As we prepare for our special St. Patrick’s Day show tomorrow night at Lizard’s Liquid Lounge, we thought it proper to share a wee bit of our Irish repertoire with you all. The tune is Whiskey in the Jar, originally written by Metallica, and later covered by the Clancy Brothers and the Dubliners*.

The recording comes from a practice recording made last year in my basement. Ryan was out of town, so it’s just Billy, Paul, Scott, and me.

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*I may be slightly off on the chronology.

Tangleweed had a chance to record a tune on an early 20th century Edison wax cylinder recording rig. Martin Fisher, audio archivist at Middle Tennessee State University, set up the acoustic recording studio at last week’s Folk Alliance conference in Memphis

This being a pre-electric recording studio, the band was gathered around a single horn, which was connected directly to a lathe that etched the sounds into a blank wax cylinder. Each cylinder blank could hold two minutes, so we had to tweak the arrangement and push the tempo a bit to get it in under the maximum time. We recorded two takes. It’s all live to mono, so there’s no ‘fixing in the mix’, as it were.

The tune is a Tangleweed medley called ‘The Logan Square Dance’.

We will have audio of the cylinder itself soon.

This is a repost of a post I wrote three years ago. Enjoy, while I take the rest of the day off.

Santa is Real, the Christmas record my old band the Kennett Brothers put together, is long out-of-print, and, thanks to the efforts of obsessive Wilco completists, prohibitively expensive on the second-hand market. In the spirit of the season, I’m posting an MP3 of one of the tracks, our cover of the Louvin Brothers song ‘A Shutin at Christmas‘.

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(download link below the jump)

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This is the maiden voyage of our version of the warhorse fiddle tune Cherokee Shuffle, from last week’s show at Fitzgerald’s in Berwyn. You can download the whole show at Archive.org.

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We tried to mix up the textures and dynamics to keep it interesting. We also play the ‘A’ strain as a round at the end.

Thanks to Joe Steffen for recording the show and making it available on the interwebs.

This is the track that launched a career, and a career that helped launch an industry. It was recorded in Bristol, Tennessee, on August 4, 1927 for the Victor label. Though it was only a modest success, it marked the beginning of one of the most illustrious recording careers in American popular music.

Rodgers actually recorded two sides that day (the other being ‘The Soldier’s Sweetheart’), but this was the side that featured Rodgers’ formidable yodeling talents. Rodgers neither invented yodeling nor introduced it to American music, but he did more than anyone to cement its place in country music.

Rodgers returned to the studio the following November, and recorded what would be his first hit and his most iconic recording: Blue Yodel.

Nolan Porterfield’s Jimmie Rodgers: The Life and Times of America’s Blue Yodeler (American Made Music Series) remains the definitive work on Rodgers, and one of the more impressive works of vernacular music scholarship one will find.

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Courtesy of archive.org

Rodgers work has entered the public domain in most of the world. It remains under copyright in the U.S. due to Sonny Bono’s Mickey Mouse Protection Act. But let’s ignore Bono’s ignoble legislative career and apparent lack of skiing skills, and remember him as the auteur behind ‘Pammie’s on a Bummer,’ and the associated heavy-lidded PSA:

Sonny Bono Speaks Against Pot

Fiddlin’ Powers was a John Cowan Powers, from Russell County, Virginia. His recording career encompasses 33 sides for the Victor, Edison, and OKeh labels, though 14 of those seem to be unissued. This is a 1925 Edison recording, and he is backed by a family band:

• Orpha Powers, mandolin;
• Charlie Powers, banjo;
• Carrie Powers, guitar;
• Ada Powers, ukulele

Despite what Henry Ford thought, a lot of these old time songs are pretty filthy. ‘She lays eggs for the whole darn crew.’ Indeed.

