Today I received a link for a video with lyrics to this song--something I'd wondered about when it was posted by a 3-finger player a while back. The author is Canadian musician and folksong writer Wade Hemsworth (1916 - 2002). He played guitar and banjo and some of his songs are revered by Canadians. Log Driver's Waltz is about a girl choosing to dance with one because he's such a good dancer, which is because his balance needs to be so good to stay on a rolling log in the river and its white water rapids. Watch the video for an entertaining animation of the song, as well as some photography of log rollers that will astound you. youtube.com/watch?v=upsZZ2s3xv8 This is dedicated to BHO member snowbird. Thanks, Joe!
Great job Janet! I bet I've seen this video a hundred times, it played every Saturday morning, probably some required Canadian content to go along with the Smurfs and the Chipmunks. I actually put together a version for the waltz competition here. Sure could have used your tab back then:)youtu.be/ODuJB5e44Ks
I'm grateful to get to know this Canadian song. My class will see the video tomorrow, though I can already see them giggling a-plenty. We just began a Language Arts unit called Journeys. They can learn something about our Canadian neighbors.
Thanks for sharing your waltz entry, Cam. It's most enjoyable. Did you make that banjo? Do you play Ook Pik Waltz? I think it's also Canadian.
Thanks Janet, I did make this banjo, I think it was the third instrument I made (give or take a banjo-uke or two) I've never heard of Ook Pik Waltz, but I'll be sure to look it up now.
Thanks ,Janet, for posting this, and nice work playing it. Among the songs by Wade Hemsworth is the "Black Fly Song" , often performed by Pete Seeger in years gone by. He was a good friend of the McGarrigle Sisters - kind of a grandfather of Canadian folk music.
Thanks, Chuck. I have everything to learn about Canadian folk and old-time music. I'm a fan of Chris Coole and have enjoyed hearing Arnie Naiman, but don't know much else.
Ook Pik Waltz was in my waltz entry, Cam. It became the name of a doll and used to be a favorite at fiddle contests.
Geez Janet you have done an awesome job on this song - both with nailing the tab and your playing.
I am a 66 year old crusty old guy (some put crusty in capitals) who is blessed with no musical background, no rhythm and no talent and I want to say that I am in a state of shock here over this. It will take me a month to learn this tune and even then I wont sound anywhere near as good as you. You have gone from seeing the animation to posting an MP3 in just hours. Amazing. And much thanks for the tab!
You're welcome, Joe, and thanks for the song. During the week I'll try it down-the-neck and in the key of G to see if it can be simplified.
It seems I'll get a bit of Canadian culture out of all this. I sure saw the Kanuks beat the Sharks yesterday in ice hockey. Oh well, I'd much rather pick banjo than watch TV.
Wade Hemsworth was a surveyor for the railroad, thus a lot of his song topics deal with themes around the wilderness and rural life. There's video around with Wade and the McGarrigles, and another with Murray McLauchlan singing "The shining Birch Tree" with the McGarrigles backing, with Wade sitting on stage. The animated short for "Log Driver" was made by the National Film Board of Canada, who did lots of pioneering work in film animation.
Hi there - Joe's brother here - very nice to see this tune catch the attention of some players here. I love Wade Hemsworth's tunes! He was not a hugely proliific songwriter, but it seems all his songs are wonderful. There is a rich tradition, or I should really say traditions, of Canadian old time music, from Don Messer and his Islanders, whose tv show I remember as a kid, and incredible Cape Breton fiddle tradition (not to mention PEI - I believe Ken Perlman has just come out with a book on PEI fiddle music), all kinds of Quebec fiddle and accordion music, the Ottawa Valley tradition (check out Ward Allen and also Mac Beattie and his Ottawa Valley Melodiers, with fiddler Reg Hill....Mac Beattie also did a log driving song by the way, called The Log Driver's Song). Also check out Metis fiddlers like Patty Lamareux!
Thanks Janet! I'm Canadian and seeing that video really takes me back. When I was a kid it used to play all the time on TV, pretty much everyone I know can sing along with it.
This is all so interesting to me. I've had very little contact with Canadians. I do have Ken Perlman's PEI book and will be more motivated to explore it. Here's the down-the-neck tab for Log Driver's Waltz. It's easy to do there for the chorus.
Wade was not a prolific song writer, but he sure wrote some good ones. He was associated with, if not actually a member of the Mountain City Four which included Kate and Anna McGarrigle, who sing The Log Drver's Waltz in the NFB film. The National Film Board also did a film of Wade's song The Black Fly that you and your students might enjoy.
Story teller Jack Nissenson, also a former member of The Mountain City Four, told me that when Wade brought the Black Fly song to the group, Kate and Anna said, Wade, you put too many words in your songs. There's not enough room to breathe," to which Wade replied, "A singer is supposed to sing, not breathe."
