Here are Law and Hargreaves…
Clifton Hicks does a great job of this one on solo banjo…
This is another very old tune that goes back to Civil War days in America. It’s been very well recorded over the years.
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Grooming Day for George
George just got home from his grooming. Lorraine did a fantastic job as usual and Georgie is looking mighty good.
Another lovely January (March) morning
The freezing rain that was predicted for our area overnight didn’t materialize, We awoke to find our world snow-covered once again. As it turned out, it was actually a pleasant morning to walk the dogs, with the temperature just at or just above freezing.
I’d just like to ask Mother Nature to look up from the poker game and pay a bit of attention. It’s March 22, and we’re done with snow for this season, thank you very much. Trout season opens in just over a month – in fact my painting exhibition at Yumart here in Toronto, opens on the same day as trout season this year. In closer to two months, morels will be fruiting around here, and if you can find some, there will be tasty dinners ahead.
Morels always seem to come about a week later than I want them to. I’m usually out there looking well before they start fruiting. The challenge scouting for morels is that they don’t fruit until they fruit, and you won’t know if a likely spot pans out until you actually see the mushrooms.
It’s spring cleaning weekend for the dogs. Georgie is visiting our fantastic groomer Lorraine this morning and Memphis has her turn tomorrow morning. George is starting to get adult fur in. It started as a ring around his torso and the slightly darker and less fluffy big dog fur has been coming in down his back. Memphis has had a very thick coat this winter. This morning she managed to find burrs on walk. If Memphis walks anywhere near burrs, they get embedded deep in her coat instantly. Lorraine will strip out a lot of that old undercoat before she sheds it all over the house.
Declaring Spring
Memphis stepped into the lake for the first time in 2014 today…..then decided it was way too cold for that nonsense and high-tailed it out of there.
The Yellow Rose of Texas
The Yellow Rose of Texas was a Confederate Civil War song that somehow or another evolved into a square dance tune. The two “versions” of the tune share a title, but are really strikingly different.
Here’s Bob Wills….
And now here’s Cathy Fink playing it on clawhammer banjo.
The adventures this song has had!
Considering Harry Smith
I was thinking about Harry Smith. I knew about Harry Smith in two ways and for the longest time I didn’t know they were the same person. First and foremost, I know the set of recordings known as the “Harry Smith Anthology” or as it is actually titled, the Anthology of American Folk Music.
Harry Smith was a guy who collected 78s, lots and lots of them, old blues, jazz, country, Cajun, gospel – a huge collection. This ultimately became in 1952 a 6-album collection of American folk music that was originally released between 1927 and 1932. This became hugely influential on the revival of folk music in the 1950s and 1960s.
Harry Smith was also an experimental film-maker. Quite a number of years ago, I saw some of his films but I failed to put two and two together – I simply thought they were different Harry Smiths. I did a search on YouTube for Harry Smith and it turns out some of his films are available there. Smith produced abstract animations, often hand-painting images on the film. Check this out….
I finally realized that the two Harry Smiths were one in the same when I read Patti Smith’s book, Just Kids. Harry Smith was living at the Chelsea Hotel in NY at the same time as Patti Smith and he comes up in her book.
If somebody gets around to writing a biography of Harry Smith, I’d love to read it. From what I’ve been able to find out he was a very interesting character, an eccentric for sure, very creative and tremendously influential.
Ain’t in it for my Health
We watched Ain’t in it for my Health tonight, the documentary about Levon Helm, directed by Jacob Hatley. It’s a lovely, intimate look at Levon Helm in the midst of his late career resurgence, spawned by two great recordings, Dirt Farmer and Electric Dirt. His voice came back years after radiation therapy for cancer left him whispering, but the film shows it is a voice that is very precarious (it can’t have helped that he appeared to be smoking weed all the time). Levon was a survivor – of drugs, cancer and bankruptcy, making some of the best music of his career in his last years.
Excellent film – recommended!
Selfie
Banjo Practice: Bill Cheatham
I don’t know who Bill Cheatham was, but the tune named after him has endured and has become a standard in both the old-time and bluegrass genres.
I videotaped some banjo practice tonight. Here’s me, attempting the old-time Bill Cheatham on clawhammer banjo.
By the way….I’m still pretty new at the banjo but I’d love to find a fiddle player in the Toronto area to make some jam with. Contact me through this blog if you’re interested.
A glimpse into the studio…
I’ve enjoyed a flurry of painting activity lately – which is a good thing since I have an exhibition happening in late April at Yumart, here in Toronto. It’s a curious thing. At times painting comes easy to me, but those times are bracketed by longer periods in which I wonder how I ever made a painting. But when it’s happening it’s happening. 
This painting is called The Forest of No Return (attentive readers will correctly notice that I’ve made other paintings with the same title….true dat).
27th Street 