GoodTimeTonight

So I’ve been messing around with a banjo lately, and I’ve been looking for good books and youtube videos and Pete Seeger pamphlets about doing so.

I started with Pete’s book ‘How to play the 5-String Banjo’ (which one friend described to me as the most frustrating book he’d ever read). It’s not too bad but a bit vague on technique and he seems to get to more advanced stuff very quickly. There’s a record that went along with this book that has some nice examples, someone has kindly ripped it to youtube. This made following along in the book much easier:

How to Play the 5-String Banjo Part 1 (youtube)

But, Pete starts you off playing in C, and the conventional wisdom (or at least what is considered these days says) says start in G. So some of the materials need a bit of transposing or returning.

Generally tho, for old time, you’ll be working on that frail, Pluck-Rest-Brush-Thumb (Bumm-Titty as Pete Says) for hours, or weeks, or months..

Other than this there are a bunch of pretty good instructional videos on youtube showing this strum and some other nice instructional things, here’s a good one.

Here’s a video from Pete’s Rainbow Quest show where he teaches you how to play Skip To My Lou. A standard starting point. Oh Pete’s great.

Another book I have really come to like is called The How and the Tao of Old Time Banjo by Patrick Costello. Its very specific on the strumming pattern and just progresses from there. It’s also pretty dang funny too. And the best part of this one is it’s free under a creative commons license, you can download it here (Archive.org) I really like how it steps you through the initial steps of frailing, very specifically and slowly. Whatever works ends up as the general philosophy, but here’s a good example of one thing that works in excruciating detail.

You’re going to need to play with other folks eventually and jam and become awesome, but these are good resources to get started!

Related Links:

You can get Pete’s book at a lot of places, here are some copies you can purchace from Elderly Instruments.  (Elderly)

You can get a hard copy of the How and the Tao (with a nice hard plastic like cover for keeping in your banjo case) at Amazon as well. (Amazon)

Update: You can check out Patrick Costello’s blog at http://dailyfrail.com, cool. And if you want to purchase the book, maybe do it direct from Patrick instead of amazon. (http://funkyseagull.com/banjo-tao.html)

When you want genuine music - music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whiskey, go right through you like Brandreth’s pills, ramify your whole constitution like the measles, and break out on your hide like the pinfeather pimples on a picked goose - when you want all this, just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo! - Mark Twain

Tags: banjo, frailing, instruction, patrick costello, Pete Seeger

So other sites may have their 2008 best of lists but I’m certainly not hip enough to rank anything and truth be told I spent more time this year listening to things that were released before my parents were born than anything that came out this year. But still I’d like to make a list of some stuff I listened to this year that may or may not have come out in 2008 that you should all check out in no particular order. In many cases you will be supporting some great Chicago artists.

• The Butcher’s Boy - Skin and Bones, These guys have been around Chicago for a bit and have gone through a name change, but they finally got their debut album together this year. I think it has a great sound and is a great mix of Byrds country and rock and folk and blues and lots of stuff. Buy it here from GrapeJuiceRecords
• The Floorbirds - Field Recordings, the Floorbirds are a folk duo from Minneapolis, they sound great and sing lovely songs. I am jealous of their talent. You can buy this from their myspace page.
• Rachel Ries - Without a Bird, I am totally a sucker for 180 gram vinyl and hand written thank you notes. Both of which I got when I bought Rachel’s album Without a Bird. She has a new EP out too, but I spent a good part of this year listening to this one. She has a great voice and I love the song Chicago. I talked about her here earlier when she played at the Hideout. If you get a chance, go see her live and definatly listen to this one.
• Joe Pug - Nation of Heat, Joe is a good guy, I’ve been going to see him for a while now so it’s great that he’s starting to get national attention, and rightly so as his album is quite good. Joe’s music is hard to pin down, I say I think he likes to write about pairs and colors. Anyway check out this album you’ll like it. I like the track “I do my father’s drugs”. And if you get a chance to see him live do it quick before you’ll have to pay more when he’s huge and playing at the Riv.
• Laura Gibson - If You Come to Greet Me, Laura Gibson is a singer songwriter from Oregon. I saw her when she was here in Chicago opening for Colin Meloy and I snatched up her album at the show. It’s great, she plays these lovely fingerpicked melodies on her sweet sounding nylon string guitar. Technically this album came out in 2006, but it was new to me..
• Bonnie Prince Billy - Lie Down in The Light, Wil Oldham has been making great music for years. This years Prince Billy release is another great relase of minimal folk tinged songs. He gets a little more ambitious with each release and it shows here. I can remember the first time I heard his band Palace Brothers album Days in the Wake and how it just blew me away. Check this one out.
• Fred Holstein - Live at the Earl of Old Town, I spent a lot of time listening to Fred this year. He’s a big part of Chicago music tho I never got to meet him his shadow looms large at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago. This is a great recording put out this year of a show Fred did at the Earl of Old Town in 1969, a bar in Chicago where he played often.
• Mavis Staples - Live Hope at the Hideout, Mavis Staples is a staple (ha!) blues and gospel singer. I wanted to go see her record this album at the Hideout but I missed out, too bad for me. But the album that came out from that night is a great set of Freedom songs.
• King Kahn and BBQ Show - Self Titled. These guys. They’re kind of punk, kind of soul, kind of blues. They are loud, and wailing blues guitar and crazy surf. I dunno what to call them but they are all kinds of awesome. I think this album came out in 2005 and 2007 in the US (!, ha, yeah I know), but somebody gave me this album this year and I listened to it a ton. Check it out.

