Banjo Hangout Top 100 Other Songs

Key of A and played on a newly crafted 11&#34 walnut open back

Old Tom of Oxford (totw 1/10/2020). Double C tuning - CH on Wildwood banjo.

Alice Gerrard, a living legend herself, wrote a song about another musical legend, Elizabeth Cotten, who she knew and whose conversation with her inspired this song, released on Alice&#39s CD Bittersweet. As I listened to the CD this song moved me to attempt it on banjo and I&#39ve had the delight of learning more about these two amazing women. As the lyrics say, &#34And won&#39t you sing to me as I take my leave, you&#39re going to miss me when I&#39m gone.&#34

Grateful Dead classic built on a descending G scale

grassabilly blues

J. J. Cale&#39s classic blues song set in A minor

For the old-time Tune of the Week, 12/9/16, Snow Deer was a popular song written in 1913 by the same composer of Moonlight Bay, and inspired by the success of Redwing in 1907. The Stanley Brothers did an instrumental of it in 1963 and Bob Wills&#39 band performed it, amongst many others. I added a Native American bridge to it to go along with the lyric&#39s theme of a cowboy and Indian maiden&#39s romance. Played on a Gold Tone cello banjo and learned from Ken Torke&#39s tab. See the current TOTW for more info. I&#39ll be surprised if people have heard of this song before -- I hadn&#39t.

Sometimes an event and a new tuning combine to inspire a tune, like in Hillside. It&#39s a tribute to my mother&#39s neighbor, Mrs. Fields, who passed away in her late nineties. Growing up with good neighbors is a blessing, isn&#39t it. Hillside is the final resting place for some of my family members and now for dear Mrs. Fields. The new tuning for me is f#DGAD, which I found in an Art Rosenbaum resource book. It&#39s a &#34D variant&#34 and he calls it &#34Little Black Train&#34 tuning. This recording is my first effort using three tracks with Garage Band using my Mac Traynham Whyte Laydie and Gold Tone cello banjo.

banjo-lute

Think it was the tempo and notes from around :19 to :30 that suggested the title. Whatever. In Double C.

Clawgrass Example - Using Clawhammer in a Bluegrass context. Playing Clawhammer in a Bluegrass setting requires the banjo player to understand all the complexities of playing in a Bluegrass Ensamble. You are playing as a &#34Unit&#34 and everyone&#39s job in the band is to do what ever it takes to make the featured soloist, be it a vocalist or someone taking a break on their instruments. It forces the clawhammer banjo player to play their banjo in several different ways instead of using just a right hand clawhammer pattern. Lead, Backup, Percsussive chopping, playing harmonies, counter melodies, Licks and tag licks, etc.etc. You have to live by the five &#34T&#39s&#34 Taste, Touch, Tone, Timing and Tuning and play with precision to get all the value from a note to get it to ring clean and clear. This can be accomplished with a banjo that is set up for this style of ensemble work like my Deering Clawgrass Model Banjos or like how Adam Hurt pulls his clean note playing and his great softer tone from his Enoch/Dobson old time banjos. The point is not how many notes that you put into a tune or song but making each note count for all the musical statement value you can get out of it. This tune is an old Bob Dylan tune that Emory Lester and I recorded about ten years ago on our Acoustic Rising Album. It is a good example of what I am talking about......and it is also an example of playing blues licks while playing in the relative minor key of C#minor against Emory&#39s E major tuning using Double E tuning (Double C tuning capoed at the fourth fret) and playing out of the third fret above the capo to catch the C#Minor position. Enjoy!

Lay down boys, take a little nap...

Mike Sanyshyn sittin in for Chad Joiner on this one with latest band member Lantz 25 (1938)

Original tune played in octave double-D on Gold Tone Bob Carlin BC-350 strung with metal-wound nylon strings.

Ok, heres a second take. I shorted the backing track to about 2:50 instead of the original 5 minutes (haha). I used a mute on the banjo this time, added some reveb and EQ&#39d to get more &#39snap&#39.

Messing around with some of the bossa backing tracks posted by Smitchtson. This is the Bossa Dorado..great tune and fun to play. My recording software was acting up during this session, so levels and reverb are not what I wanted. But what the hey....

After watching a Giants baseball pennant win I wrote this tune as they celebrated. They&#39re a downhome team to root for--with not a single hero, but all shining stars.

Been working on a couple of new fingerpicked tunes. Here&#39s one of them, a bit off the beaten path. In Double C.

I&#39m playing a hot rodded Gold Tone Bob Carlin clawhammer banjo with wound nylon strings tuned down to Low A-modal.

Dedicated to my mother, now 93 years old. In my mind she&#39s reached the summit, which was the original title of this piece. I&#39m playing on a Goldtone cello banjo.

I wrote this late one night when I couldn&#39t sleep. That&#39s why it sounds like a late night thing, when the banshees are roaming around! ;>) Pentatonic CEFGBb

A clawhammered, chordal approach to this light-hearted song John claimed in his lyrics that he dreamt about. I&#39ve heard this on BHO several times and am a great fan of John Hartford, though I have much, much more to learn about his music. I think the genre is considered Newgrass, but you can correct me.

The first is from Buckley, the second from Converse.

the first track on Banjo Suite 2 (2013) with Paul Mills on guitar and bass, and Don Reed on fiddle.

Our first grandchild was born the day after Thanksgiving last year, so today she is celebrating her first Thanksgiving with us, something to be so thankful for. Before she had arrived I composed this tune for her in Double C tuning. Hope you enjoy and all have your own Happy Thanksgiving.

After hearing Paul&#39s Leap Frog I found that I could easily play along with it. I tried composing some counterpoint melody to it, but forgot to re-set the slow-downer back up to the key of D. This came out in C with my banjo tuned to double C and I&#39m playing clawhammer. Paul is playing a mandocello tuned in 5ths and uses a flatpick.

My beautiful daughter has a green thumb. This tune is dedicated to her. It&#39s in double C tuning with the 5th string tuned down to an F. I found the pretty notes at the beginning by accident and didn&#39t want to forget them.

Jim has posted his incredible music again after a time away from BHO. This is one he wrote a while back and I&#39m inspired to try and learn it now. The notes flow. A poet could describe its beauty better than I!

During The Vietnam War, The &#39&#39Red Garter &#39&#39at&#39&#39 The Texas Tavern in Sydney,&#39&#39 was set up to entertain U.S troops on R&R leave, Down Under . With a foot tappin&#39 banjo band , lots to drink, and wild wild women , it was all a bloke could ask for. Here&#39s a couple of tracks off an LP, I aranged back in 1970 called &#39&#39The Red Garter Revue&#39&#39-- They were wild times !!!

Just fooling around to see how this style of 5-string banjo playing might sound.

In learning some tunes in the Cumberland Gap/Sandy River Belle tuning I wrote a little tune. It has a darkish sound so I named it after a neat place where big boulders form a little cave where the grandkids like to climb around. I checked later and realized I wrote it in the Aeolian mode in the key of G, played on a Mac Traynham Whyte Laydie openback.

This is what I wanted it to sound like back in 2009 when I posted the original. Long overdue reworking of the tune, but I think I finally was able to play it the way I was hearing it. Whew! - I can let it go now!

Dedicated to Paul Roberts and his creation, the Goldtone Soundbird tenor banjo. I composed this using clawhammer, but no 5th string to simulate a tenor banjo.

Kenny Baker was a genius playing his fiddle. It&#39s real hard on clawhammer banjo, but I can hear the melody and like to think of Bill Monroe listening to his fox hounds hunt on Jerusalem Ridge by his Kentucky home.

A comparison recording with the fretless gourd banjo. The slides from the gourd transfer easily to the fretted neck of the openback.

As I listened to this original song the first time the melody happily drove along just like the title suggests. But Jim&#39s 3-finger picked melodic song is so incredibly intricate and skillful, I had to simplify it with this clawhammer version so I could enjoy playing it, too.

A song I wanted to learn after hearing Jim Reed&#39s BHO video.

This is the first part of an African slave song notated when Sir Hans Sloane was in Jamaica in 1668. It&#39s quite a lovely tune and I thought putting it to clawhammer banjo was fitting. Sloane also drew the earliest known pictures of the gourd banjo, seen in many written reference materials.

A 2004 recording I did because the tune was stuck in my head. I have uploaded it now, in 2012, as an example of my brushing and non-brushing in a tune. Played on my Ramsey Electric. aCGCD capoed to become aDADE.

From the Briggs' Banjo Instructor of 1855.

A piece from the Brigg's Banjo Instructor of 1855.

This is a historic marching song for Prussian soldiers. &#34Plinky and Plunky&#34 are Kit on mandolin and myself, 3-finger picking.

Some blues in E.

Two songs from entirely different eras, but with similar themes.

Since my Christmas song knowlege aint there yet I thought I would so something a little different MERRY CHRISTMAS BHO!

I wrote Miracles on the first night of Chanukah, and have embedded a Chanukah song.