Banjo Hangout Top 100 Clawhammer and Old-Time Songs

After watching a Giants baseball pennant win I wrote this tune as they celebrated. They're a downhome team to root for--with not a single hero, but all shining stars.

After watching a Giants baseball pennant win I wrote this tune as they celebrated. They're a downhome team to root for--with not a single hero, but all shining stars.

This is another test recording of the new Knowles SHINE banjo. This was recorded with a stereo pair of AT-4033's. There are no effects, eq or tricks here... just the banjo.

From the Samuel Bayard collection of Pennsylvanian tunes in Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife. This medley is played by Mark Tamsula and Richard Withers on their excellent CD "Up in the Batten House."

I learned this tune when Mark Johnson posted it in the Tune of the Week for 4-1-2011. Since then, it's pretty much always the first tune I play whenever I tune into G (or in this case A) modal.

I've been meaning to thank Mark for introducing me to this for three-and-a-half years. So... "Thanks Mark!"

Learned from folklorist, song collector, and skillful melodic banjo clawhammer picker Andy Cahan. I heard of him through his collections in Virginia with Alice Gerard, especially of Roscoe Parrish. This tune is one that Francis O'Neill published in his eminent book of Irish Music published in the first decade of the 1900's. It was named his favorite by the man, Edward Cronin of Tiperary, who played it for him in Chicago when O'Neill was chief of police and collected Irish tunes as a hobby. It's also the first hornpipe notated in that book with 1,850 selections. Perhaps it really is his favorite.

Learned off the new CD of BHO member Nickhornbuckle called 12X2 (+/-), it's fitting title for the first day of fall today. I've seen the geese flying overhead while at school and point out their V formation to my first graders.

f#DF#AD 3-finger

Inspired by the playing of Pete Steel and Pete Seeger. 3-finger. I messed up at the end, but I rolled with it.

Inspired by the playing of Dock Boggs and Pete Seeger.