Here’s an extra mid-week special, to alert everyone to Laurel Swift’s exciting new venture (if you don’t already know her playing, see 28 May post ‘Whitefriars Hornpipe’).
Get away and absorb yourself in a relaxing folk music retreat. Hone your folk style and skills, build musical confidence and jam informally whilst surrounded by beautiful countryside and lovely people. Two unique weekends of inspiring classes, homecooked food, informal sessions and country walks!
Folk Fiddle Retreat
4th – 6th September 2015
Stour Valley, Brantham, Suffolk/Essex border
A small and friendly weekend away for fiddle players (violin, viola and cello players new to folk music all very welcome), plus walks along the beautiful Stour Estuary.
With media recently marking the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, I offer this jaunty Morris tune (for those who prefer their titles rather more pc, sometimes known as Travel By Steam.)
Nick Hart (MacCann duet concertina)
A brief (but beautifully-formed) in-house recording from a Saturday Workshops Ensemble class, Cecil Sharp House, London.
This savage event was the last battle of the Napoleonic Wars. On that one day, some 47,000 died (not including prisoners and missing). Just three years earlier, French Neoclassical painter David had painted a portrait of Napoléon Bonaparte, of which this is a detail.
(Jacques-Louis David: The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC)
Perhaps my favourite tune in the whole wide, sky-filled world.
Paul James’s wild rant*, named for falcons, whirls and tumbles and jinks like the Red Kites I watched playing on the Ridgeway thermals near Monks Risborough one summer evening.
Two videos: the first, dancetastic band Blowzabella recording the tune for their album Strange News; the second, Paul’s teaching video.
Blowzabella
Several of the band’s musicians are multi-instrumentalists. The line-up here is:
Andy Cutting (triangle), Jo Freya (bass clarinet), Paul James (bagpipes), Gregory Jolivet (hurdy-gurdy), Dave Shepherd (violin), Barn Stradling (acoustic bass guitar), Jon Swayne (bagpipes)
Paul teaching Falco on border pipes, fast and slow; first in F, then in G from 4:38.
(Note to fiddlers: I like to play this tuned GDGD – gets a little of that pipes/gurdy drone sound. However, E strings don’t last long with all that tuning back up again, so if you want to play cross-tuned, perhaps best to use AEAE, and stick to standard tuning if you want to play along with Paul’s pipes or other non A-friendly instrument.)
(‘Paul James of Blowzabella playing the tune “Falco” on border bagpipes’ YouTube video, 8:58. Posted by Paul James, 28 Nov 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aICsx8Ig820)
* Rant: a dance with a rhythmic, percussive step (not someone having a right go on social-media!)
For more information on Blowzabella’s gigs, recordings etc – and the fantastic all-dancing, all-playing Blowzabella Days:
A lovely variation on an old-time/bluegrass sessions favourite. I’ll be posting up the standard version later in the year – but in the meantime, caveat musicus: DANGER – this is the OTHER version!
Annie Staninec (fiddle), Luke Abbott (viola)
Annie is a major west-coast bluegrass and old-time fiddler, solo and with a number of bands. Luke sings and plays old-time and bluegrass on ‘a bunch of stringed instruments’ and is part of the brilliant Toneway Project that teaches music by ear online.
This candidate for my Best Title Ever award dates from about 1800. It’s played here in a set with Wedding Shoes.
Boldwood
Becky Price (accordion), Miranda Rutter (fiddle, viola), Matthew Coatsworth (fiddle, viola)
Boldwood’s core repertoire stems from forgotten tunes played back into life from obscure manuscripts dating largely from 18th century England – a wondrous musical era when, their website says, “the worlds of folk and classical music happily co-existed and inspired each other to produce rich and fascinating instrumental music”.
This recording is from the group’s 2012 unreleased second album Mudlarking, available on Soundcloud (https://soundcloud.com/boldwood)
They have a new EP out, full of wonderfully earwormy tunes; and their first CD, the dance-inducing Feet, Don’t Fail Me Now, is a real treat. For details of how to get your hands on a copy, see their website: http://www.boldwood.org
The dots for Jackson’s Shaving Brush can be found in The Boldwood Dancing Master – a musical treasure-trove of over 70 tunes available from the website. The cover photo alone taught me things I didn’t know about all those Austen balls: next time I’m in Oxford, in the Ashmolean, I’ll tear myself away from my old friends the Stradivarius guitar and Powhatan’s Mantle and the mediaeval bishops’ rings, and make the acquaintance of Dance Fan for the Year 1789!
The second of the crooked tunes I promised last week is a delightful, fairly recent American oldtime tune. Expect the unexpected in the B part!
Canote Brothers
Twin brothers Greg (fiddle) and Jere (guitar/banjo/melodeon) are renowned for their off-the-beaten-track tunes, traditional and modern. This quirky tune, composed by Jere, was inspired by a cat who would always go out by the front door, but would only ever come in through the back.
Greg Canote (fiddle), Jere Canote (guitar), Adam Hurt (banjo), Cathy Barton (banjo), Dave Para (guitar)
A clip from a jam/teaching session at American Banjo Camp 2009, held at Fort Flagler, Washington state.