I know John Weldon, the animator that made the Log Driver's Waltz film, who happens to live in my neighbourhood, and also plays the banjo. He told me that he had wanted to play the banjo himself for that film, but the higher ups at the National Film Board "didn't believe he would play well enough" (even though they'd never heard him play) and they told him to find someone better. So he got his old high school friend, Kate McGarrigle (was not yet famous) to do it. Kate, for those who don't know her, went on to have a very illustrious career together with her sister Anna (who wrote "Heart Like a Wheel") which career was kick-started when they were the musical guests on Saturday NIght Live followed by being on the cover of Rolling Stone (back when those two things meant something serious). Kate passed away from cancer a few years back, and now there's a public square in Montreal named after her.
I love hearing these waltzes played clawhammer. The Canadian piece is very nice and your medley is a creative blend of tunes. I particularly like what you're doing with the chords on Star.
I've been listening to French-Canadian dance tunes which are very rich and have a lot of life. The foot-tapping rhythms they incorporate sound like foot-clawhammer. Canadian folk dance music seems to offer a vast terrain for clawhammer arrangers.
I'm certainly getting a synopsis of some Canadian musicians of the type I personally enjoy hearing and learning from. Thanks!
Here's a photo of my first grade class today enjoying Log Driver's Waltz. We also watched Black Flies and they laughed and laughed. It figures that Wade Hemsworth also played banjo -- clever people with a good sense of humor do. We read an Inuit story called Mama, Do You Love Me? and listened to a classic fairy tale, Little Red Riding Hood (I figure there are still wolves in Canada). Our worldwide journey in class continues all month....
Isnt tecnology wonderful? It wasnt too many years ago that grabbing a video from something called an internet and playing it on a big screen in a school just wasnt possible.
Don't just stop at Perlman's book, get his CD, Island Boy, tunes from PEI.
One of my favourites on YouTube is Commando Trad, traditional Quebecois music performed in the Montreal Metro, in markets, at UQAM, in Quebec City's old town, on radio. It's well worth watching and listening to. These people are passionate about traditional music. It's as good an entry point as any.
Anyone interested in hearing Quebecois music would do well to hunt down YouTube videos of the fiddling of Jean Carignan, who really was the pre-eminent Quebec fiddler of his day. He even released a record on Folkways Records where he's backed by the banjo playing of Pete Seeger. Presumably, that record is still available in some form from Smithsonian Folkways, which preserves the entire Folkways Records archives.
Marc, I first heard Jean Carignan at one of the first Mariposa Folk Festivals in either 1961 or 1962. He was accompanying Alan Mills. They also had a guitar player, whom I believe was Bram Morrison, but I'm not positive. Here's a photo from that festival.
this tune will be forever burnt in the minds of Canadians growing up while it was aired. i wanted to give it a go when i listened to Cams take last year, never got around to it.... love this tune
Pretty sure it appeared on tv up until the early 90s
I see this thread has turned into a bunch of us Canadians coming out of the woodwork to comment! But we've been mostly taking about the song, and some of us (like me, for instance) have neglected to comment on Janet's rendering of the tune, which is, of course, lovely. I'll attribute that gap to the obvious fact that everything Janet plays is lovely, so, as the expression goes, "it goes without saying" that we like it!
In Canada, our province of Quebec and our eastern maritime provinces have a pretty rich tradition of turning out folks who own fiddles and who aren't afraid to use them. Now that we have dragged Jean Carignan into the thread I just have to link to this video of him having a go at Devil's Dream. This is pretty much a must see video I think youtube.com/watch?v=OLfuH--OIbo
That's a very young Kate McGarrigle on banjo, her sister Anna McGarrigle singing and playing the accordion, and between them is Chaim Tannenbaum on mandolin. I went to high school with Chaim; he was a couple of years older than me, so I knew who he was, but I'm pretty sure he didn't know who I was at the time. It was seeing him playing the banjo and singing at our high school talent show, and thinking "boy, i wish I could do that" that spurred me to go to a pawn shop and buy myself a banjo (though it was several years until I finally sat down and taught myself to play it).
Thanks, Canadian gentlemen. A pat on the back is always appreciated. I see there's a world of Canadian music out there which you're so familiar with. I'm curious as to whether the Cajun music I'm fond of traveled up to you with its accordian and fiddling influence.
Ken Perlman's Island Boy is a good buy on amazon. How different is it from the CD that comes with the PEI book? I'd forgotten there was such a CD.
... I see there's a world of Canadian music out there which you're so familiar with. I'm curious as to whether the Cajun music I'm fond of traveled up to you with its accordian and fiddling influence. ...
I think it would be more accurate to say that Cajun music travelled down from the Acadian region of Canada to Louisiana, where it was modified by the folk process in that cultural melting pot, incorporating all kinds of non Acadian influences. "Cajun" is just "Acadian" with a Louisiana accent.
... I see there's a world of Canadian music out there which you're so familiar with. I'm curious as to whether the Cajun music I'm fond of traveled up to you with its accordian and fiddling influence. ...
