Early on when I started playing clawhammer banjo, I learned a fab “D” tune called Spotted Pony. It was a catchy tune with a fun ascending passage that defines the tune. In fact, my buddy Ted and I regularly play it today. When I went… Read More
More so than songs, tunes often have lots of names. Sometimes a tune will take on a regional name. Sometimes, nobody locally will have known the actual title, and so simply call it something else. Sometimes, there will be a name from a tune’s country… Read More
Mac Beattie and his Ottawa Valley Melodiers
Have you heard Abby the Spoon Lady? Thanks Salvelinas for sharing her music with me. ….and a little Soldier’s Joy
Some songs seem to transcend style, fad and fashion and have endured in our collective imagination for a long time. Shortnin’ Bread has been a kind of cure-all for the soul, an Afro-American song dating back to the 1890s. Three little children, lying in bedTwo… Read More
Cathy and Dave….
Wildwood Flower was popularized by the Carter Family, but its close cousin I’ll Twine Mid the Ringlets was written by Joseph Philbrick Webster and published way back in 1860. It could be that both are based on another earlier tune, but if so I don’t… Read More
I’ve been working on the St. Anne’s Reel on the banjo recently, but I’ve been familiar with this one from my button accordion days as Reel de Ste-Anne. I don’t know the actual origin of this one, but a lot of people will tell you… Read More
I love the way Éric Gagné plays that box….
This is Reel de la Pointe au Pic performed by Gaston Nolet. The previous examples were played on a one-row accordion. M. Nolet is playing a 3-row box. I don’t recognize the maker of his accordion. It’s a beauty.
27th Street 