Tag: clawhammer

WATCH: Cristina Vane, “Prayer For the Blind”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Cristina Vane
Hometown: Turin, Italy
Song: “Prayer For the Blind”
Album: Nowhere Sounds Lovely
Release Date: April 2, 2021

In Their Words: “‘Prayer For the Blind’ is inspired by a friendly couple I met while camping on the border of Nebraska and Iowa. She told me her mother suffered from dementia, but that it couldn’t help but make her laugh when her mother claimed that her husband was cheating on her, going dancing with a woman with two peg legs, and that she was going to wring her neck. The anecdote got me thinking about how we try and find levity in heavy situations, and also about the bond between mothers and daughters and the intergenerational burdens that can be passed along through them. I wanted to find a tone that matched the difficult nature of these questions, and the lonesome modal banjo seemed perfect for that, paired with Nate Leath’s great fiddling. The issues of motherhood and illness are no new phenomenon, so I thought old time sounds fit the theme well — you can’t beat a fiddle and banjo!” — Cristina Vane

Photo credit: Oceana Colgan
Video credit: Jeremy Harris

These Artists Take Irish Banjo Beyond Four Strings

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Editor’s note: Tunesday Tuesday is changing slightly in 2021. What began in 2017 as a bi-weekly tune feature and short review will now be expanded into a monthly roundup of interesting, engaging, and groundbreaking instrumental music and the themes we trace within it. 

One of the most thoughtful and virtuosic clawhammer banjoists around, Allison de Groot (Molsky’s Mountain Drifters, The Goodbye Girls) has released a brand new video with fellow Canadian, guitarist Quinn Bachand. The two old-time musicians found themselves with free time hunkering down on British Columbia’s coast last fall and joined together on a gorgeous rendering of a couple of tunes — not rousing old-time or bluegrass fiddle melodies, though. Instead they chose a pair of Irish jigs: “Tom Billy” and “Trip to Athlone.” 

“I love working up fiddle tunes outside of the American old-time repertoire,” de Groot relays via email. She arranges old-time and bluegrass with a striking, clean precision and unmatched rhythmic pocket for a frailing banjo player — facets of her playing style which might not seem to lend themselves to the often staccato or triplet-heavy or frenetic flurries of licks and trills in Irish music. 

“When I’m playing in a new style,” she goes on, “I try to capture aspects of what makes the music special to my ear while still embracing the unique qualities of clawhammer banjo.” And on “Tom Billy” and “Trip to Athlone,” she does just that, impeccably so. De Groot is a player that at times can perfectly disappear into her source material, but her obvious embrace of clawhammer’s idiosyncrasies is what makes these Irish forays so entrancing.

 “Adapting jigs to the five-string banjo is not a historically new endeavour, but there is lots of room to explore clawhammer banjo in this setting. I find a lot of freedom in that space!” That freedom is perhaps the most charming aspect of this set of tunes — second only to the joy always apparent in de Groot’s picking. 

Though perceptibly rare, other banjo players have indeed been enticed by that very same freedom (de Groot is right that it’s not a new endeavor). The five-string banjo, especially post-Earl Scruggs, is an instrument with intrinsic qualities of innovation, acrobatics, and thinking outside the box. The physical instrument itself and the lore driving the mystique behind it lend it perfectly to Irish and Celtic folk music. 

Ron Block, longtime member of Alison Krauss’s band, Union Station, and an award-winning multi-instrumentalist, has long been an acolyte of five-string Irish banjo. On a 2018 duo release with Irish songwriter and picker Damien O’Kane entitled Banjophony, the pair explore not just the mind-bending beauty created by a five-string banjo’s interpretations of traditional Irish musical vocabularies, but also the ways in which the five-string and four-string instruments bump into each other — often delightfully — in these contexts. The linear-laid-out four-string banjo and the more bouncy, melodic five-string each naturally settle into their roles in this dialogue, like old-time and bluegrass’s primordial band structure of fiddle and banjo, but with more aggression and dissonance — and a heavy dose of the stark sort of beauty that grows from the spine-tingling friction between such gregarious and bold instruments.

