Celeste

Here’s a song/tune in waltz time in honor of Mother’s Day which will be this coming Sunday. I still don’t know who wrote it but the group here performing “Sit Down and Write” is the Laurel Fork Travelers. Laurel Fork is in neighboring Carroll County, the best county in Virginia for many authentic sources of ‘real’ mountain music.

Here’s a tune that I consider to be one of the standard dance tunes today.  It was found in the repertoire of many old-timers from the Blue Ridge area whose music I have heard who learned

Hello to everyone from my socially distant location in Floyd County. I knew there were good reasons to move to the country in the 1970’s way back when deciding just how I wanted to live. Here years later I have figured out yet another reason. Social distancing. I still get out a couple

Hello, I hope this finds you safe at home and not traveling. So this week’s tune is the Arkansas Traveler. It is a well-known tune and has been passed around like a virus mutating as it goes. It has a comical skit that has been done many times on record as a leftover

Well, I hope you are doing well in this age of COVID-19. I managed to get out on a nice hike up in the nearby Rock Castle Gorge with my buddies Hope and Charlie Thompson, and Andy Buckman last Sunday. Mindful of “social distancing” it was good to be outside and active away

This is Floyd County’s own Dent Wimmer. A strong clawhammer banjo player who never dropped thumb. His style is full and rhythmic typical of this area where house parties and frolics with flatfoot dancing were common before WW2. He was recorded for the Old Originals project in 1973 by folklorist Tom Carter.

Here’s one from Carroll County and from the unique repertoire of Sidna (banjo) and Fulton Meyers (fiddle). In this banjo-fiddle duet the fiddle is tune like standard GDAE but lower and played in G fingering. It could be F or E if low enough. Who cares as long as it sounds good, huh? I think it's kinda cool down low like that. No rules have to apply.

Here’s wonderfully simple tune from the Kimble Family who live in the Blue Ridge Plateau area of Carroll County next door to Floyd County. It is just Taylor on fiddle and Stella on banjo as a duet. The tune is from a collection of their music recorded by Mark Sanderford. I’m sending this out since Gail Gillespie and Dwight Rogers mentioned this tune to me after a recent visit to the Kimbles.