Banjo Hangout Newest 100 Clawhammer and Old-Time Songs

The old-time Tune of the Week for 9/9/16 is Green Corn, also heard commonly as Hot Corn, Cold Corn. Lena Hughes, an elderly and beloved 2-finger style picker from Missouri recorded this and I've taken the opportunity to try something for the first time with the 2-finger style. She uses thumb-lead and I also tried index-lead the third time through while "playing the melody."

This is my first effort using Garage Band which comes with the Mac computer. I played an openback banjo in modal tuning and a cello banjo in open C tuning. Meadows of Dan is a beautiful little town in the mountains of Virginia where Alice Gerrard did lots and lots of field work collecting music.

I don't really know what I'm doing with Garage Band, but it seems to have turned out okay today. Send any feedback my way so I can continue learning.

This comes from Kentuckian Sid Hudnall. I learned the tune in standard G at a jam one night. I got home with this in my head and rightly or wrongly I still play it this way. Here’s a very rough recording but you get the picture.

For this week's old time Tune of the Week (8/26/16) one of my favorite tunes learned from my lessons with Adam Hurt has been chosen. I've already recorded Old Beech Leaves a couple of times, so I thought I'd listen to the source recording and try arranging it in another tuning. This one is worked out in open G tuning, played on my cello banjo (so actually tuned down to an open C). It was recorded from the rather rough playing of a Kentucky fiddler from Logan County, Sid Hudnall, who lived with his family pretty much isolated from the rest of the world. Check out the TOTW for more info and tab of Adam's version (with his permission).

CH take on Miss Thompson's Reel. in D. First heard on Sharon Shannon's first album.

This old tune was in the well-known fiddle tune book Knauff's Virginia Reels, published in 1839. I've heard good "source recordings" from Burl Hammons and Henry Reed. My arrangement is from listening to Alan Jabbour with Tommy Thompson on banjo on The Hollow Rock String Band CD, recently re-released as a 2-CD set called The Hollow Rock Legacy. The Route is one of those tunes that has a familiar feeling, even the first time you hear it.

For the old-time Tune of the Week, 8/19/16, this is a dance tune from Northumbria in England. It's often played on a melodeon and uilleann pipes; here it's clawhammered.