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Thursday, December 10th, 2009
John was over this evening -- we're going to play the open mic at Summit Unitarian Church on Saturday, looks like our set list will be "Louisville Burglar" and "California Stars" for our primary 2 songs, and "Prodigal Son" (which turns out to sound much better in E than in D) and "Meet Me in the Morning", if we get a chance to play more than 2 songs. We mostly went over stuff we have played before; the new songs we tried out: - "Somewhere East of West Berlin" (Stonewall Jackson) -- Cold War Country/Western.
- "The Growling Old Man and the Growling Old Woman" -- French Canadian fiddle tune; I've been working on this a fair amount the past few days, using my metronome technique. It sounded very nice.
- "Uncle Pen" -- I did not know this tune at all, it was kind of tough to catch the tune. But worth working on.
We also played "Jockey Full of Bourbon" in A minor (instead of E minor) -- I'm finally getting to work out a good fiddle part for that.
Someone who found my site by searching for "Louisville Burglar" sent me a link to this magnificent version of it, by John Specker: Grassroots Festival, 1996.
 (John reminds me, we also played Neil Young's "I am a Child", and "Ophelia" by The Band.)
posted evening of December 10th, 2009: Respond
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Sunday, January 17th, 2010
A good weekend for music with friends -- John came over last night and we played for a couple of hours, then I went over to Bob & Janis' place this afternoon and played, I am hoping to practice with the Lost Souls tomorrow evening. Set lists below the fold.
 John and I played a pretty eclectic mix of music: A couple of takes of my "Bonaparte" medley, "Jockey full of Bourbon", "Behind that Locked Door", "Meet me in the Morning" (which I think has potential to be really great), "The Battleship Maine" (by Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers),"Little Ditches" (by Michael Cross, about undertaking), "One of these Days", "A Man of Constant Sorrow" (ditto on the potential greatness), and "Walk Right In" among other songs. With Bob and Janis and Greg I played a pretty Grateful Dead-centric hour of music; starting with a drastically slowed-down version of "West Texas Cowboys" we played "Panama Red", "Breakdown Palace", "Rollin' in my Sweet Baby's Arms", "Loser" and more.
↻...done
posted afternoon of January 17th, 2010: Respond
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Sunday, January 24th, 2010
In emails last week, John and I have been talking about how to approach our weekly rehearsals, with the thought in mind that we'd like to have a good enough sound to play some shows before too long, and make recordings. What we eventually came up with was a two-pronged approach: if we start with a small group of songs that we think of as our book, and spend some time on those songs every week trying to get them to sound really polished, then we can also spend some time each week playing new songs, songs we haven't tried and are thinking about, or songs we enjoy that occur to one of us on the spur of the moment... So that's how we did it on Saturday and it worked out pretty well. The songs we are beginning with as our book are:
- Jockey Full of Bourbon
- Bonaparte medley
- Louisville Burglar
- Man of Constant Sorrow
- California Stars
- Meet Me in the Morning
- Walk Right In
- St. James Infirmary
- Angel From Montgomery
This is a nice mix of musical styles and of songs he sings with songs I sing. We played every one of these (except St. James I think) on Saturday, and they are in general really starting to come together. And we had time left over to fool around -- we did a couple of Dylan songs, one by George Harrison, one or two by Neil Young; also "Praying Mantis" by Don Dixon, which we've done before and which might be a candidate for the "book" list...
posted evening of January 24th, 2010: Respond
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Friday, January 29th, 2010
John and I had a good time practicing tonight -- we will be playing at the open mic at Menzel Violins on Thursday, the songs we play will most likely be "Man of Constant Sorrow", "Meet Me in the Morning", and "Walk Right In" -- here is a recording we cut of "Walk Right In". Sound quality is still pretty ragged but it is nonetheless, I think, a fun song to listen to. (And to play, of course.)
