The TOTW for 3/21/2025 is....The Cowboy Jig. The Cowboy Jig is a trad Irish tune. I first heard it in the early '90s on the album The Road North by fiddle player Alasdair Fraser. It is the second tune in a medley with the jig Calliope House. I learned it by ear and the sheet music from Cole's 1000 Fiddle tunes. I don't see "Hollywood Cowboy" images when I hear this tune. At any rate, it's a great tune!
Lots of versions on Youtube. Here's a few:
youtube.com/watch?v=KXP8j1qWU5g
youtube.com/watch?v=j9S5b38cfaU
youtube.com/watch?v=RPbjA3y7lbk
Here's my CH version in G tuning on a Vega 2:
banjohangout.org/myhangout/med...archived=
John d
Here's some clawhammer tab in the key of G.
Cowboy Jig Tab - Details and Ratings - Banjo Hangout
David
Onto a tangent .... and I've got no "explanation," but the first thing that came to my mind upon reading The Cowboy Jig was, "Ya, probably like Chinese Breakdown."
That would go really well with this tune:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLC5qldhXwU
Which also goes well together with this one (third part of Cooks is the same as second part of this one):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUVbbl5QZvY
Nice! The closest I can get to playing jigs is schottisches. At least in the Midwest, these are 6/8, but generally a bit slower than jigs.
A fun jig to try, John. You play it clawhammer style as natural as a cowboy loping on the plains. For me, 6/8 jig style means that sometimes my middle finger plays twice in a row and sometimes my thumb waits an eighth note before drop thumbing. If I play the piece enough it feels pretty normal. This one is still very new so using the tab helped.
Nice playing and a very helpful tab, Janet.
David
I met John D decades ago and was taken by his jigsaw playing and his clawhammer guitar—years before Molly Tuttle was born.
