Overall Comments

“If You Want To Go To Sleep, Go To Bed”. Is the title of the new cd by banjoist Hunter Robertson and fiddler Casey Joe Abair. And it is obviously a work that involved a lot of late nights for a long time before any recording equipment was ever set up. When the players know each other well, and have put in many hours together, fiddle and banjo duets can catch fire, producing an event that is more than the sum of the two instruments. Abiar and Robertson obviously know each other well and know how to throw ideas back and forth in a way that brings the listener a new insight into the music. If that all sounds a bit “classical”, well perhaps it is. The banjo fiddle combination is does not have the full sound of a string band, it is more like a chamber group, where the communication between instruments and players is more important than a full group sound. Listeners can really hear the two instruments because they differ in range, timbre, attack, sustain, and so many other ways. It is almost as if the fiddle and banjo go so well together because they have so little in common.

Banjo and fiddle is also one of the most exacting and dangerous combinations to record. Unlike a full band, fiddle and banjo will not cover mistakes for each other. Each player is fully responsible for every note he produces. This is not music for players who need the safety net of guitar and bass.

The selection of tunes is heavily weighted toward the old tunes played with the fire and enthusiasm they really deserve but seldom get these days, but there are some less common tunes that work beautifully in the duet setting. their “The Devil’s Dream” is from Hobart Smith and very different than the one I play. It is actually considerably more “band” friendly and the tune is closer to John Brown’s Dream.

“Fort Smith Breakdown” doesn’t show up on many jam lists but is a super tune from a 1920s recording by Luke Highnight’s Ozark Strutters. Here Robertson is playing a fretless Harmony ResoTone in Old G (gDGDE) tuning. “Run Slave Run” uses the same tuning and probably the same banjo.

“Hog Eye Man” aka “Sally In The Garden” is frequently played crooked, but Abair and Thompson seem to have found a whole new crooked way to do it. I’m going to try it out, but I won’t attempt to show it to my jam groups.

Some of the selections are great “trance” tunes where the two instruments seem to float around the melody passing it back and forth until you feel it has been the background music to your entire life. I was very surprised to read that “Tater Patch” and “Sandy River Belle” were each only about four minutes, as was their rendition of “Sail Away Ladies”

The album is Yodel-Ay-Hee number 74, and you can order it direct from Hunter Robertson’s website:
http://www.hunterrobertson.com
where you can also watch videos of Abair and Robertson, and even buy a copy of Robertson's solo album “Hunter Robertson Sings Songs For The Masses.”

Overall Rating

9

Overall Comments

If you like your stringband music hot, but flavourful then Kevin Fore’s new album “Frolic In Round Peak” belongs in your collection. Technically the cd is by “Kevin Fore & Friends” and what a collection of friends it is. Reading the track list is like reading the Who’s Who of Round Peak Music. From Benton Flippen, Bobby Thompson, Chester McMillian, Verlin Clifton, Kirk Sutphin and Riley Baugus to the many great musicians of Kevin’s generation like Emily Schaad, Jeremy Stephens, James Burris, and Joey Burris. Even this is not a complete listing of all the musicians on the album.

Kevin and bunch are joined on several tracks by eighty nine year old master fiddler Benton Flippen, who also contributed a brand new tune to this album: “Benton’s Haystack Blues”. The Fiddle part is real slippery, slithery as befits a blues, while the banjo weaves in and out through the music. The tune would fit into a set list from the 1930s, instead of the strict confines of most post-war blues tunes, it has a modulation characteristic of the early radio era.

I was not familiar with “Red Bird” but it is going to be the next tune I add to our jam lists. I keep going back to it again and again. Bobby Patterson plays guitar on this tune and Benton Flippen once again provides stirring fiddle.

Durham’s Bull Is another new tune (to me) and it features Emily Schaad fiddling in the swinging style of Benton Flippen, her mentor

If you think there is no room for clawhammer banjo against bluegrass banjo riffs, listen to “Sally Goodin” with Kevin on the fretless and Jeremy Stephens on bluegrass banjo, working together to create an entirely novel blend of banjo textures. Now add Kirk Sutphin on fiddle and you have an Old Time & Bluegrass cross with the drive of Round Peak.

My favourite banjo track was “Grey Eagle” Where Kevin’s fretless banjo slides around Jeremy Stephen’s fiddle and Kirk Sutphin’s Demonstration of the late Paul Sutphin’s Camp Creek Boys guitar style

Kevin’s regular band, the award winning “Southern Pride” only shows up as a unit on a single track “Lost Indian”. I hope there is a full cd by the group soon, but for now you can find some tracks on youtube and watch the group in action.

