Heaven knows why I settled on this title. And heaven’s not saying. I don’t like the title, but it’s fun saying there’s nothing I can do about it. Of course I can do something about it.
In Gold Country I guess I gave this tune this name because I wrote it shortly after I visited Coarsegold, California. No, I did not attend the casino there. I was there to discover, by accident, an antiquarian translation of the Tao in a friend’s library. The translation was unusual–one that a greeting card company would have commissioned. Or a company that makes posters of cats in dire positions, metaphors for the human condition. No doubt, there are giant creatures who look upon us as we hang by one slim claw above an abyss. And no doubt, they think, “Aw. Cute.”
Good thing I never know which drive or folder or sub-folder I’m in when I open a computer. I always find tunes I lost, or didn’t remember writing, or, usually, both. Man, I wrote this thing years and years ago. It showed up in the digital equivalent of a back corner of my socks drawer in a folder that was named, apparently, by a non-native speaker. I gave it this title because it shares a riff with a song my friend Eleanor Ellis used to sing, beautifully, too, about somebody’s Uncle Eph. I reckon his full name was Ephus.
To speak with any authority about this piece, I would have to listen to it. I’m not sure when’s the last time I did that, but even if it wasn’t too long ago, I wouldn’t remember how it goes. The title is familiar, but only because I had to type it into the slot where you put titles. And I’m only guessing it’s a banjo tune. The title seems like one I’d choose for a banjo tune, although “choose” isn’t quite what I do when I give a tune a title. I do as little as I can, usually less.
If you knew what it took to coax Buffy out of her broodiness, you’d excuse me for commemorating the feat by naming a banjo tune for it. We named her Buffy because you would have. I’m sure by now you’ve guessed that she’s a buff orpington. Everybody knows what a buff orpington is. She’s uncommonly pretty, but a pain in the patootie. You know the type.
I got tired of mowing the lawn, so we got a couple of sheep. Modest-sized ones. When the grass isn’t growing, I have to haul bales of alfalfa out to the fence. Lemme tell you: when you see people in movies chucking around bales of alfalfa like they’re Nerf balls or something, remember — they’re in Hollywood. A three-string bale weighs about 100lbs. But we love our sheep even if they regard us as only momentarily entertaining. They eye us as if they know what’s up and we don’t. I’m not saying that’s not the case. I know I don’t know what’s up.
In this tune, along with another I recently wrote, I cleverly inserted an extra beat in one measure. An associate asked me why. I was ready with an answer: “Because that’s the way it goes.”
If you don’t believe in voodoo, you haven’t met my laptop.
I’m not a church-goer. As the Swiss proverb advises, “Some people go to church; some people like cherries.” Stained glass is pretty, but there’s plenty else that’s as, or more, inspiring. Nevertheless, if church is for you, amen. I wrote this tune, in fact, as my donation to churches that can’t afford an organ but have enough for a banjo.
If you need lulling, you’ve come to the right tune. When I recorded the banjo part, I got lulled into playing it too many times. When I added the guitar part, the same thing happened, and I just kept playing until the banjo stopped. But when it came time to hack off some of the iterations–in deference to listeners–, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I liked how the banjo and guitar sounded as if I’d meant for them to interact they way they do. I guess I did, in a way, mean it. But if you don’t know you mean something, do you still mean it? You can ponder that, if you like, for the whole four minutes or so this tune runs.
Originally, I titled this tune “Diggin’ on Your Grave,” in the lighthearted sense of that phrase. I thought it best, though, to change the name. It doesn’t hurt to play it safe so no one takes you the wrong way. I can’t imagine why anyone would, but you know how people are. “Diggin’ on your grave” appears in a grisly traditional ballad, one of those in which someone murders someone, and if there was a reason for the murder, the narrator doesn’t think it necessary to state it. I guess everyone assumed back then that if you murdered someone, either you didn’t need a reason, or you didn’t need to tell anyone what it was because, y’know, that’s just what you do.
So, I used a bit of “We’ll head ’em off at the pass.” When I was a kid, I heard that line a lot in cowboy movies and TV. I’m sure I found cause to use it myself, as a younger man. There were a good many spots in the woods by my house that, to any self-respecting boy, could pass for a pass. Heading ’em off, by the way, meant murdering ’em.
This is a banjo solo only because I tried adding rhythm guitar and bass, but either, or both, made the tune sound lighthearted. I wanted everyone to know I was dead serious about heading ’em off at the pass. One false move. . . .
This is one of the few tunes for which I approve of the title I gave it. I don’t remember how the tune goes, so I can’t say whether it fits.
Poorjoe
Nice to know that Poorjoe–sometimes spelled Poor Joe–is known also as Rough Buttonweed and Povertyweed, that it grows throughout the Southeastern U.S., and that no one seems to have anything good to say about it. One wildflower hunter reported being glad to find it somewhere she didn’t expect to, but she didn’t say why. This tune sounded weedy to me, and Poorjoe seemed to cry out for someone to boost its self-esteem. And you must admit that having a banjo tune named for you is a great honor compared with having your name associated with an exotic glandular disease.
You’d think we’d have learned by now.
Wanna bet some grammar fiends would argue over whether the apostrophe is proper in this case? I opted to use it since, having taken print shop in seventh grade, I know what a three em space is, and I wanted to avoid confusion.
I named this solo for the banjo on which I played it, a “Black Beauty” made by A.A. Farland, probably in the early 1900s. A lovely old soldier it is.
According to family legend, until I was maybe seven, eight, I used to sleep with my toy guns. I don’t doubt it’s true. Though no one in even my very extended family owned a real gun, on television in the ’50s, lots of honorable people used them honorably. I wanted to be honorable, and besides, on ’50s TV you didn’t bleed or anything when you got shot; you just held your stomach and fell over. I assumed it didn’t even hurt, or not much. But I named this tune in awe of myself for having remembered–when prompted by a crossword puzzle clue–that Davy Crockett called his rifle Ol’ Betsy. No big deal remembering a detail like that, you might say. OK. I was seventy-two when I made the recollection. Years old. Came to me in an instant.