And the more obvious must haves.

• Pete Seeger - at 89, at 89 years old Pete Seeger is still going strong with this new album. I liked it, but I loved the film The Power of Song, don’t miss either of these.
• Neil Young - Live at Cantebury House 1968, this is the newest release from the Neil Young archives. It’s great for Neil’s banter between songs and his fiddling on melodies like ‘Winterlong’ when we know how great these songs will sound.
• Bob Dylan - Bootleg Series 8, Outtakes from the Last three albums including 3 takes of Mississippi? Yes thank you. These bootleg releases are usually pretty good, this one is great too.

Other stuff

• Good Time Tonight podcasts! Seriously the music I’ve heard live this year has far outshined anything I’ve heard in albums, I’ve spent a lot of time recording and posting the best of the grafton and Mike Alberts One Mic Stand series here on the goodtimetonight podcasts, these guys are all great and you should listen to them over and over.
• Mississippi Records, I’ve picked up a couple archival releases from this Portland Record label, they put out some great anthologies of old blues, folk and gospel. I spent a lot of time listening to their excellent Life Is a Problem anthology of rock gospel, and their other folk and pre-blues anthologies.

Friends

The movers and shakers of Good Time Tonight have weighed in, here are their recommendations. thanks guys:

• Mike Alberts, “Well,  I was just thinking that I listen a lot to James McMurtry’s Live in Aught Three and Just Us Kids too.  Good stuff.”
• Mark Dvorak,  “I listened a lot to Neil young’s LIVE AT MASSEY HALL while traveling. and Coleman Barks’ reading the poetry of RUMI. Can you dig it?”
• Peggy Browning, “I listened to the Goldmine Pickers new cd Lonesome Gone.  Mark is on that cd too.  I also have been listening to Mark Dvorak’s What a Wonderful World“
• Lizabeth MacDonald, “I was listening to the year end round up on Sound Opinions the other night, and other than Brittney Spears, I had no idea who the other people were. “
• Dennis Harpole, “I am no help, cause I never listen to current music anymore. In the car, I’ve been listening to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Will the Circle be Unbroken album from 2002, a CD from an old Gram Parsons tribute that somebody made for me, and Diana Krall’s Live in Paris CD from 3 or 4 years back.”

Tags: 2008, BBQ Show, Bob Dylan, Bonnie Prince Billy, Fred Holstein, Goldmine Pickers, Grape Juice Records, James McMurty, Joe Pug, King Kahn, Laura Gibson, Mavis Staples, Mississippi Records, Neil Young, One Mic Stand, Pete Seeger, rachel ries, RUMI, The Buthcher's Boy, The Floorbirds

First of all, I saw this comic, go ahead, read this comic:
http://catandgirl.com/view.php?loc=611

This comic is cute, but I think it’s got a point. And it’s an interesting point, at that, for folk musicians. Are we approacing (or regressing?) to a state of ‘post-consumerism’ in music? Where the everpresent microphone makes recordings meaningless and the idea of music as a commodity, moot? A marching resurgance of DIY Folk Musicians taking over the planet? Read on for my thoughts on this compelling cartoon!

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Tags: Comics, Pete Seeger

As folk musicians and appreciators we are quite aware of the contributions of the Appalachian region to the mythology  and cannon of American folk music. It can sadden us then when we see interviews with West Virginians and Kentuckians in the run up to the Democratic presidential primaries culled for the most reactionary racist and stereotypical comments towards the candidates.  How then can we try to reconcile this image with the music that we say we love? I read an interesting blog post by Michael J. Iafrate today regarding the stereotyping of Appalachian Americans through hurtful humor and imagery. From the blog post over at CatholicAnarchy.org:

Despite the complex sources and forces that contributed to the development of the image or idea of Appalachia, what developed, and continues to exist today, is a two-sided and contradictory image of Appalachians: that of a romanticized proud people steeped in tradition and “original” American values, or its opposite, a culture of backward, ignorant, and violent savages
….
Most Appalachian scholars locate the origin of the idea of Appalachia within various literary narratives, particularly the popular postbellum “local color” writers who constructed fiction centering around the curiosities of regional cultures which helped to define middle class American values by creating and gazing at exotic “others.” As has been the experience of other colonized peoples, a number of scholars have noted that the creation of a distinct, homogeneous region called Appalachia, as well as its colonization, was also facilitated by the missionary activity of the churches after the Civil War, who spread the political ideologies and values of middle class America to the people they served.

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Tags: Appalachia, Lead belly, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie