This is a great banjo and vocal performance on a neat old modal tune. There are many different versions of this tune, with different lyrics, and, in some cases, substantially different music. The object of affection remains a girl from Danville. In this version, she is unobtainable, the protagonist a married man. In other versions, she’s the girl left behind by a travelling man.

Danvilles exist in Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, New Hampshire, California, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Alabama, and Illinois. Illinois’ Danville was a significant railroad town, and a regional vaudeville hub.

Courtesy of Archive.org
Danville Girl (MP3)

Previous Dock Boggs posts:
Dock Boggs playing Pretty Polly
Dock Boggs playing Country Blues

The Reverend Gary Davis is one of the great guitar stylists of the 20th century. There’s some great interplay between his guitar and his voice in this clip. Regrettably, there’s not a lot of close-up footage of his hands in this clip. His chord voicings are always interesting to see, and a huge part of how he achieves that great combination of flowing melodies and driving rhythm.

This is the second post from our live-in-studio performance on The Blues Hang with Jon Alan on KIPO. The performance came at the end of a long day. One of us figured that we had been on stage for 12 of our first 28 hours in Hawaii. The result is that we’re pretty loose here.

This is a good performance of our version of ‘High on a Mountain’. The song, from our second record, will be featured in a September episode of the PBS series Roadtrip Nation. Mister T. Ryan Fisher sings lead, Billy Oh and Kenneth Rainey sing harmony.

High on a Mountain (MP3)

Previous posts:
Little Sadie live on KIPO

Our recent trip to Hawaii included a set on Honolulu’s Public Radio station, KIPO. We joined Jon Alan on his program ‘The Blues Hang’, and played about a dozen songs. We had just come from playing a wedding on Waikiki beach, had a bottle of Scotch whiskey in our posession, and were feeling pretty good. We played some tunes in that set that we haven’t yet recorded. This one, Little Sadie, is an old-timey warhorse that we like playing. Mr. Scott Judd sings the lead vocal.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I have no idea why the protagonist’s last name keeps changing over the course of the song. Brown, Lee, Lipschitz, whatever is needed to complete the rhyme.

tangleweed_-_live_on_kipo_-_little_sadie.mp3 (MP3)

This is the second part of a very rare Phil Ochs interview that popped up on YouTube this week. It’s well worth watching, and often disturbing to note how little things have changed.

Previous Phil Ochs posts:
Phil Ochs sings Cannons of Christianity and I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore
Phil Ochs interview video (part I)
Phil Ochs sings Joe Hill
1974 Phil Ochs clip
Phil Ochs singing The War is Over
Phil Ochs singing Here’s to the State of Richard Nixon
Phil Ochs singing The Crucifiction in 1969

This just popped up on YouTube this week — a very rare interview of Phil Ochs. He was among the most passionate and articulate opponents of the Vietnam War, and he stands up well to a hostile line of questioning here.

This is the second of three Phil Ochs posts. In the first post, Phil plays two of his songs: ‘Cannons of Christianity’ and ‘I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore.’

Previous Phil Ochs posts:
Phil Ochs sings Cannons of Christianity and I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore
Phil Ochs sings Joe Hill
1974 Phil Ochs clip
Phil Ochs singing The War is Over
Phil Ochs singing Here’s to the State of Richard Nixon
Phil Ochs singing The Crucifiction in 1969

This is the first of three Phil Ochs postings. As an Ohio chauvinist, I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Phil Ochs. Some of his earliest performances were in Larry’s Bar on High Street in Columbus.

Here he is performing two of his songs, ‘Cannons of Christianity’ and ‘I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore’. Both are strong performances, but ‘I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore’ is a particularly impressive.

Previous Phil Ochs posts:
Phil Ochs sings Joe Hill
1974 Phil Ochs clip
Phil Ochs singing The War is Over
Phil Ochs singing Here’s to the State of Richard Nixon
Phil Ochs singing The Crucifiction in 1969

There’s some very nice 12-string slide playing in this 1982 clip of Leo Kottke. Also, for a guy who once described his voice as sounding like ‘goose farts on a muggy day’, he sings pretty well, too.