Like you, I boldly posit theories right and left, though I might have only one slim bit evidence for their soundness. Back when I taught poetry, I told my students I felt strongly that all language has its basis in onomatopoeia. I warned them, frequently, that I was full of crap, and that I’d reward–not punish–anyone who challenged me. Nobody ever did. Maybe they found my wacko notions fetching. Maybe they were as leery and contemptuous of academic research as I am. My theory was that they were lazy, but I never researched it. But the word squawk does seem a case in point. Should a researcher find that all language does spring from onomatopoeia, I will withdraw my theory. I don’t mind frauds, but ones who procure taxpayer-funded grants, I cannot abide.
A banjo can never sound good, but all banjos do sound bad differently. I recorded this tune on a Mike Ramsey Special that has a twelve inch “pot,” as it’s called. Normal people would call it “the round part.” Though the lay person wouldn’t hear the difference between a banjo with an eleven inch pot and one with a twelve inch pot, cognoscenti would recognize it instantly. The two sound exactly an inch different.
I have a modest suggestion for questionnaire designers: please include a sub-menu under “Disagree Strongly” through which respondents can insert a number indicating just how strongly they disagree. Include the symbol for infinity, or at least allow for exponents. Were people able to quantify just how strongly they disagree, they would be much more willing to complete questionnaires, I’ll bet.
Even better, if questionnaire writers included “Indicate your level of hilarity, or rage, over every web site’s or phone tree’s request that you to complete a brief questionnaire,” they’d get a 100% response rate. Usually, they consider 20% excellent.
Or make it a computer game: respondents get to shoot atomic warheads at characters in suits.
Riptide would be a good nickname for a heavyweight boxer. Ephus “Riptide” Uppercut sounds more like a boxer than does, say, “Sugar” Ray Leonard, no offense to Mr. Leonard, whose style really was sweet.
They’ve done it. Physicists have been saying for years that there’s no reason that time’s “arrow” has to point in only one direction. Two labs have recently coaxed a handful of photons to shoot into the past. The future looks a lot brighter. Soon–whatever “soon” means–, we’ll be able to go back and unmake our mistakes before we make them. Ultimately, Adam will get there just in time and grab that piece of unidentified fruit before Eve takes a bite. Watch out, Eden; we’re backing up. If I had the chance, I probably wouldn’t have named this tune “Matter.” I’m looking forward, or maybe backward, to re-naming it.
We got a couple of sheep so I would no longer have to mow the lawn. I learned not to buy them the kind of salt lick that contains copper because it builds up in their kidneys, or liver, or somewhere important. So think of this as a cautionary tune.
This is the music that the art historians play when they wax academic about Rodin’s The Thinker. I’m glad Rodin thought it important to turn thinking into a solid. Otherwise, it might become, even more quickly, a lost art.
I feel sorry for chard. It’s pretty good if you know what to do with it, and it would be good even if you didn’t. If you didn’t, you’d reflexively cook it with onions and garlic, and that always works. But the word chard sounds like something you have to scrape off of something or it won’t work right or because it makes something uglier than need be. It is in this sense that I named this tune. Also, because the tune sounds like an argument you’re having with your landlord.
If this tune sounds pretty much like “Persist,” a few tunes up the page, it’s because I’m working on being a Major League idiot. Right now, I’m in Triple A, but I’ll keep plugging away at it. I plum forgot I’d finished writing the motif I started with above and finished it again. The two versions are understandably different in spots because, if I can’t remember that I’ve finished a tune, I certainly can’t remember how I did it. On an unrelated note: years ago, on Saturday nights I played in bars. On Sunday mornings, I played in a big cathedral. Felt about the same. This is a church tune in spirit.
We’ll learn to live with new viruses and all of their adorable offspring, for sure. We’ve learned to live with banjos. True, we’ve had to carve and inlay them with all manner of what look like threatening runes and esoteric symbols that suggest we’d best not offend the player, who might know what they mean. I played this tune on a more tasteful Mike Ramsey “Special” that features only two demure mother-of-pearl inlays: one of Saturn, and a smaller one of a shooting star. We do know that Saturn connotes gloom and misery, and a shooting star indicates that a distant solar system burned out sometime in the distant past. Ominous as these symbols are, at least we know what they mean.
The unsung lyrics to instrumentals go like this: “I know how you feel. I know how you feel.”
You can hear a great version of this tune played twice this fast by a band with two fiddles, banjo, guitar, and double bass if you have a good imagination. I wrote it to be played that way. Rather than emphasizing its potential as a stirring hoopdeedoo, in my own version, I strove to explore its lyrical possibilities. They remain possibilities.
Someday, when sitting in a rocking chair on the porch is about all I can manage, I’d like to whittle a chess set out of two contrasting exotic hardwoods. I’ve never been able to play chess, but I used to be able to whittle. Playing chess has always been out of the question for me because I can’t even think about the move I’m making, let alone what I’ll do next, and I’m told you have to plan seven moves ahead to be any good. This tune captures what I imagine thinking feels like, hence, the name.
I did buy a chess set when I was a kid, but only because I liked the pieces that look like guys on horses, or sometimes, just horse heads. These are the “knights.” I liked them despite the spasmodic way they’re permitted to move on the board. Chess players, I’ve heard, are taught to consider the board as akin to a battlefield. Clearly, the moves knights are allowed were dictated not by a general, but by a ballroom dance instructor.
Before you begin writing what you hope might sound like a fiddle tune, you should have a title for it. Better yet, you should have several titles so you can claim that fiddlers in Tennessee call it “Poke the Frog” while those in Kentucky call it “Fatback” and in Missouri they call it “Clapsaddle.” I didn’t have the title for this before I wrote it, but it didn’t take long to think of one. Slag came to mind instantly. No doubt, you’d have thought of it yourself.
To counteract the menacing, but friendly, disposition of this tune, I offer a recipe for my favorite dessert. Humankind, clearly, does not deserve vanilla pudding pie, but it’s about all that keeps me going some days: Make a graham cracker pie crust. Do not be intimidated; even I can make one. Cook two packages of vanilla pudding. No cheating: “instant” pudding is an abomination. I’ve never tasted instant pudding, but it just doesn’t seem right. Pour the pudding into the pie crust. Let it cool and set. Refrigerate. Top with real whipped cream; you will not go to heaven if you entertain for an instant using something called “whipped topping” by any of its trade names; the people who make it are dark natured. It’s pitiful that we even have to attach the adjective “real” to whipped cream, but this is where we stand.