Irish music fully embraced the banjo — the four-string iteration of the instrument, most often tuned in fourths (C, G, D, A) — by the mid-twentieth century, closing a transatlantic feedback loop that began in Africa, landed the banjo’s precursors in the Americas brought by enslaved Africans, and then transported the instrument in its modern form back across the Atlantic to Ireland. This conclusion occurred after the four-string banjo (and any/all banjos with varying counts of strings) skyrocketed to the height of fame in America’s popular music of choice throughout the nineteenth century: minstrelsy.

Its punchy volume, its bubbly, single-string triplets, the low buzzing of the wound strings were each folded into the greater sound of Irish folk so naturally, from the purest traditional instances to the most daring punk affectations. The banjo’s subversive, trailblazing tendencies are ripe for exciting forays and experiments. One such experiment is banjo player, builder, and inventor Tom Saffell’s behemoth Infinity 8-String Banjo.

In this 2007 video with acoustic Irish-bluegrass band Plaidgrass, Saffell demonstrates how the Infinity 8-String Banjo combines Irish banjo approaches on both four-string and five-string instruments. The two lower, wound strings, while droning or being picked, round out the natural high-end of five-string banjos, bringing in some of the punch and gravel we know and love in Irish banjo. Meanwhile, the higher strings — with one additional above the typical D first string — equip Saffell to efficiently execute Irish turns of phrase with a simple bluegrass roll of the right hand. 

Whatever it is about Irish banjo playing that just works, these pickers demonstrate there’s an entire world to be discovered not just in other genres that may be seen as outside of the norm for our instruments, but even more so in the space created between those genres. That’s as close to a definition of American roots music as we might get, the “melting pot” quality we all know and love, evident and flamboyant in each of these examples of Irish banjo on more than four strings. 

Photo credit: Patrick M’Gonigle  

Jalan Crossland Revives “Moonshiner” on a Historic Wyoming Stage

Posted on by Editor

In this must-see live video bluegrass and Americana veteran Jalan Crossland plays it lonesome at the Lincoln Theater in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Crossland, who has been releasing music since 2000, is a champion-level instrumentalist, but he mixes several techniques to shape his mountain sound on his song “Moonshiner.” Listen for a little flatpicking here and there, some fingerpicks like a Scruggs-style banjo player, and clawhammer thrown in for good measure on the strings of his banjitar (or ganjo, if you prefer).

The sound that comes from Crossland’s hands matches the gritty timbre of his rich voice, which seems to emanate from deep within and pour out like smoke from a fire. “Moonshiner” is from one of the instrumentalist’s earliest albums, dating all the way back to 2004. Performing solo inside one of Wyoming’s most beautiful and historic venues, he brings a skill and prowess to what is otherwise folk music, and the result has a magnetism that few others can achieve. Watch the striking performance from our friends at Western AF below.

Bruce Molsky, “Cider”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Something about the simplest forms of bluegrass and old-time make them the perfectly fitting music to soundtrack autumn, with her crisp nights, warm colors, harvest treats, and seasonal drinks. The season evokes a back porch and round-the-fire pickin’, roots music in her most basic iteration, as respite and enjoyment for the long winter nights ahead. A fiddle, a banjo, a guitar, a mountain dulcimer, an autoharp – any of these would be the ideal score for summer giving way to fall. 

It’s fitting then, that Bruce Molsky’s “Cider” begins with a rake. Molsky’s 2006 album, Soon Be Time, is perhaps his solo magnum opus, a no-skip, nearly perfect collection of modern interpretations of old-time classics deliciously steeped in a subtle, autumnal vibe. The project includes numerous tracks that have since grown to be regarded as seminal recordings of each, to a new generation of bluegrass and old-time pickers. Tunes like “Lazy John,” “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie,” “John Brown’s Dream,” and others are seemingly regarded as Molsky’s own material now, with plenty of covers referencing Soon Be Time’s versions as source recordings. 

