Big Mon - A Mandolin Duet with my teacher, Al White

Recorded in Spring, 2000, at Berea College. I was a senior and close to graduating so I wanted to record some tunes that I had learned—even if they weren’t totally up to the usual bluegrass tempo, a.k.a. “lightning fast.” I actually had the pleasure of attempting to play this song on Monday for the first time in probably a decade at the Radford Fiddle and Banjo Jam . It was fun, but holy cow it was fast!

This recording of Big Mon is not-so-fast, short, and a fun memory for me. We were in the upstairs piano lab of Preston Hall (before the renovations) and just put the tape recorder on a music stand, and played. At first, it was hard to tell which one of the mandolins is him and which one is me. After listening a bit more closely, though, I can hear the difference in both his mandolin (my favorite Gibson f-style I’ve ever played) and mine, (Sigma f-style) and his excellent touch alongside my hit-or-miss technique.

Al White is an outstanding musician, teacher, and fun fellow to be around. You can check out some of his music at: http://bit.ly/bereacastoffs. His songbook, Yesterday’s Noodles, has some of the most fun contra dance and waltz tunes in it around. He probably still has copies of it for sale if you ask him.

Scotland - by the Free Range ‘Possums

Yes, I have been in two, count ‘em, two bands with ‘Possum in the name so far. (It’s ok if you’re impressed.)

This video was taken in February 2009 at the Appalachian Awareness Day celebration at Radford University. We were asked to kick off the event and particularly to play songs about mountaintop removal, which was that year’s theme. We played Black Waters, Paradise, and the Old Homeplace to fit that request, plus some other favorites of ours like Alabama Jubilee, Old Joe Clark, and Devil’s Dream. The sound quality of the video isn’t quite what we wanted, but it gives you an idea anyway.

The video clip begins with us ending the song, Will the Circle Be Unbroken, but the tune I’m featuring this week is called Scotland. It’s a great, traditional fiddle tune and was the last one of our set that day. I hope you enjoy it!

This fine group of folks (sans me) still plays some great bluegrass and old-time tunes here in the New River Valley and now also have an alter ego Dixieland / Jazz band known as the Amore ‘Dillos. (You can when they’re being the ‘Dillos because they all put on bowties. They’re real classy like that.) You can find out more about them by visiting their Facebook page. There are some more recent videos and photos of the group, plus the usual fun silliness that comes from these great folks. Check ‘em out!

Song Credits:
Bud Bennett: banjo
Tom Steele: guitar
Bailey Steele: fiddle
Harper Steele: bass
Fritz Schindler: mandolin
(Julie Steele has since joined the group and does some mighty fine singing!)

Banjo Pickin’ Girl

Yes, this is truly the name of the song, and yes, I’m actually the one playing the banjo. The only boy in a bluegrass group with three girls. Yep. That’s just how we rolled back then in the ‘Possum Ridge Pickers. You can actually hear us trying to keep our composure at around 0:22 as the humor of it all struck us while we were singing. But again, that’s how we rolled in the PRP.

This song was one of the first hits recorded by the original ‘Coon Creek Girls back in the early days of radio. They were the first all-girl bluegrass band to become well-known, largely from their regular appearances on the Renfro Valley Barn Dance radio show that was broadcast just a few miles away from Berea, KY where the PRP members grew up. Our mutual music teacher on fiddle and guitar, Wanda Barnett, was, at the time, a member of the New ‘Coon Creek Girls, a stellar, all-girl bluegrass group of the late 1980s and early 1990s. She and fellow ‘Cook Creeker and my banjo teacher, Annie Kaiser taught us this song and we performed it in some of our longer live sets and on this recording, made in “Fritz’s Room Studio’ (a.k.a. my bedroom) in the summer of 1991 with a four-track recorder on cassette tape.

Our band began in the spring of 1990 as a school talent show act consisting of Deborah and me playing the rip-roaring instrumental song, “Theme Time.” I was in sixth grade and Deborah in fourth. We later grew into the foursome including the Compton girls.

‘Possum Ridge was a nickname our parents gave to the neighborhood we all lived in, honoring the plethora of ‘possums who gave their lives while unsuccessfully trying to cross the road. (Believe it or not, this was only the first band I’ve been in that had ‘Possum in the name!)

The PRP played for such illustrious events as the grand opening of the Berea Public Library, several editions of the Family Medicine Musical Review, and numerous talent shows. Deborah and I also later played together in the high school folk dance super group of central Kentucky, The Last of the Fashion-Conscious Lumberjacks, but I’ll save that story for another post. (See how I keep building suspense and anticipation?)

The funniest part for me about this song isn’t actually the irony of being the banjo-playing dude in a song about a banjo-playing chick. What I love is that we recorded this song a few years before my voice changed so I’m also the one singing the highest harmony part! To round out the humorous parts of our group and this song (and I was kinda round back in those days before I hit my growth spurt), as the oldest and only boy member of the group, I was actually noticeably shorter than Elizabeth, who was a few months younger than me. Geesh. How embarrassing. [Insert chuckle or sympathetic “awww” here.]

Funny stuff and all, here it is, Banjo Pickin’ Girl by the ‘Possum Ridge Pickers in 1991. I hope you dig it! Thanks for stopping by to share in the nostalgic, musical fun!

The ‘Possum Ridge Pickers were:
Elizabeth Compton - guitar, lead vocals
Catherine Compton - fiddle, vocals
Deborah Payne - fiddle, vocals
Fritz Schindler - banjo, guitar, mandolin, harmony vocals

Old Joe Clark (1991 4-Track Cassette Edition!)

As a middle-schooler, I was really into bluegrass music. The love started for me by playing guitar, but heated up to an incredible degree once I got a banjo for my birthday. (I think I was 12?) Within a year or so, I was actually playing banjo so much that I injured my right arm and had to all but give it up. That led to me taking up the mandolin and for a short while, the fiddle, too. That’s the silver lining part, I guess you could say.

Anyway, one summer (1991 to be exact) I saved up enough money to rent a 4-track cassette recorder for a couple months. It was a huge deal to me, because this was the closest thing a person could get back then (before GarageBand, at-home digital recording, and the like) to professionally recording and producing music on your own. I was so stoked! (I don’t personally know any other kids my age who did that, so looking back I think it’s kinda extra cool.)

I plugged in the two old microphones that had belonged to my grandfather, placed one on my chest of drawers (conveniently the right height for guitars and the like) and hung the other from the Nerf basketball hoop on my closet door (just right for recording vocals and fiddles), hit record and started laying down tracks and having fun. I recorded mostly on my own, layering tracks of me playing banjo, guitar and mandolin, and sometimes singing. Several of the songs I also invited my band-mates from The ‘Possum Ridge Pickers (more on them in a future post) to join me. All in all, I put together a 10 - 12 song album, created the album artwork myself (see above), the liner notes, special labels for the tapes themselves, and hand-numbered each copy. Probably only made eight of them or so total, but man, it was so much fun!

This song, Old Joe Clark, is a bluegrass standard that basically everyone in the genre knows. On this version, I play banjo, mandolin and guitar. The mix and timing aren’t perfect, but I think it captures my enthusiasm for pickin’ at that time in my life. I’ll probably share other tracks from this album at some point in the future, but this one is my favorite so I selected it first. I hope you enjoy it! Please let me know whatcha think!