I don’t want to put any ideas in your head. Not at all. So don’t picture a bunch of scurvy seamen and seawomen dancing on a wooden deck, peglegs splintering as they pound on the boards. Not that I do.
In his astounding poetry, Octavio Paz uses this word–in English it means stones– a whole lot. You can’t blame him. If you haven’t noticed that life is hard, where can I get some of the stuff you been on? Making this recording, however, was surprisingly, and uncharacteristically–for me–, easy. It’s an improvisation I lifted from my notebook recorder and scrubbed. Not in the NASA sense of scrubbing, but in the Audio Types sense: remove any intrusive sounds of nearby volcanic activity, Willie–the neighbors dog–barking, folks across the way playing mah jongg to the death . . . that kind of scrubbing.
Maybe you’re not allowed to say it, but I like this tune, even if I did write it. I know I am allowed to say I hope you do, too, but I mean it. Perhaps you too will find you’ll rue having taken it for granted. For some reason, my warmth toward it strikes me as the same I’d have toward a middle child.
I proposed giving another tune this name, but thinking the title lacked color, settled on “Blue Rain” since purple had been taken. But having lived ten years in Northern California now, I find rain self-explanatory. We have two seasons, as our veteran neighbors have pointed out: “might rain,” and “won’t rain.”
Something like this has happened to you, too, I’m sure. I was walking home one night after dark. I took a route I didn’t usually take. I knew it would get me where I wanted to go, but I found it disquieting that all the streetlamps were out. Suddenly, I had a vivid premonition. I knew that a German Shepherd would come running at me. I couldn’t see more than a two or three feet in front of me. I didn’t hear anything ominous. When I did hear something–five or ten minutes after I’d had the premonition–it wasn’t until the German Shepherd got to within arm’s length of me. He rose onto his hind legs, lunged. And put his paws on my chest.
I assured him it was OK with me, his putting his paws on my chest and all, given. I noted that he was pretty young, but nearly full-grown. He didn’t have tags, just an old flea collar. He followed me home. He was, indeed, hungry. He stayed the night and most of the next day. The flea collar started bothering me; it clearly wasn’t any good any longer, and it was mighty dirty. When I took it off, I found a phone number, faint, written in ballpoint on the inside. I called.
Not that this has anything to do with the tune, or its name. I just like the sound of the word stray. It lingers. Wants to stay the night.
I’m sure you remember Clint Courtney, aka “Scrap Iron.” A catcher for the Baltimore Orioles, in 1960 Scrap Iron was the first to use a 42-inch-circumference mitt to protect himself and the hot dog vendors from the uncertain trajectory of Hoyt Wilhelm’s knuckleball. As they say in sportstalk, “Who can forget?” I wonder if anyone’s compiled a list of baseball players’ nicknames. Seems it would make a good book–a compendium of the names plus the stories–true and apocryphal–of how the players earned them.
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My students never believed me, at first, when I told them that grammar has much more to do with honesty and respect for others than with the little squiggles of punctuation or the niceties of verb agreement. Then I asked them whether they would say to their parents, The car was crinkled,” or I crinkled the car? Or would they try to erase themselves from a sentence like Mistakes were made, or fess up with I made a mistake? I rested my case.
Judges, lawyers, politicians, and all manner of liars resort to the passive voice either to pretend to authority or pretend they had nothing to do with whatever evil they’ve engaged in. “You have been found guilty,” sounds as if god herself made the finding, it’s final, and there’s nothing the speaker or you or anyone can do about it. “The car was totaled” leaves you out of the sentence, and takes you out of the driver’s seat. This, of course, wasn’t on my mind when I named this tune. It was named as it appears. I wasn’t even there.
Hardwood Scuff
Aptly, if badly, named. I figure I must have written this tune because there’s a shoe keeping time, and the shoe sounds like one of mine. I found the banjo part, intact, among tunes I promised myself I’d work on. Fortunately, I didn’t have to keep my promise; I recognized the melody [sic] as complete. Complete insofar as it’s no more or less so than, say, most old-timey tunes, which are a minimalist’s dream. I simply added guitar to the raw banjo and felt, justifiably, that I’d earned chocolate and a nap.
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Soon, I Hope
I don’t recall what I was waiting for. Probably the toaster. We had the slowest toaster this side of the Oort Belt. Let me tell you, just how tiny you are in the great sweep of history and the incomprehensibility of space never hit you as forcefully as they do when you’re waiting for a toaster.
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Tu Sombra
It means your shadow in Spanish. I mean it in a good way.
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You’re My Honey, I Guess
Our great friends, Larry and Pirkko, wrote the text for their wedding service. Instead of “until death do us part,” they vowed, “for as long as it lasts.” These were inherently romantic people. They called their chainsaw “the Valentine” because it was a gift from one of them to another. Probably Larry gave it to Pirkko, and most likely, the gesture would have moved her to tears.
But they did last, to the end.
All of this tune’s ancestors are banjo tunes; its bloodlines are manifest. But it thumbed its nose at tradition and flaunted an uptown E minor chord. The nerve.
I don’t deplore the fact that these kids these days have no respect, though. I don’t see where a whole lot of adults have given them much to respect. We need more disrespectful kids. Like Greta.
A solo tune played on a fretless banjo, apparently while someone in the room was leafing through a National Geographic. You might argue that the magazine sounds a good bit better than the banjo, and few would disagree. But that doesn’t explain why there seem to be more banjos in the world than there are copies of the National Geographic. I can explain, though. As a fad, banjos were more popular than were Hula Hoops, and banjo frenzy lasted for far, far longer. What’s that information do for your faith in humanity?
Oh, yeah–stinkfoot is a weed. It is aptly named. My prayer is that the name befits the tune nearly as well.
The only chance I ever got to taste poi, I missed. Everyone I’ve ever talked to says I should miss all subsequent chances, should I have them. If you’re Hawaiian, please, no offense intended in the least. I’d warn you off a good many mainland dishes. But this tune has an island feel, so, Poi it is.
You know what I wish? I wish that if some of the tunes and songs on this site were to ask to sit next to you on a bench, you wouldn’t mind. Anything beyond that would be gravy.