Kevin Fore’s first cd (Round Peak - The Tradition Continues) has been out for about a year now, and if you haven’t bought it yet, add it to your order. It is equally consistent high level Round Peak excitement.

Overall Rating

9

Overall Comments

The title of Kevin Fore’s new cd is “Round Peak The Tradition Continues” and never has an album title been more accurate. Kevin is a native of Lowgap, and is related to some of the best known Round Peak musicians. Although he is still a young man he has devoted the last decade or so of his life to playing the banjo in the tradition of Charlie Lowe, Tommy Jarrell, Dix Freeman, Fred Cockerham, and most importantly Kyle Creed.

Kevin has of course integrated the playing of these and other Round Peak masters into his own style which is quick, solid and clean. His banjo dances around the fiddle line as sure as any mountain goat. I’m not the only one who has noticed the quality of Kevin’s playing. He has taken home a bunch of prizes at banjo and old time band contests. In fact, although I have known him on line for quite a while my first in-person meeting with him was at the 2008 Hoppin' John Fiddlers Convention in Shakori Hills, where Kevin took first prize in the Old Time Banjo contest. Here is a youtube video of his band playing Old Bunch Of Keys at that convention:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfeFk-TNqTc

These are just some of his other awards
2005-2007 1st place banjo Alleghany County Fiddlers Convention
6 year 1st place Laurel Bloomery Tenn. Fiddlers Convention
1st place 2008 Blue Ridge Banjo Shoot Out Galax, Va.
1st place 2007 Old Time Band Galax Old fiddlers convention
1st place 2008 Old Time Band Laurel Bloomery Tenn. Fiddlers Convention
1st place 2008 Old Time Band Sparta Fiddlers Convention with Benton Flippen's Smokey Valley Boys

Of course prizes aren’t important when it comes to listening and Kevin has put out a solidly entertaining album. He knows that an hour of straight instrumentals can end up sounding a bit monochromatic and has added enough vocals into the mix to keep up audience interest. Kevin sing, like he plays - completely in the tradition but also his own man.

Each track on the album has also been carefully notated giving his original sources (like Creed, Freeman, and Jarrell) and noting the many Round Peak musicians who participated in making this cd. Benton Flippin, Mac Snow, Bobby Patterson, Verlin Clifton, Chester McMillian and Kirk Sutphin are names familiar to most of us who collect old time music, but there are also many younger generation players like James and Joey Burris, grandsons of Otis Burris, William Flippen, grandson of Benton. The cd is a snapshot of Round Peak today.

Many of the tunes are well known and loved Round Peak favourites like “Sally Anne” and “Rockingham Cindy” but there are a few surprises like “Head Over Heels” a Fred Cockerham song, unavailable on any commercial recordings and the lesser known “Otis Burris’s Fortune” (sometimes called Up The Mountain Fortune). Kevin acknowledges his spiritual mentor Kyle Creed with “Roustabout” and even has Bobby Patterson, a frequent Creed sideman, do the guitar accompaniment.

If you have any interest in the Round Peak Style this is an album you need to own. Even if your interest in RP is only marginal, this is a solid set of 19 great tunes and songs played by inspired musicians – it could change you mind and your playing. I don’t review everything, preferring to save my efforts for exceptional recordings – and this is one of those exceptional recordings you need to hear.

Kevin also builds banjos – in the style of Kyle Creed, of course. He informs me that on his website he is slowly adding pictures and stories about the Round Peakers who have now passed on. Visit his website at:
http://www.roundpeakbanjos.com