Another song we played that was a lot of fun, was "The Battleship of Maine," by Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers. Same tune as "Up on Blueridge Mountain," this is an anti-war song from the '20's.
posted evening of January 29th, 2010: Respond
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Saturday, February 6th, 2010
John and I played for a couple of hours this afternoon -- it seems to me like we're getting better, more in sync with each other, a good deal faster than I expected/hoped we would. Of the songbook tunes we played, every one was just right -- sounded like I hoped it would sound in front of an audience -- except for "California Stars", which was the first song we played and sounded like we had not warmed up yet. Two songs are ready to upgrade from "songs we're working on" to our songbook, namely "Preying Mantis" and "One of These Days"; and two songs which we played for the first time today -- "Pack up Your Sorrows," by Richard Fariña, and "On My Way Back to the Old Home," by Bill Monroe -- seemed like they could be included in the songbook straight off by virtue of how natural they were for us to play. We played "Shady Grove" for the second time, and I was happy and excited to realize that this is the source for the melody of my song Fair Elaine -- it has been nagging at me for a couple of years now to figure out where that came from.
posted afternoon of February 6th, 2010: 1 response
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Sunday, February 7th, 2010
This weekend I started working on a couple of new songs, some solo fiddle tunes and a blues tune I could play with John.
I thought I would explore the latter half of the alphabet in my music book a little; paging through the R's I found "The Road to Lisdoonvarna" -- well! I've been to Lisdoonvarna -- on a bike trip in western Ireland, with Ellen about 13 years ago -- and remember it fondly, and I have a shortage of jigs in my repertoire; so I thought I'd give it a try. Looked it up on YouTube to get an idea what it sounds like, and I found Ryan and Brennish Thompson playing it along with two other Dorian tunes:
I like all of these songs and have set myself the task of learning them -- they're coming along pretty well, I think. "Lisdoonvarna" and "Swallowtail" are jigs -- i.e. fast tunes in 6/8 time -- and "Drowsy Maggie" is a reel, in 4/4.
Another song I took a look at last night, which I think will be great to play with John, is "If the River Was Whiskey", Charlie Poole's version of "Hesitation Blues." Here are The Dough Rollers playing it: or you can listen to Poole at
lala.com. It's a great fiddle part, a lot of fun, and it'll sound great with John's guitar.
posted afternoon of February 7th, 2010: Respond
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Sunday, March 28th, 2010
John came over for a little while this afternoon; we started playing and with practically no warm-up time we were sounding really good -- earlier today I had been listening to Justin Townes Earle's version of If the River Was Whiskey -- it is very different from any other version I've heard, and easier to imagine myself singing -- so we tried that out, and came up with a fun blues tune. No new songs today -- the degree of comfort we both felt with the tunes in our songbook took me a bit by surprise, in almost every case we could just launch directly into the tune instead of noodling around trying to figure out how to begin it... Other highlights of the set list:
- The Old Home (Bill Monroe)
- Meet Me in the Morning (Dylan)
- One of These Days (Neil Young)
- Drowsy Maggie (traditional) -- We're slowing this way down. It's starting to sound like something that could actually have lyrics...
- Man of Constant Sorrow (Stanley Bros.) -- raised the key from Dm to Em (actually I think it's a modal key, but approximately "minor"), John is able to sing it a lot more clearly there and the transposition on fiddle was only a little bit tricky.
- Jockey Full of Bourbon (Tom Waits) -- we have not played this one in several weeks, it came together a lot more solidly than ever in the past.
We are going to play the (April Fools' Day) open mic at Menzel Violins on Thursday (Mo put my photo on the flier!), we're planning to play "Meet Me in the Morning" and "The Old Home".
posted afternoon of March 28th, 2010: Respond
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Monday, April 26th, 2010
Alexandra Birnbaum of Maplewood Patch published a very nice photo of The Lost Souls from when we were playing in Maplewood's Open Market on Saturday (except she cropped Eric out of the picture, to the right). I think this must be from when we were playing "Old Joe Clark" at the beginning of the second set:
posted evening of April 26th, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, May 13th, 2010
Here is a song John and I recorded last night, a medley of "Drowsy Maggie" and "Dancing Barefoot" -- we've been working on this for a few weeks and played it last week at the Menzel Violins open mic. I'm pretty happy with the way we've integrated the vocal melody with the fiddle melody.
Oh and here is another song I recorded recently that I'm pretty happy with:
This is a Leadbelly song also performed by Hazel Dickens (and many other artists), but the version I learned it from and which I always think of when I hear it, is my friends' band Other People's Children, Liam and Malcolm.
posted evening of May 13th, 2010: Respond
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Monday, May 31st, 2010
Some of the nicest weather we've had all month, yesterday and today. John and I played music for a long time yesterday afternoon, sitting out in the sunny, mild backyard; then Andrea came over and we barbecued some chicken and hot dogs, and all in all it was just about the perfect spring/summer evening.
And the weekend continues! Happy Memorial Day, everyone -- Bob and Janis are coming over to jam for a while this afternoon.
posted morning of May 31st, 2010: Respond
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