“Cider” isn’t the only fall-flavored tune on the album — see also: “Come Home” and “Forked Deer” — but its impeccable banjo tone, magnificent rakes, and jovial quality will warm you head to toe like a piping hot mug of your favorite appley drink. If you’re headed over the river and through the woods this autumn, Soon Be Time would be the perfect companion, especially with a taste of “Cider.” 

Photo credit: David Holt

Adam Hurt, “The Scolding Wife”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

 Adam Hurt is a banjo player’s banjo player. This role is well known in bluegrass, where almost an entire generation of banjo players, who came up almost immediately during and after Earl Scruggs’ popularization of a three-finger approach to the banjo, continue to go largely unsung outside of five-string niches and circles of Scruggs-style acolytes. Hurt is remarkable, though, because he’s not an acrobatic, up-and-down-the-neck, barn-burning bluegrass picker on the margins of the scene. Instead he’s a clawhammerist — but the musicians and instrumentalists who count themselves followers and fans of Hurt’s pickin’ aren’t just old-time players; they’re everyone.

On his new album, Back to the Earth, Hurt strays still further from “mainstream” banjo playing by returning to its roots: the gourd banjo. Back to the Earth is a follow up to Hurt’s 2010 project, Earth Tones, an album often regarded as a seminal work on the gourd banjo. Despite largely being anchored by solo tunes played on the modern five-string’s precursor (which was brought to this continent by enslaved peoples kidnapped from West Africa), the entire new collection feels firmly rooted in the present. Raw, rustic affectations often found on old-time recordings are missing here, but not to the detriment of the final product or its “authenticity.” These twelve tunes feel simultaneously immaculate and primordial. Hurt deftly follows the gourd banjo’s microtones, warbles, wobbles, and slides as they lead him, rather than the opposite — which might be the most distinctive aspect of his playing, compared to other clawhammer players, other gourd banjo players, and five-string or four-string players alike. 

Ricky Skaggs, Brittany Haas, Paul Kowert, Jordan Tice, Marshall Wilborn, and others guest on Back to the Earth in different groupings, depending on the tune, but on “The Scolding Wife,” Hurt performs solo, a man in dialogue with his ancient instrument, ringing through the millennia to land in 2020. If you aren’t already a fan of Adam Hurt and his playing, Back to the Earth is the perfect, charming, listenable introduction — and you’ll find yourself among the likes of fans including Skaggs, Haas, Kowert, Tice, Jerry Douglas, Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer, Molly Tuttle, Sarah Jarosz, and just about any other instrumentalist who’s ever had more than a passing interest in the banjo and her cousins on the instrument family tree. 

Photo credit: Martin Tucker

LISTEN: Mike Barnett, “Righteous Bell” (Featuring Sarah Jarosz)

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Mike Barnett
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Righteous Bell” (featuring Sarah Jarosz)
Album: + 1
Release Date: September 11, 2020
Label: Compass Records

In Their Words: “I wrote this just before the 2016 presidential election. Looking back, there is much work to be done before any ‘righteous bell’ is rung. The juxtaposition of the propelling, changing instrumental and the grounding, unchanging vocal melody creates a sort of galvanizing tension that hopefully inspires the listener to take action — voting, conversing, learning, protesting, etc. Just like in an old-time jam, the vocal melody and lyric fuels the fiddles and banjos, and everyone feeds off each other’s energy. Sarah Jarosz’s powerful singing and driving clawhammer banjo brought this song to life.” — Mike Barnett

Photo credit: Stacie Huckeba

Jake Blount, “Goodbye, Honey, You Call That Gone”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The title of banjoist, fiddler, and ethnomusicologist Jake Blount’s upcoming album, Spider Tales, is a reference to Anansi the Spider, a folklore character of the Akan people of West Africa. Says Blount, “The Anansi were tales that celebrated unseating the oppressor, and finding ways to undermine those in power even if you’re not in a position to initiate a direct conflict.” 