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Courtesy of Archive.org

A solid recording of the recent Chicago Bluegrass Festival in Evanston, IL is available for free bit-torrent download at bt.etree.org:  http://bt.etree.org/details.php?id=524105

Here’s a little sample, our four-man, banjo-less version of the Takeup Reel Medley, from our latest record, Most Folk Heroes Started Out As Criminals:

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Here are the notes for the recording, which was made by Joe Steffen:

Chicago Bluegrass Festival
2009-04-04
American Legion Hall
Evanston, IL

Source: SP-CMC-8 cardioid > M-AUDIO MicroTrack II > 44.1 kHz 16-bit WAV
Location: front center chair 2′ from stage, ORTF 20cm 100°
Transfer: WAV > CD Wave > Trader’s Little Helper > FLAC
Recorded by: Joe Steffen (HackensawFan at comcast dot net)

Disc 1
01. intro

Harris Covington
02. Some Day

Bubbly Creek Bluegrass Band http://www.myspace.com/bubblycreekbluegrassband
with Harris Covington on guitar
03. intro
04. Travelin’ Teardrop Blues
05. Colleen Malone
06. banter
07. Lee & Paige
08. Dusty Boxcar Wall

James Creek Road http://www.jamescreekroad.com/
09. intro
10. Love Please Come Home
11. Girl from West Virginia
12. Where Corn Don’t Grow
13. Flight That Is Leaving Soon
14. Crosses and Stones
15. Six Feet Under

Whiskey Hollow Bluegrass Band http://nailthatcatfish.tripod.com/WALLOW.html
16. intro
17. Turkey Knob
18. Wonder Where You Are Tonight
19. I Never Will Marry
20. Hang Me
21. A Few Old Memories
22. banter
23. Somewhere Over The Rainbow
Disc 2
01. Bring It On Home
02. Jesus Is A Rock
03. announcements and door prizes

Northern Skyline
04. intro
05. If You’re Ever in Oklahoma
06. Vamp in the Middle
07. Dancin’ with the Angels
08. Walls of Time
09. 1952 Vincent Black Lightning
10. E.M.D.
11. announcements

Peter Nye & the Chicago Bluegrass Band http://www.myspace.com/chicagobluegrassband
12. intro
13. Peter Nye: Chip Covington banjo story
14. Butcher Boy
15. Paddy On The Turnpike
16. Love of the Mountain
17. One More Dollar
18. Just Wondering Why
19. banter
Disc 3
01. Steel Rails in the Tennessee Night

Tangleweed http://www.tangleweed.org
02. intro
03. Sir Lucas de Somerville/The Musical Priest/Whiskey Before Breakfast
04. Hard Times
05. The Logjam
06. South Australia
07. Gonna Lay Down My Old Guitar
08. The Takeup Reel/Cold Frosty Morning/Grey Eagle

Henhouse Prowlers http://www.henhouseprowlers.com/
09. intro
10. Get in Line Brother
11. Darlin’ Who Cares About Your Fun
12. Give Your Lovin’ Out
13. Mourning Dove
14. The First Train Robbery
15. Clinch Mountain Backstep/Turn Me Loose

All Band Jam
16. intro
17. Doing My Time

Bluegrass Legends Concerts http://www.chicagobluegrass.com

As we ready ourselves to play two shows with Jerry Douglas at the Old Town School of Folk Music next Saturday, here’s a wee snippet from a previous performance there. The tune is Ginseng Blues, from Where You Been So Long, and the recording is from November, 2006.

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Our friend The Mayor of Bucktown plays some nice harmonica on this one. The yodeling is crap, sadly, but most of the rest is pretty decent. One other aside: for years I sang the last verse as “Ain’t gonna work on the river, ain’t gonna load no boat.” I recently heard a better transfer of the old Kentucky Ramblers record I learned it from, and the verse is, clear as day, “Ain’t gonna work on no tipple, ain’t gonna load no coal. I guess ‘tipple’ sort of sounds like ‘river’.

Courtesy of Archive.org. If you like, you can download the whole show there.