Since I can’t add anything to what this tune says for itself, I won’t. I’ll say something else. My favorite English word is peloria. It means, according to my Websters New Collegiate: “an abnormal regularity of structure occurring in normally irregular flowers.” But my favorite English word pales next to mokita my favorite word from Kiriwina Island, Papua New Guinea. It means truth everybody knows but nobody speaks.
Wistfulness beats a whole lot of other fulnesses. Don’t fight it.
What bugs me about adults is how presumptuous they are when dealing with children. Sometimes, I wish I could go back and, when my mother said, “You’re not thinking,” reply, “In fact I am. But tell me honestly, were you thinking about what I was just now thinking about?” A three year-old I know once dictated to me this letter to his father: “Dear Daddy. I love you and I like you. Why are you so dumb to me? Like you ask me to do something when I’m already doing something.”
On a visit to Finland, I saw a lovely approach toward cooperation between the chronologically-different. A child had been playing on the beach, alone, when his mother came to ask that he come inside. But she didn’t ask. She engaged with the child for some time, and they laughed and played together. When they were on the same team, she suggested it would be fun to do something else with her. They went into the house hand-in-hand, still laughing.
What children are doing is exactly as important to them as what adults are doing is important to adults. Not an iota more or less.
Oh, about the tune. It’s improvised, front to back. In it, I can hear myself thinking, though to you it might sound like some insect chewing another insect in a nature documentary.
Advertisers are sometimes clever. And sometimes, I suspect they don’t think too hard about their claims. I just love when I read an ad that says, “Save up to 50%, and more!” And I look carefully, but never find, any statement about just which quality or qualities I should expect to find in a “quality product.” After all, we’re all possessed of any number of qualities, many of which we don’t boast of.
This tune clearly has some qualities. But you don’t hear me proclaiming that. It goes without saying.
There’s a darn good reason that locusts have black eyes, and cicadas, which are a kind of locust, have red eyes. It’s so that, when cicadas emerge by the bzillions after doing whatever the hell they’ve been doing underground for seventeen-years, slam into your face as they stupidly fly nowhere in particular, and drone on with their deafening UFO noises, they will disgust and traumatize a greater number of children much more comprehensively than locusts can. If this tune is even faintly as menacing as a swarm of cicadas, the title I gave it will be apt, even if I didn’t think–not in the usual sense–about what to call it.
“Yo soy un hombre sincero” is the first line from “Guantanamera.” “I am an honest man, from where the palms grow.” Can’t go wrong after a start like that. Why am I likely to believe someone who claims sincerity in Spanish more readily than I would someone who makes it in English? Probably bias.
I play this tune once through at a slow tempo so’s not to bother anyone. Then I play it faster so’s to bother everyone.
I’d wanted to title this tune “Egret Standing on One Leg,” but I rejected that as overly long. “Succinctness” was, in fact, my parents’ first choice for my middle name. And it would have been had they not, at the last minute, thought it overly long. Egrets stand on one leg for at least three reasons I can think of: fatigue and thermal regulation come to mind easily. But absentmindedness, I think, is chief among them. Perhaps I personify, but I know I forget to uncross my legs until one of them notifies me that it’s asleep.
I’d love to hear this tune played about twice as fast as I played it here, which is as fast as I could without having to practice it until I hated it. The musicians I’ve met who play “old-timey tunes” would describe it as “note-y,” an adjective that you have to agree is plain fetching. I don’t know if “note-y,” as a word, is trad. or if one of the new breed who can’t wait to be called old fiddlers came up with it. I could ask. In any case, they’d object strongly to my use of four chords in this tune rather than the traditional one; two, grudgingly; and, only at gunpoint, three.
You have to wonder about food choices. Who discovered that you can even open an oyster, let alone dreamed of eating what she found inside? I just can’t imagine someone looking at that supremely asymmetrical matter and thinking, “Y’know, this would go good, raw, with a squirt of lemon and maybe a dab of hot sauce.” And was it bravery or something else on the part of the explorer who ignored the artichoke’s many “Keep Out” signs? I come from Baltimore. My first solid food was a blue crab.
Don’t ask. I’d disavow this tune readily upon request. All I know is that it kept bothering me until I committed it to a recording, and I’m putting it here because I have good reason to suspect that if I didn’t it would start bothering me again. We don’t want that.
I played this tune on a Dobson banjo made around 1890. It’s strung with nylon strings formulated to sound as close to gut as anyone’s gotten so far. When this banjo was born, it would have been strung with gut. Real gut strings don’t stay in tune very long, so very few people use them any longer. This comes as a great relief to cats. My cat isn’t outwardly bothered by my playing nylon strings around her. She might object to gut strings. I just don’t know and I love her too much to experiment. She is, as Shakespeare pointed out, a necessary cat.
In an aside: say what you will about the sexes being equal and all that–which they manifestly are–, but you have to admit there at least appear to be subtle differences between them. I used to tell my students that, though there’s more than one way to skin a cat, no matter how you do it, you wind up with a cat with no skin. Invariably, the girls gave a collective “Ewwwwww!” and the boys thought it hilarious. This might be merely anecdotal evidence for stark genetic differences, sure; but it does merit a footnote.
Skeeter was the mean one. Our other three chickens were fine. Sweet, even. Not Skeeter. Always angry about something. She wouldn’t say what. Nonetheless, she lived the longest, and when she died, we took it hard. I guess we love all our children the same, after all.
Playing banjo is downright therapeutic. I recommend it highly for anyone who doesn’t want to have to wait until well into old age to not give a damn what anybody thinks.
Suppose you dislike banjo tunes. Then you don’t have very good taste; adelie penguins like banjo tunes, and they are famous for their sensibilities. They particularly like “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary,” which is a catchy number. I know this because Leonard Hussey, a member of Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition, brought along his banjo–essential for survival in harsh conditions–and played for the crew. Once, a group of penguins waddled close when they heard him and listened, long, and intently. They were clearly entranced. Until he played a Scottish tune. They scrambled away as fast as they could when he tried one. Make of that what you will. You can see Hussey’s banjo if you’re in Britain, or online if you’re not. It’s in a museum. It’s of a type called “zither banjos” because they are nothing at all, nothing at all, like zithers.
What bearing does any of this have on this solo tune? None, either. I found it on a little digital recorder that I use to capture ideas when one comes to me. I cut out the parts I figured an adelie penguin wouldn’t like and gave it this name for the very reason that penguins flee when the Scots start in: who the hell knows?
I do have a theory, though. Maybe someone was there before Shackleton. And maybe he was wearing a goose down kilt.
Whenever you hear a stumping politician say “I just love love love the great state of (fill-in-the-blank)” you have every right to dismiss the glowing oratory as shameless, nude pandering. Anyone who likes Montana, though, probably really does. Even Montana’s detractors–if there are any–would have to acknowledge that the folks there sure know how to name their roads. Hellroaring Road didn’t roar like hell, that I noticed, but I might have been there on an off day.
Owl light is most commonly called dusk. But how much fun is that? And I’d bet that every acknowledged poet throughout the ages has used the word dusk in at least a dozen works. And all those who’ve ever fancied themselves poets–that is to say, those who’ve ever been puberty-stricken–have used it many more times than that. So, dusk didn’t make the cut in this carefully considered title.
But owl light! Now there’s a title. A title, yes, but one that is up to you whether it fits this tune. Frankly, I was just fooling around on the banjo and I had my recorder running. I transferred my noodling to my computer, cut out the lousy parts, and this is what was left. If you think you’ve found evidence of thought–in either the tune or the title–, you are undoubtedly an art critic or academic of some type. Even my analyst could find nothing in the tune or title to work with. “Can we talk instead about your fascination with antique staplers?” she asked. “I don’t think I’m ready,” I had to admit.
When I first started playing banjo, I had a purpose in mind: I imagined I’d assume the traits I’d noticed in every banjo player I’d ever seen. They all look carefree because banjo players don’t have sense enough to care. Not about what people think of you. Not about world affairs. You might care about whether your banjo is tastelessly ornate enough, but that’s only if you can afford it.
But I’ve maintained my broodiness and sense of doom despite owning several banjos. I don’t think this tune is downright apocalyptic, but it does seem worried about something. I’d apologize, but banjo players never notice that everyone expects an apology.
The first thing they teach you in college, if you decide to become a teacher, is to hate snide comments. Come to think of it, I don’t know if I learned anything else in my ed. courses. Come to think of it, I think I knew that before I took any ed. courses. But, I’m not sorry I took those courses. I was sorry at the time, and for a long time afterwards, but it’s been a while and I’ve learned forgiveness. My students taught me that.
A sketch, this one. It’s brief, sparse; a stab at getting the gesture. I played it on a Dobson banjo that was probably made in the late 1800s, very early 1900s tops. Fitted with high-tech gut-like strings, it probably sounds about the way it sounded when it left the factory.
Once you read a little about the Uncertainty Principle, you begin to wonder if all articles aren’t indefinite. You grant that you are indefinite, but you already knew that. You’d been hoping maybe something else wasn’t. Knowledge isn’t power. It’s depression.
I once saw a very honest-looking white-haired fella at a party in New Jersey and decided to talk to him. Music came up, somehow, and I mentioned that, odd as it might seem, the viola is my favorite instrument. Funny indeed, he said, because he plays viola. Oh, I said. Do you play with any groups or anything? I asked. Yes, he said, with a little orchestra. Lovely, I said. Anyone I might have heard of, I asked. Um, the New York Philharmonic, if you’ve heard of them, he said. Oh, I said.
More crazy coincidences followed. A year later, I saw him again, and he told me he and his wife were moving to Maryland. Oh, I said. Where in Maryland? A place called Olney, he said. Funny, I said. First lunch is on me; I work in Sandy Spring, about a mile from downtown Olney. Oh, and by the way, Olney is a viola hotspot. Oh? he asked. Yes, one of the National Symphony’s violists lives there as well as does a highly-regarded viola maker.
Hank and Dorothy Nigrine became my beloved friends. Both passed away some years ago, and I miss them actively, every day. Dorothy was an accomplished painter, and the portrait she gave us hangs in our bedroom along with two of Hank’s photos. He was the unofficial photographer for the orchestra, and his living room walls were covered in arresting, searching photos he took from his chair of the world class conductors and soloists who worked with the symphony.
That’s only one reason I named this tune “Viola.” The other is that I’m volunteering at our local elementary school, and one of the kids I work with is named Viola. She’s an extraordinary writer who can tell you, in detail, what the ebony goblins on Pluto–where it sometimes rains garlic powder–are up to at any moment.
When I named this tune, I didn’t picture weevils humming it as they went about their interesting lives. But I do now. I can picture a few dozen of them onstage, ready to begin the premiere performance of Concerto for Weevils and Orchestra in D minor or Thereabouts. The key signature for this tune, as far as I can tell, is To Be Announced. But not by me. I played it out of a banjo tuning I invented, except it’s not in the same key as that tuning, and I’m not sure I ever determined what key it’s in. Or if it’s in a key.
“Odd,” I said to myself when I finished this tune. It’s probably good that, at least for a while, I don’t know what to think of a new song or tune. It generally takes me some time and distance to decide whether I like a piece, if “like” is the right word. But I did like this tune straightaway, as the Brits say. If I knew why, I’d write more like it. Just my luck, I don’t know why.
One day in a Philosophy 101 discussion group, I raised my hand. I had no idea what I was going to say before I started speaking; I had no idea what I was saying while I said it; and afterwards, had you asked me what I’d said, I’d have been less able to tell you than others in the room might have. But I made certain to sound erudite.
The TA put his hand to his chin, mused deeply, and long, and mused some more. After a while, though, his eyes brightened, and he said, “I’d never looked at the problem that way. That’s very, very cool. Amazing. Thanks!” I said, “You’re most welcome.”
He’d just admitted he couldn’t allow anyone to think him stupid. I didn’t tell the class, or anyone. But I wanted to. I was getting even with him for hitting on my girlfriend.
I’d been pondering a question about the first few picoseconds after the Big Bang, as I’m sure you must. If the universe’s speedometer tops out at 186,000 mps, how did the universe expand many, many, many more miles than 186,000 in a time far, far, far less than a second? Of course, I gave myself a dope slap when I read that lightspeed is the max for light when it travels through space. But, since the universe did not consist yet of space–it created space, and time, as it expanded–light wasn’t expanding through anything, or any time. And neither was anything else. The universe has been making up space and time as it goes along; it creates the envelope it’s pushing, so to speak. And you can go at a pretty good clip under those conditions, which, strictly speaking, don’t qualify as conditions. Gives a new meaning to the word “unconditional,” eh?