I think it would be more accurate to say that Cajun music travelled down from the Acadian region of Canada to Louisiana, where it was modified by the folk process in that cultural melting pot, incorporating all kinds of non Acadian influences. "Cajun" is just "Acadian" with a Louisiana accent.
Marc is quite correct. The Acadian people (French) from the east coast of Canada were deported en masse by the British to many places the world over, one of which was Louisiana. Many of the Acadians made their way back to Canada over the decades and those communities still exist here today.
Janet, there is a sort of sad but interesting cultural thing that happens when you move west from Quebec into Ontario. You enter a whole different world. Different religions, different heritage values, and most importantly a different language. Quebec is a French speaking province and everything west of Quebec is mostly English speaking (with of course some exceptions). This has tended to isolate French Canadian music. A good example of how that works would be me. When I became interested in banjo I also became interested in old time music that was rooted in the Appalachians. One of the reasons for that was the old time music was accessible. There are instruction books all over the place. I have about 3,000 old time tabs. There are youtube videos and places like BHO - all in my language. I know that traditional eastern Canadian music exists and I quite like it but I dont have the skills to go past quite liking it. Im sure there are books but I cant read French very well. Im in the same boat with youtube videos. There are some instructional videos out there but I cant understand them. Until I get the skills to learn tunes by ear I have to just leave the French music alone. That creates for me and for many others a sort of cultural wall at the Ontario/Quebec border. Perversely, the music I play is American music.
My historical perspective broadens as I read and listen. I looked up Acadia on wickipedia. Lots more history to learn....
For sure we live in an eclectic climate of music and culture, yet also composed of individual genres. Like you, snowbird, I like the old-time mountain music. Before that I liked Celtic music. And before that I liked folk and classical music. Still, they can intertwine, as in a song like Log Drivers Waltz -- a waltz and folksong that could have come from many parts of America or Europe.
Thanks Janet, I did make this banjo, I think it was the third instrument I made (give or take a banjo-uke or two) I've never heard of Ook Pik Waltz, but I'll be sure to look it up now.
Cam: Ook Pik Waltz was written and recorded by the great Frankie Rodgers from Mission, British Columbia. It`s on his `Maple Sugar`LP. He was one half of the Rogers Brothers who were quite popular in Canada back in the late 50`s and 60`s. Frankie died a few years ago. A friend of mine in Lindsay, Ontario has one of his fiddles.
For energetic, inventive east coast Canadian trad-based music, check out "Ten Strings and Goatskin," a great (very) young band from Prince Edward Island (two of the trio are nephews of Lennie Gallant, all are from Rustico, which is on the Acadian shore). They play a mix of Acadian and Scots-Irish traditional fiddle tunes, their own hybrid compositions, and covers of an eclectic mix of songs. They stole the show at the Lunenburg Folk Harbour Festival in 2013. There is no banjo in the band, but great fiddling. In their live shows they play a number of the songs Ken Perlman documented.
That's a dynamic video, Steven. I'm on the fifth song -- another begins after one finishes, and it's still going. I can see how the group would have stole a show. Their ten strings could have been two hide-head banjos, but oh well! I'll look forward to getting to know the PEI repertoire more as I listen to the original recordings on the CD. Thanks for the heads-up.
Janet, you seem to have woken up the entire "sleeping" Canadian section of the hangout - well done! You are indeed a cultural ambassador extraordinaire!
Yes Janet the Canucks are really coming out of the wood work for sure eh........
Great job on this beautiful waltz. You've inspired me to learn this but I'm going to play it on the fiddle as my banjo version would not do it any justice.
Glad you're going to try the waltz, Terry. I forgot you're Canadian (or never read the fine print).
Here's a calming, then lively, cheerful video from the Yves Lambert Trio called An Irish Medley. It has that Cajun accordion rhythm I like (so is that the Acadian influence?)
And here's a link to the current old-time Tune of the Week (TOTW) which has its roots in Newfoundland, Canada, but is played in Irish pubs all over. The song is called The Night That Paddy Murphy Died and is definitely a pub song. banjohangout.org/topic/300790 I don't know the politics of the Irish culture in Canada, but I have a soft spot for them and their captivating music.
Not up on Canadian -Irish politics , but we had a Prime Minister called Mulroney who sang "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" with President Reagan one St. Patrick's Day in the '80's.
Eeew, Chuck! That was an embarrassing moment in Canadian history!
Janet, you have a great touch on the banjo!
North of here, there's a whole school of Ottawa Valley fiddling. The late Graham Townsend (photo) was a major player. There are some good fiddlers in these parts, although most of the stuff the public is exposed to is Bluegrass and country. Still, there are some fiddlers who really should be extensively recorded before their talent (and repertoire) is lost. We have a couple of French Canadian fiddlers in Kingston who are very good, but they aren't exactly spring chickens. There's an interesting mix of French and English Canadians from here east.
I looked up Graham Townsend. This video looks like a family affair. I recognized Flop-Eared Mule and Saint Anne's Reel, but there are several other tunes I wish were named in this long medley.