Slower teaching audio file of the Canotes and Candy Goldman playing, made for their Seattle stringband class. (Greg’s fiddle is tuned ADAE. If you must, you can get away with standard tuning – but then you’ll miss that great cross-tuned ring from the sympathetic low A…)
For more about the Canote Brothers, including albums, gigs, and the Seattle stringband class, see their website: http://www.canote.com/
For more tunes taught at the Seattle class, see Maya Whitmont’s astonishing archive of audio files and banjo tabs at: http://www.stringband.mossyroof.com/
American Banjo Camp 2015 – 11-13 September at beautiful Fort Flagler, WA – is “not just for banjos anymore! We also feature a FIDDLE track as well as GUITAR, BASS, MANDOLIN, and JAMMING classes!” Sign up for 87 classes, 23 scheduled jams, 2 concerts, 6 meals, 2 late-night snacks, and 2 optional sleep periods. And all over one stonking weekend (note the “optional”!). Here’s the link: http://AmericanBanjoCamp.com
The posts for this week and next are both crooked tunes – musical riddles that turn round and bite you in the ankle just when your ears are quite sure how the tune is going to work out.
For this week, then: two arrangements and a teaching video of the wonderfully crooked hornpipe Whitefriar’s. (Traditional English, I believe – though after last week’s research debacle, I wouldn’t lay bets…)
Leveret
Andy Cutting (melodeon), Rob Harbron (concertina), Sam Sweeney (fiddle)
Inspirational playing in a set with the inscrutable Purlongs.* (Mr Cutting only half visible, but happily entirely audible.)
A great teaching video made for the 2014 Cowan Creek Mountain Music School advanced fiddle class. Andy notes: ‘Fiddle tuned GDAE. As played by John Salyer.’
A few passes through Google turned up nothing about Last of Harris’s intriguing title. The tune’s origins seemed pretty obvious though. In my mind’s eye I could see it all: the ship’s stern, the gulls above the silver wake, the mountains of the Isle of Harris misting away over the horizon as a Hebridean fiddler sets sail for the New World.
A poignant theme that deserved to be illustrated, I thought, and contacted Harris-based photographer Stefan Davies, explaining that the tune ‘presumably relates to the experience of emigrating to the US from the Isle of Harris’. He kindly sent me a wonderful photograph to upload.
Sorted – a great post for this week!
And then, last night, quite out of the blue, Google sweetly offered me a search result I really didn’t want to see: ‘Last of Sizemore’. ‘Don’t click!’ whispered my sinking heart. ‘Don’t go there!’ But I did. And read. And oh, abbamoses.com – how could you be so cruel…
‘There are a number of musically unrelated ‘Last of’ tunes: Last of Callahan, Harris, etc. Usually they go along with a story of the last tune played by a fiddler on his deathbed or at the gallows.’
I fall on my sword. Blushing. But truth has come too late to press memory’s delete. For me, Last of Harris will always evoke, not poor Mr Harris about to meet his Maker, but Stefan’s image of the Isle of Harris – quite simply too beautiful to be left out.
Three different takes on the glorious 48-bar jig composed by Simon Ritchie.
Nick Hart and Tom Moore
Nick (duet concertina) and Tom (fiddle) recorded this haunting rendering on their 2014 self-titled CD.
Mary Humphreys and Anahata
Played at breezy dance speed on English concertina and Oakwood melodeon, in a set with The Alexander (by William Clarke of Feltwell – see Mary’s fascinating notes at: http://www.maryhumphreys.co.uk/William_Clarke.php)
Simon Ritchie (composer)
Simon and His So-Called Band recorded the original barnstorming version on their 1998 album Melodion Mania. I hope to post up a Spotify link here soon, but in the meantime you can hear the track on Spotify, and download it from Amazon.
For this very first post in my new fiddle tunes blog, I thought I’d treat you to something unusual that I came across while hunting out old-time versions of this week’s featured tune, Billy in the Lowground. And so we begin with a story, a riddle, a rhyme – and dance away into a tune played fit to charm Old Nick himself…
Anna and Elizabeth (Anna Roberts-Gevalt and Elizabeth LaPrelle), accompanied by Jefferson Hamer and Eamon O’Leary (The Murphy Beds)
The Devil’s Nine Questions was learnt from the 1920s-40s singing of Texas Gladden and Mrs. Rill Martin, Virginia. Comment on Irish music forum The Session has Billy in the Lowground originating in centuries-old Scottish and Irish reels.
Anna and Elizabeth illustrate some of their songs with story-scrolls turned on frames known in the States as ‘crankies’. The duo is touring the UK and Ireland in May, in London on 8th (Musical Traditions/sold out) and 19th (Green Note, Camden). Check out their full itinerary on their website: http://www.annaandelizabeth.com. The Murphy Beds are at: http://www.murphybedsmusic.com
Every couple of weeks or so I feature a tune that's caught my fancy – audio/video clips of brilliant musicians playing great, perhaps uncommon tunes to learn by ear. Most are from the English and American Old-time traditions; some hail from other musical worlds ‒ Scandi, perhaps, or French. But whatever you play ‒ fiddles or frets, free-reeds or fipples ‒ I hope you enjoy catching these wonderful tunes!
Jenny Glover's FIDDLETAILS 