercises  Performing Ohio Fiddle Tunes (with Susie Goehring) I attended all three. However, I'll focus on the two presentations related to Ohio fiddle ...

Five years ago, I began a quest to study old-time musicians from Ohio and the tunes they played. I was trying to determine if there was a specific repertoire of the Buckeye State.  In a post from May 2018, I reported on a survey I conducted to find what might be considered the most  common tunes of Ohio fiddlers . I always meant to come back to this topic to discuss some of the more unique pieces that these musicians played, which could be called "Ohio tunes."  Sure, there are tunes like "Banks of the Ohio," "Camp Chase" and "Big Scioty" that specifically reference the state and its landmarks, but these compositions are often attributed to sources outside of Ohio. There also are a number of wartime songs , minstrel tunes , broadside ballads and canal songs that have their origin in the state. However, I wanted to find the more unique tunes played by the fiddlers I surveyed, with special attention paid to those pieces that specifically mention Oh...

Earlier this year, the Field Recorders' Collective released a new album by Teodar Jackson , an old-time fiddler from Texas who was recorded in the mid-1960s. Yesterday, the FRC announced four more albums to round out their 2020 offerings.  The Field Recorders' Collective is a non-profit organization established by the late Ray Alden that is dedicated to preserving and distributing non-commercial recordings of American traditional music that would be otherwise unavailable to the general public. Each year, the FRC releases a handful of a albums from a variety of musicians that are available on CD or as a digital download via Bandcamp. Not only does the group provide excellent music, but it's a cause well worth supporting.  This year's releases represent musicians from Texas, Missouri, Mississippi, Kentucky and Ohio, including a reissue of a long out of print Rounder recording. The following is a quick summary of the 2020 FRC albums. For now, only the the Teodar Jackso...

Let's play show and tell. If you've been reading me for any length of time, you know that the Glory-Beaming Banjo home office is in Northeast Ohio. As such, old-time music from the Buckeye State is of particular interest to this author. Without much to report on during these days of COVID-19, it seemed like a good time to show off my Ohio old-time music collection. Many of these items have appeared on this blog in the past, but I've never shown everything all in one place. Most of these albums are solely by artists from Ohio, with the exception of the two Young Fogies volumes and Visits , each of which feature only a couple of Ohio musicians. A couple of these musicians are not native Ohioans, such as Ward Jarvis, Rector Hicks, Cecil Plum and Dan Gellert, but they lived here for a significant period of time. Gellert apparently no longer lives in Ohio, but he did when his Old-Time Tiki Parlour album came out. The following is a rundown of the collection ... Bad D...

In my never ending quest to learn more about Ohio's old-time music heritage, I recently came across an article from the Ironton Tribune about Jess Large. His name has been referenced in Field Recorders' Collective releases for Arnold Sharp and Jimmy Wheeler , but I never knew anything about Large or his legacy.  Born Jesse James Large in 1905, he lived in Ironton, Ohio, a small city at the southernmost tip of the state, along the Ohio River. Ironton is the county seat of Lawrence County, with a population of more than 10,500. Large was most active in the 1930s and '40s, fiddling for barn dances and radio programs in the tri-state region of Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia. Large took his own life in 1961 after a brain tumor robbed him of his ability to play the fiddle.  In addition to Sharp and Wheeler, Large was reportedly an influence on other fiddlers in the region, including Asa Neal, Forrest Pick and J.P. Fraley, according to the article Mark Shaffer of th...

Ward Jarvis at his home in Athens County, Ohio, c. 1977. (Photo by Kerry  Blech. Source: Slippery-Hill ) A s mentioned last time around , my new focus for old-time music is the Ohio River Valley, primarily Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia. Musicians such as Ed Haley, John Salyer, Burl Hammons and many others. As an Ohio boy, born and raised, my natural inclination is to start with some Ohio fiddlers, like Lonnie Seymour, Arnold Sharp, Jimmy Wheeler and Jeff Goehring. But first up is Ward Jarvis. Jarvis was born in West Virginia in 1894 and is said to have been influenced by Ed Haley . Jarvis then moved to Ohio for work in the 1940s, settling in Athens County. He was recorded by a few different people, including Jeff Goehring, Davis Brose and Ray Alden. His music appears on a release of Goehring's tapes by Field Recorders' Collective ( FRC402 ), two LPs produced by Brose, "Traditional Music From Central Ohio" and "Rats Won't Stay Where There's Mus...

Your scribe (second from right) with some friends at the 2017 Raccoon County Music Festival. (Source: Chagrin Valley Times) Well, it's been a minute, hasn't it? The last year has been difficult on many fronts. Playing music was no exclusion. The amount of time I spent playing banjo and fiddle suffered the most. I didn't blog much either, which you already knew. But it wasn't all bad. Here's a look back at last year and a look ahead to my goals for the year ahead. 2016 Notes I have now been playing banjo for eight years and fiddle for four years. My focus remains on the fiddle, as I try to learn general technique and tunes. Time spent playing banjo was mostly to keep up with a handful of tunes I like most. Playing Time: Due to increased work travel and other factors, my playing time was dramatically reduced in 2016. As mentioned before , I log my practice time in the quest to reach that fabled 10,000-hour mark. This last year was my lowest (by far) amount o...