The Glory-Beaming Banjo

Making music has taken a back seat to buying music lately. I haven't gotten much playing time in over the last couple months, but I have another stack of records to share with you. That is, if you're willing to take a peak at the latest additions to my collection.  While I do have a cool vintage vinyl release to share, it seems that 2025 has become the year of 78 rpm records for me. I've added another 10 shellac records to my collection since my previous post , although not all of them fall into the old-time / hillbilly realm.  Let's start with the vinyl. I saw an online listing for the two-LP set of The Hammons Family, A Study of a West Virginia Family's Traditions, released by the Library of Congress in 1973. The exciting thing about this particular copy was that it was still sealed! The box set includes two records and a 36-page booklet about the Hammons family of Pocahontas County. This collection features music by Burl Hammons, Maggie Hammons Parker, and Sherma...

Leave it to me to write a whole big "Vinyl Hunter" post about records that aren't vinyl, and then forget about the newest additions to my old-time music collection that ACTUALLY ARE vinyl.  First up is an album released earlier this year. I had my local record store pre-order me a copy of Rhiannon Giddens & Justin Robinson, What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow , which was released in April on Nonesuch. The album features two-thirds of the original Carolina Chocolate Drops lineup and arrived shortly before the band's reunion concert at the inaugural Biscuits & Banjos Festival , April 25-27, in Durham, North Carolina, and it also preceded the release of a new documentary about the band that you can watch now on Amazon Prime.  The Giddens-Robinson duo provide a dozen North Carolina fiddle and banjo tunes. The entire album was recorded outdoors at Joe Thompson’s and Etta Baker’s North Carolina homes, as well as the former plantation Mill Prong House. In the bac...

For whatever reason, I called my record collecting posts "Vinyl Hunter" back in 2016. I had just gotten back into collecting vinyl records , and at the time I didn't really think about the possibility of adding 78 rpm records to my collection. That all changed a couple years ago, when I shared my copy of Uncle Bunt Stephens, "Sail Away Lady" / "Louisburg Blues" (Columbia, 1926), which I got off eBay. However, that wasn't even the first piece of shellac I bought. But, we'll get to that.  First, I wanted talk about my most recent 78 haul. Earlier this year, I stopped into an antique store in South Carolina while traveling for work and walked out with four shellac records. Awhile back, I joined a 78 rpm collecting group on Facebook, and someone posted some records that had just been put on the store floor at Catnip Antiques in Simpsonville, S.C. It just so happened that the store was on my way back to the airport, so I decided to check it out. ...

July 2 is exactly the midpoint of the year, with 182 days preceding and 182 days to follow. It seems like a good time to reassess my goals for 2025. In years past, I would post my goals in January. This year, I didn't even bother doing that. I figured you probably get tired of constantly hearing how I'm behind on my playing goals, so guess what?  I'm behind on my playing goals this year.  I totally missed two months of playing, not playing at all in March and May. However, I started to get back into a groove in June. I'm hoping to use that momentum for second half push to get back to playing music regularly.  I typically set three playing time goals each year: a primary goal, a minimum goal and a stretch goal. I was hoping to reach 100 hours of combined playing this year, with a minimum goal of beating last year's total of 85 hours and a stretch goal of 124 hours.  Having missed two whole months and topping out at a combined 5.5 hours in February, the only goal ...