Overall Rating

9

Overall Comments

Martin Fox & Jeff Winegar - The Way It Was
http://cdbaby.com/cd/foxwinegar

I find fiddle/banjo duets more fun than playing in a full stringband, but they are also considerably more stressful in front of an audience - and recording brings it to a whole new level of tension. Without a guitar to broaden the sound, every note from both instruments can be clearly heard. The smallest mistake will stand out like a gorilla at a cocktail party. There is simply no place to hide.
Duets are also harder than soloing. Playing alone, you can slip in a couple extra beats if you need them or cover a goof by adjusting something else it all comes out right in the end. Playing with another musician you must to stay with the program or you Both end up falling flat on your faces.
When a duet works well however, the combination of old time fiddle and clawhammer banjo is pure bliss. The instruments were born to be together – especially when two consummate musicians like Jeff Winegar and Martin Fox are doing the playing. These are superbly tight duets in a very modern, yet completely old time, style. Winegar’s banjo makes elegant arabesques around Fox’s rich fiddle lines which are in turn twisting back on the banjo. The level of “interactivity” is stunning throughout the program.
Most of the tracks are tunes that have not been recorded too often, so it is not only a good listening record, but also good for the musician or band out to build repertoire. The key and fiddle tuning are given for every track. Oddly enough the banjo tunings are not, but everything I’ve tried seems to work well in the tuning I normally use for the given key.
While every track on the album is excellent there are a couple I want to point up as especially neat and/or challenging. My wife and I have been having a lot of fun with “Highlander’s Farewell”, and “Moonlight” which are both pretty straightforward but she has also learned the aptly named “Horse and Buggy-O”. The tune is very crooked and I can only catch on to it after about a dozen times through. The tune called “Rocky Road To Dublin” on this record is not the well known Irish jig but a modal melody from an Edison cylinder recording by Allen Sisson, who was a Civil War veteran. Now THAT really is “old” time music.

Overall Rating

9

Overall Comments

This is the review I originally posted in the forum about a year ago.
Building repertoire comes up a lot on banjo forums and for good reason – clawhammer is, for the most part, not about fantastic chops and blowing away the competition, but about having a good time, socializing and playing along with like minded others. Sort of like pre-school for adults.
Having a lot of tunes under your belt not only makes it more likely that you will know the next tune that comes up at a jam, but actually makes it easier to quickly “catch” tunes you don’t know, since many phrases show up in many tunes. There comes a point for most banjo players (other instruments too, but this is a banjo forum) where new tunes just seem to drop into place and while you might be missing a few notes, you have the general shape of the melody and can easily “fake” it almost immediately.
Over the past couple weeks I’ve been playing my way through R.D. Lunceford’s two books of banjo tabs and listening to the cds they go with and find they impress me as excellent ways to build up that repertoire. Usually I don’t recommend tab books as I find that many book arrangements are fussy, and designed to be played solo at tempos that simply will not fly in most jams, or they are based around a style that is not completely adaptable to the sort of semi-generic nature of most old time jam groups. Ron’s books don’t fall into either category.
I know the cds were made for entertainment, but other than saying he is a fine player and they are good cds I am more interested in pointing out their value for the banjo player in the stage many call “intermediate”.
The first book “Drop Thumb”, consists of 21 tabs of tunes that are all playable either as solos or in jams. There is not a lot of extraneous material cluttering the page (or the recordings) and while a couple moderately scarce techniques are occasionally used there is nothing too difficult here for anyone who has the basic drop thumb techniques down – the frail, the double thumb, drop thumb, slides, hammers, and pulls – I’ve already forgotten if there is any Galax Lick in the book but if there is, it is not excessive.
This is however, not an instruction book. Except for a page on reading the tabs, there are no lessons whatsoever, so this is not a good start for the beginner. There are several relatively simple familiar tunes like June Apple, to get acquainted with Ron’s tabs and some fairly complex but familiar tunes like Soldier’s Joy to build toward.
I found all the tabs clear and easy to read, which is very important. The arrangements are also pretty close to the way Ron plays the tunes on the cd so you have both the written form and the sound as a guide.
There are also some rare tunes (like Shaving a Dead Man – aka Protect the Innocent) in exotic tunings. A couple of these are beautiful banjo solo tunes that are probably in danger of fading away simply because no one seems to take the time to re-tune for them any more (I could write pages on that subject). Ron plays them beautifully and should inspire at least some people to start turning those buttons.
The second book, “Cotton Blossom” is a little more complicated. Many of the tunes are adaptations of minstrel tunes and, while the playing here is still modern clawhammer, several tunes have occasional bits that will take some work to get them down smooth. As Ron points out however, this is not a book of complicated solo pieces like the ones in the 19th century tutors but modern interpretations using nothing that isn’t found in current techniques. Many of these tunes are standard repertoire for clawhammer players and jam groups, and as in the Drop Thumb book they are presented in clear easy to read tab.
Ron plays the cd for this book on a fretless, but I only found two spots in the tabs where I felt I had to make a change from the written version to adjust for the fact that I was playing a fretted banjo. Listening to a low tuned fre

Overall Rating

9