With such a deft, succinct mission, Blount takes a vibrant and dense, harlequin cultural tradition — which has lived on across the African diaspora, brought to the United States and colonies in this hemisphere by enslaved Africans — and applies it to a collection of old-time tunes in a way that’s intuitive and digestible. Without oversimplification or homogenization to achieve broader “appeal,” these songs and these instruments speak to much more important lessons and narratives than the average old-time record.

Take for instance “Goodbye, Honey, You Call That Gone.” A tastefully unadorned tune, performed by Blount on banjo and percussive dancer and scholar Nic Gareiss, it comes from Lucius Smith, a Black Mississippi banjoist recorded by Alan Lomax first in the ‘40s. “Smith played a steel-string banjo rather than a nylon-string one like mine,” Blount explains. “But tuned all the way down to the same pitch. The looseness of [his] strings causes the pitch of each note to waver as he plays it, imparting a ‘wandering’ quality to the melody.”

Wandering, a condition not uncommon among diasporic communities, or Appalachian musical traditions, or queer folks, or movers and dancers, is not only communicated here in the tune’s title, and its delightful, lazy half-tones and breaths of quarter-tones, but also in the syncopation, virtuosity and musicality of Gareiss’ feet playing off Blount’s clawhammer. 

Above all of these, the epitome of Blount’s Spider Tales may be the intention with which Blount and Gareiss approach creating and music-making together, providing an indelible benchmark by which we can better learn to queer old-time and string band music while telling its true, unabridged history, and centering Black, Indigenous, and non-white stories — all with the same treepling toes and fretting fingers.

Editor’s Note: Blount and Gareiss will be featured in the Bluegrass Situation Presents: A St. Patrick’s Day Festival at New York’s New Irish Arts Center, participating in an opening night jam session with clawhammer banjoist Allison de Groot and fiddler Tatiana Hargreaves on March 17 as well as a headlining performance on March 18.

LISTEN: Natalie Padilla, “Fireweed”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Natalie Padilla
Hometown: Lyons, Colorado
Song: “Fireweed”
Album: Fireweed
Release Date: September 6, 2019

In Their Words: “As many of my songs do, this one started as a clawhammer banjo one-part melody. I was in Crested Butte, Colorado, with my band Masontown doing a few mountain town shows and had a bit of time to sit down with the tune on this great porch that backed right into the mountain. The pink fireweed was still blooming, but near the top of the plant which is a sign that winter is coming. This song is meant to symbolize the importance of all seasons life has to offer, even the dark ones.” — Natalie Padilla

Photo credit: Woody Meyer

Rhiannon Giddens, “Following the North Star”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Rhiannon Giddens is not only our Artist of the Month, she’s roots music’s renaissance woman. She’s an outspoken activist, a MacArthur Genius grant winner, a veritable music historian, and opera-oriented podcast host who has scored and staged a ballet, acted on a major television series, given her fair share of keynote addresses, and has helmed more than one supergroup. Somehow that list only begins to scratch the surface of Giddens’ contributions to our roots music communities. Who knows what other incredible ideas will come from her mind, her pen, and her banjo in the months and years to come.

Here’s the thing. In the flurry of credits Giddens’ bio will inevitably spit at you it’s easy to forget what might be the most important line item in her IMDb or Wikipedia profiles: she’s a damn fine picker. “Following the North Star,” an amuse-bouche of an instrumental from her 2017 release, Freedom Highway, is an excellent reminder of that fact. The bouncing, clawhammer banjo is stark against just percussion and bones, a percussive folk instrument played by hand, similar to playing the spoons. It’s a shockingly simple, but never simplistic production. Each note drips with Giddens’ understated virtuosity. Her understanding of the music’s past, present, and future is translated effortlessly by buttery fretless banjo, which retains every ounce of its haunting, melancholy potential in defiance of the tune’s forward-leaning tempo.

