Pat Lyons offers a modern old time tune composed by Seattle fiddler Eric Merrill. The title's meaning is "a highly prized opportunity or an exclusive pass that guarantees access to something incredibly desirable." Remember Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? It's a tune that grabs you -- TOTW, 7/24/26, The Golden Ticket. 

Once in a while we get a TOTW presented with the skill and intensity of a bonafide professor.  Today Lyle Konigsberg offers a historic and musical perspective of a past banjo player that is worthy of our study -- Wade Ward.  We can hear Ward and other examples of the tune played at tempo (i.e. very fast) and Lyle also gives the opportunity for tenor banjo players to try his arrangement.  Most of us have heard this tune before, but Wade Ward's version is definitely a classic, as well as challenging.  Who will give it a try?! TOTW, 7/31/26, Wade Ward's Chilly Winds.

Andy Taylor has done a nice job covering a John Salyer tune. We don't know the namesake of the tune, but it may have been a famous fiddler of the 1800's and you can read about him.  Other tunes with this kind of title are about fiddlers about to be hung, but perhaps not this one.   Take a listen to the video samples Andy has linked and share your own recording, as per his hope for this week's TOTW, 8/7/26, Last of Harris.

For my turn this week I chose a bluegrass tune learned by listening to Kenny Baker's fiddle and Bill Monroe's mandolin.  During research it was discovered that the tune was actually written by a Bluegrass Boy fiddler, Byron Berline, along with Monroe.  Berline had a slightly different rhythm in one part and I've tried to adopt that version.  In fact, he was quoted as saying that the B part (where this occurs) reminded him of "wagons going over a rock" and therefore the title Monroe had suggested was fitting. When playing the tune, I can picture the overland journey by covered wagon that eventually made California a populous state (and caused my little town of Smartsville to be founded).  Hope you enjoy the TOTW, 8/14/26, Gold Rush.

R.P. Christenson has a large collection of tunes from Missouri.  Mtngoat has chosen one by a rather obscure fiddler, but one who has many tunes recorded by Christenson.  You can view 19 of them on Slippery Hill if you look for August Merrill in this list: Old Time Fiddling from the State of Missouri.  The tune is named for a well-known coon hound of the South and sounds like a good dance tune:  TOTW, 8/21/26, Old Blue Tick.

Noah Cline stays true to his West Virginia roots and has uncovered a "barn burner" of a tune, with a source recording by Clark Kessinger.  We have been introduced in TOTW to this extraordinary fiddler before, but here we also see Noah digging deeper to link up with Kessinger's living relatives.  He also treats us to a barn-burning duet version of the tune himself and gives other links for our learning and listening pleasure.  Here's the TOTW, 9/4/26, West Virginia Hornpipe.