This simple explanation just hadn’t occurred to me. What occurred to me was this tune, which probably isn’t as important. It took on even less status when I read that when–as physicists suspect might happen–our dimension slams into a nearby one, in what they’re affectionately calling the “big splat,” everything starts from zero again. But, we’ll have to wait trillions of years before someone comes up with the idea of zeros. Fortunately, it’ll go by pretty quickly. When there’s no time, it won’t seem like long.
Close your eyes. Write down the first thing that crosses your mind. There: you’ve got a perfect name for a banjo tune. It doesn’t pay to think about the name. A well-considered name won’t make the fact that you’re playing it on a banjo any less inexcusable.
Long, long ago, at the world’s first summit meeting, our earliest ancestors determined that nothing anyone could ever do would make a banjo sound good. So, they agreed that any improvements must, by law, need to be in the interest of making them more difficult to play. The fretless banjo was one inevitable result. Its neck has none of those little horizontal wires that give you an idea of where you’ll find precisely the wrong notes you’re looking for. So, all notes are wrong on a fretless, but there are infinitely more of them.
I played this tune on a fretless banjo. Fretless banjos might not fret, but people who play them do nothing but.
A little syllogism of a tune. It could serve as Hamlet’s leitmotif. He goes in dark circles, haltingly, too.
A courteous little banjo tune, it doesn’t last long, and it gently fades out. It’s abrupt enough in the middle.
The good thing about this tune is that it induces hypnosis. Cheaper than therapy, too.
On our way to our new home in California, we stayed one night a few miles from the Bonneville Salt Flats. At sundown, we drove to the spot where racers from all over the world bring their cars and motorcycles to try to crack the land speed record or prove a concept. They need a long runway to do this cracking.
Three things about the Flats: They are flat. Second, exactly how far past the horizon they keep going is a matter of conjecture, provided you’re not a timid conjecturer. And, the silence is the most beautiful thing you’ve never heard.
This tune is the answer to the question: What always happens when you’ve got on hand a banjo, a fretless banjo, a guitar, and a little drum called a dhoumbek? Inevitable, I’m sure you’ll agree.
The title of this tune reminds me of a telling moment in my life. I was playing in bars and restaurants and concerts back then, and I’d just had a hundred copies of a collection of songs made on cassettes. It takes a good bit of work to write, record, edit, order, and otherwise produce an album. To celebrate the accomplishment, I stopped for a drink in a little pub close to the cassette duplication joint. I carried the box of cassettes under my arm.
When I sat at the bar, a fellow a few seats down turned and looked at the box. He seemed intrigued. And he kept seeming intrigued for longer than is usually considered polite. But, I was in a good mood. “Music. Cassette tapes,” I said. “I just produced my second collection of songs. I sell them at gigs. I’m sorta proud of this new batch.” I was ready to strike up a nice back-and-forth about music.
“I was looking at the box. My company makes boxes.”
No doubt there are people who’d want to examine a ball of twine for similar reasons. Expertise is expertise. I once took a photo of an unusual-looking fire hydrant while I was in some distant city, and a dinner guest pored over it, clearly enthralled, when we showed him our vacation shots. I’d just met the guy, and I didn’t know he sells fire hydrants.
So, once again, take nothing for granted. Think of this tune as an ode to twine, even if it doesn’t remind you of anything. It doesn’t remind me of anything, either, which is probably where I got the name.
A while ago, on this site, I’d titled this tune, simply, “Rabies.” When I later added a bass part, I faced a difficult decision: should I call it “The New Rabies” or think of something even more tasteful? Now, I know that most people don’t think of banjo players as deeply contemplative or sensitive, but my solution to this problem suggests otherwise, doesn’t it?
I will not be inducted into the Guys With Great Memory Hall of Fame. I wrote this tune twice, each time with the same B part, but with a different A part. I forgot that I’d finished it, and that I’d recorded it.
Neither version bothers me, which is more than anyone can ask of any banjo tune, so I put both here, right up snug. I called the first one “And I Don’t Know Why” because, if this tune had words, those would be the first few words of the B part.
If you listen to both, I’m certain you’ll want to write a comparison/contrast essay. 500 words, please, double-spaced.
You can read the pathetic story of this tune in the excuse, I mean notes, above.
Perhaps my appalling memory accounts partly for my preoccupation with Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, a truly wonderful black and white film that would suffer horribly if anyone colorized it. The film features “Mr. Memory,” who is based on a real person–the famous “S.” S earned his anonymity by being the subject of thirty years of study by a Russian psychologist. S had what we think of as a photographic memory, though reportedly, no such thing exists. As you might suspect, S’s memory was less an asset than a liability. He couldn’t attend to mundane tasks, and he became useless as an employee, anywhere. Ultimately, he had to endure the humiliation of becoming, essentially, a circus act, a sort of freak show.
I don’t have a thing to worry about, then, you’d think. My question to researchers would be, “If I can’t remember anything that I need to remember, why can’t I forget things I want to forget?”
I played this tune on a very old Orpheum #3 banjo, a modestly curlicued model. You’ve seen worse.
The great thing about writing notes about banjo tunes is that you never run out of things to say.
Anything having to do with trains finds its way immediately into our hearts. In the same way that everyone is plain nuts, everyone is fond of trains; it’s just a matter of degree.
A sketch. An atmosphere. An essay on decision making.
This tune jumped out of a Buckbee banjo I’d bought just that day. I’d taken it out to the garden and played as I watched our chickens. Chickens, in my experience, are the only creatures that don’t mind the sound of a banjo. At least they don’t seem to mind. Still, I’ve never taken a banjo out to the garden again. I’m a little afraid a neighbor might report me. People around here are very conscious of the way we treat animals, and I allow that someone might think it cruel not to offer the ladies asylum in a soundproof coop should they wish.
The tune is short and simple. I didn’t want to challenge our chickens’ attention span or intellect.
A crazed banjo tune that started as a crazed vocal. I couldn’t find lyrics to fit it, lucky you. I’d have had to channel a maniac, and I’m too close to him most days as it is. Sometimes, the kindest thing the muse can do is to bug out. Richard Seidel added bass. Thanks, Richard.