‘Tis sweet to be reminded that, no matter where her creative compass may take her, she’ll always have the chops — she’ll always be a killer banjo player. And, from this banjo player’s perspective, that’s what’s most important anyway!!

10 Young Banjo Players You Aren’t Paying Enough Attention To

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

We don’t blame you. Banjo is typically all about praising the masters, mimicking their technique, and playing “it” — whatever tune, song, lick, or fill — exactly the way the heroes did it. Of course it’s easy to overlook up-and-coming pickers who are innovating the instrument and letting their own personalities shine through their playing. Rest assured, we’ve been keeping up with a panoply of younger banjo player virtuosos for you, just in case you’ve overlooked ’em.

Gina Clowes

The most recent addition to Chris Jones and the Night Drivers, Gina Clowes’ debut album, True Colors, is a surprising departure for anyone who might be expecting songs along the lines of the more traditional-leaning material of the Night Drivers, but Gina’s playing refuses to be pigeonholed.

Catherine “BB” Bowness

BB has a chameleon-like ability to deftly shape her playing to fit any number of styles. With her Boston-based bluegrass band, Mile Twelve, she tends to lean into a more traditional approach, hard driving and uncompromising. In other contexts, she demonstrates she’s as progressive and outside-the-box as any Fleck/Pikelny acolytes out there.

Tabitha Agnew

Based in Northern Ireland, Tabitha Agnew and her two brothers tour and perform as Cup O’Joe. The subliminal transatlantic touches through her playing are like Easter eggs, keeping listeners on their toes, never quite sure what’s coming next.

Victor Furtado

Typically on banjo, when your aim is speed and intensity you give up some measure of precision and nuance. Not Victor Furtado. Whether he’s playing an emotive, pensive tune, or a foot-stomper like this, he never sacrifices any of his intricate, unexpected musical ideas. Oh, and remember Gina Clowes? Victor and Gina are siblings. Go figure.

Matthew Davis

There are plenty of young banjoists out there in the world right now who are obsessed with learning and transcribing every note they can from progressive trailblazers like Béla Fleck and Noam Pikelny. (And rightly so!) However, National Banjo Champion Matthew Davis (of new acoustic, bluegrassy string band Circus No. 9) is one of very few whose own imaginative voice on the instrument comes through louder than any of his influences, which gives his playing a remarkable maturity.

Little Nora Brown

This ain’t your usual, “aw this kid is playing an instrument as big as they are!” cutesy sh*t. It is a compelling case for reincarnation, though. It almost sounds like Little Nora Brown has a host of roots music legends pouring out of her fingertips and through her lips. Leave it to the young people to remind all of us that old-time music is relevant in any context, but especially poignant and transformative when it’s allowed to be in the present.

Steven Moore

A two-time National Banjo Champion, Steven Moore is a career biochemist who plays the banjo with downright effortless command, combining modern styles with classic, timeless licks and tricks. The moral of the story here is that when a banjo player plays an utterly stunning Don Reno cover, you oughta pay attention.

Uma Peters

She may be stoic, quiet, and generally shy, but Uma Peters is not one to overlook. At 11 years old, her old-time banjo skill level is already so high we can hardly imagine the heights to which she’ll take it. Again, this music stands for a whole lot more than just cuteness. Uma Peters for President.

Gabe Hirshfeld

More than just a bluegrass meme master, Gabe Hirshfeld is another example of a banjo player who refuses to let his playing style fit neatly into any of the molds already set forth by bluegrass forebears. On the five-string he can be unflinchingly traditional, totally off-the-wall, borderline insane, and/or all of the above all at once.

Alex Leach

Playing an arch-top banjo player in the Clinch Mountain Boys is quite the mantle to take on, but Alex Leach does it with ease and aplomb. The world needs more right hands backed up against bridges, more raised heads, and more playing and filling while singing lead. Just follow Alex’s example.

Lede image: courtesy of Mountain Home Music Company