I know of no one named Ellie, and why I imagined I did, or why she’d be running, I just don’t know.
Originally, I’d called this tune “Disco Hora.” Pete McClurken, a very good banjo player, didn’t seem to like that title. At least, I took his question, “Why did you call it that?” to mean he didn’t like it.
Now, the first lesson you learn when you take up banjo is to lose all faith in your own judgment forever. By cracky, I must have learned it well. Here, I decided that another banjo player’s judgment was better than my own. I settled on “Louisville Blue” because at least the title sounds good, something a banjo can never aspire to.
A banjo tune, so no more better be said. I’ve heard that young pokeweed tastes like asparagus. Mature pokeweed, I can report, does not.
I wrote this tune because we had ghosts living in the basement. I got tired of looking for the tape measure, which they never put back after they’d used it. The thudding you hear, my foot stomping, was my attempt to irritate them so they’d leave. It was much louder on the raw recording: For your benefit, I applied the rumble filter when I edited this tune. Sad to say, this composition and the impromptu percussion did not work. I still can’t find the tape measure.
What would you have called it? On second thought, don’t answer.
Folks on the Orkney Islands, we discovered, call those striped pedestrian crosswalks “zebra crossings,” only they pronounce it zay-bruh. I recommend you visit there, if only to find my grey hat. I dropped it somewhere near where we got ice cream.
If you like any of these songs or tunes, you can send me money. But unless it’s a lot of money, I’d much prefer that you send halvah, a Middle East confection made with sesame seeds and, for all I care, petroleum byproducts. It’s one of those foods that requires a simple calculation: How many years will it take off my life versus what good life without it would be.
I like Joyva brand, either with or without pistachios, with or without the chocolate coating. Just make sure it’s fresh; when it gets crumbly, it’s not as good. But I’ll eat it either way. Delis usually have it, or kosher supermarkets.
Somewhere on this page is a tune titled “Black Widow.” My critic says it doesn’t evoke a spider, nor does this tune evoke a horse. My reply: It’s a banjo tune, you ninny. Nobody cares what you call it as long as you don’t play it.
Here’s a cranky little number. It’s my attempt to be inclusive. Some notes just don’t fit into a tune, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use them. It just means they won’t sound good. But since you’re listening to banjo tunes, I can tell that doesn’t matter to you. So, enjoy. Or something.
I think I read about some wild leptons or muons or crayons that have this quality. Banjo players are prone to be our own grandpa, but only two banjo players I’ve met are likely to know about a similar phenomenon on the sub-atomic level. One of them has a Nobel Prize in physics, the other has a Toyota pickup.
Here’s where I tell you about some of the more cosmic coincidences I’ve experienced. I heard someone sing “I Am My Own Grandpa” one night and thought it a mighty groovy song. The next morning, I decided to learn it. I didn’t have a copy, and didn’t know where I might find one. So, surprisingly confident, I went to a thrift shop. I thumbed through the lps, which were mainly by Lawrence Welk and Andy Williams. But, about the third or fourth lp was by someone I’d never heard of, and whom I can’t remember at the moment. I scanned the track titles. Yes, I was staring, open-mouthed, at the title “I Am My Own Grandpa,” true, but it was the theme from The Twilight Zone that played in my head.
Once, staying at some friends’ place (where F. Scott and Zelda had lived), I found a book on their coffee table and read a few chapters before I fell asleep on the sofa. I liked the book. The next morning, we had to rush so they could catch a plane. I forgot to write down the title or author of the book, and my friends were on their way overseas for a few months. No way to get in touch; this was when connectedness was optional, and at times, costly and difficult. A new library had just opened in my neighborhood, and when I walked into it, I saw rows of shelves, many still empty. On one shelf stood one book.
Neither of these incidents tops the time when I awoke one morning with a compulsion to clean out my medicine chest. I’d lived in my apartment for ten years and I rarely cleaned anything, let alone my medicine chest. Apartment living, to a young bachelor is about the same as camping. So I was most puzzled by my certainty that, if I didn’t clean my medicine chest, I’d be responsible for knocking the cosmos out of round for the rest of time. First thing, I cleaned my medicine chest. I went for breakfast at the Flower Deli, as was my custom, and read the paper, as was my custom. Reading my horoscope was not my custom. Never did it. A bunch of hooey. But I had as odd and burning an urge to read my horoscope that morning as I’d had earlier–and I noted the eeriness of this desire, as well. Yep. First line. “A good day to clean your medicine chest.”
And, as Dave Barry would say, “I swear I’m not making this up.”
I’ve known a bunch of women and girls named Hannah. They’ve all lived up to this beautiful name. There might be something to the theory that our name influences our personality. If people treated you like a Hannah, you’d probably want to act like one. I wish I could have made a living as a theorist, too. But no, I had to work for a paycheck. In any event, now that I listen back to this recording, I realize it’s not nearly as graceful as any Hannah I’ve known, and it’s just the wrong name for the tune. Sorry, all you Hannahs, wherever you are.
I named this tune for a fond habit. I rise from a chair, then stand stock still for as long as it takes me to remember why I’ve gotten up. Twenty minutes is average.
I’ve thought it curious that, on two occasions, I’ve heard someone remark that, after learning to play a banjo, the first time he’d heard a recording of himself, he said, “Yeah, wow! that sounds like a banjo!” I suppose that’s an accomplishment, but so is learning to tolerate Brussels sprouts. Both mean suppressing the gag reflex, and neither belongs on a resume. This sounds like a banjo. And for that, I humbly apologize.
They used to say, “Guess I’ll be turning in” in old movies, a lot. Haven’t heard it lately. I wish more people would say it, and mean it. The beltway wouldn’t be so crowded all the time. Consider turning in.
Something eight-ish and leggy about this melody–as it were–compelled me to name it this. I guess. Tell you the truth, I don’t generally think, not in the ordinary sense, about banjo tune titles. It’s more like taking a Rorschach test or something. I stop thinking, stare at the amorphous black blob that replaces thought, and ask myself what it looks like. In this manner, I avoid all responsibility for everything.
Once, years ago, we saw one of our neighbors raking leaves after dark. I hollered to him, “Joe, the Nightraker.” He liked the name. Recently, we saw another neighbor, also named Joe, doing the same. That reminded me of the first Nightraker, and I resolved then and there to use that name should I write a menacing banjo tune. They’re all menaces, but a few are menacing, too.
A vaguely sinister tune, and indirect. So, Sidewinder. Good enough.
This tune is similar to another I wrote, but I don’t remember which one it’s similar to, and I think it’s different enough to deserve its own title. This might have been the germ out of which the other developed, and it’s likely it’s the victim of a very personal kind of folk process: the kind in which you write a melody, forget you’ve written it, think you’re writing a new one when you recall it but don’t know you’re simply recalling a former tune, don’t get it right, then find the original and realize you’re stupid, again.
Connie was the first hurricane I lived through, back in the ‘50s. I lived through her again–though this time she came roaring in as a human–in a brief romance. Connie was always angry about something, which I found attractive. Last I saw her, she was cussing as she fed logs into the woodstove to make biscuits, I think it was. She was more of an event than a person, though she was plenty enough a person.
We moved from Maryland to California. This title captures the essence and isness and selfitude of the aura vibe energy gestalt spiritual spirit out here. The tune doesn’t capture anything, but neither will it let it go. Once you understand that you can’t understand a paradox, you’ll fit right in here.
The best thing about this tune is its brevity.
You have to name them something. Banjo tunes suffer from poor self-esteem as it is, and failing to name one at all would be the final insult. Besides, the name can’t be worse than the tune. That’s always impossible.
Saying it’s “just” a banjo tune is redundant. I’ve never chewed tobacco. Thought you’d like to know.
Close your eyes and you’re among cows. I hope you like cows.
The inspiration for this tune came from my diddling on a circa 1890 Fairbanks and Cole “flush fret” banjo, which is altogether different from the diddling you do on a regulation banjo. A “flush fret” has frets, all right, but they’re shaved down to the same level as the fingerboard. That makes it a fretless banjo, essentially, but a fretless with a heart. The lines give you an idea of the neighborhood where the note you’re looking for should be. The note is, in fact, around there, but still never quite there. This makes playing a banjo not only meritless in regard to the sound you get from it, but out-of-tune additionally. I find it paradoxical that no matter whether you do nothing to make a banjo sound bad, do just one thing, or do a hundred, you can’t get it to sound any worse than it does naturally. It seems to be a constant. It’s a little like the speed of light, except we think of light as good. After all, God did not say, “Let there be the sound of a banjo.”
The title comes from a trip to Colorado. We were staying in a tiny cabin with a tiny patio on the side—a patio not much bigger than the picnic table on it. We awoke one night to a strange, disquieting sound, a kind of low-pitched rustling. We looked out the window to see about a dozen cows milling about on the patio. We don’t know why they all wanted to stand on the patio at once, and chances are they didn’t know either. I wanted to be among them, but Kathy pointed out that I had no clothes on. I didn’t see how this would make any difference to them, but I guess Kathy knows better than I how I look without clothes. She thought they’d be offended.
Naming a banjo tune is far easier than naming anything else. A tune for banjo will never go far in life, so it hardly matters what you call it. Still, the impenetrable, frankly imbecilic nature of this tune suggested something dense, like coal. I enjoy naming banjo tunes. All the pressure’s off.
My friends like this tune, but they don’t like the name. I really should change it. They’re right. But I just love that juxtaposition of two highly positively connotative words and the final slap in the face negative. Who says that oil barons don’t have a poetic bone in their body?
The picture above is of four bananaquits, locally called “sugarbirds” in the Caribbean. Cute little boogers; highly opinionated; outspoken; and, seemingly, perpetually pissed-off. Put a bowl of sugar on your porch, and flocks of them, along with other species of sugarbirds, will gather around it just as other birds will visit seed feeders.
I became a very bad instrumentalist because I had the potential to become a truly horrifying painter. But, I did get something from my art courses: I got to meet Roy G. Biv, though we never really talked.
I do hope you’ll agree. I played this on a Vega “Little Wonder” banjo. I do wonder why they called it that.
Another banjo tune, so disregard the name along with the tune.
A frankly lazy tune. I take full responsibility for it.
Remember them? Only if you’re pretty old. Or a big radio buff. I’m both. Like all banjo tunes, the title has no bearing on anything. This might be why so many traditional fiddle and banjo tunes have several names; you have to call them something, and it never matters what. So old-timey musicians, having forgotten the name of a tune, must have felt free to call it whatever came to mind. The only reason each tune doesn’t have thousands of names is that, rightly, few people play them.
Dogies are calves. Cowpersons used to call them that on the roundup. When I hear this tune, I think of calves. Great: The only evocative tune I’ve ever written evokes calves.Doc Rosenstock, noted banjo expert and all-around regular guy, tells me: “Re: ‘dogies’….. actually refers to motherless calves, weaned too soon…. their digestive systems, not yet ready to handle grass, would become impacted with doughy, half-digested grass, so they were referred to as ‘dough guts’, or dogies for short. They were herded along on cattle drives as convenient ‘veal on the hoof’ for the crew, a short, hard life. Kinda puts that happy cowboy song into a new light, huh? Whoopie-ti-yi-yo, indeed!”
Seems brutal, but you’ll notice, in none of the old Westerns do you ever see a refrigerated chuck wagon.
This is a banjo tune, and as such, nothing intelligent can be said about it. I named it for a type of bicycle, but I could have named it for a manufacturing byproduct and no one would have argued.
An altogether strange tune. If I knew where these things come from, I’d complain, or try to get them to take it back for a refund. It’s like one of those websites that doesn’t have a “contact us” button, except they don’t even have a website.
I took up banjo for a number of excellent reasons. First, even the most accomplished banjo players can do everything but make the thing sound good. The only way to do that is not to play it. So I knew I could do no more harm than any other banjoist. Second, banjo players appear to be happy, or at least vacuous. I am willing to try anything that promises to hamper thinking. Third, I know nothing about music theory. This is an advantage. Even if you do know something about music theory, on a banjo, it won’t do you any good. Don’t ask me the names of the chords in the B part to this tune; that would only encourage them. I just put my fingers in odd places until they sounded “right.” Right? for a banjo?
Sound advice.