New in the forum: Post & discuss YouTube videos

I've added a new forum called "YouTube Videos" and also added some code to make the videos easily embedded on the forum pages.

I posted two videos of "Sally Johnson" to get things started: one from Clark Kessinger and one from George Ainley.

Enjoy!

John

New Old-Time Musicians' Directory

There's been a lot of conversation on the Topica oldtime list about the need for an online, searchable directory for old-time musicians, similar to what Donald Zepp used to manage for Banjo-L, or the great directory on banjohangout.org, but for old-time musicians of every stripe: fidddlers, guitarists, banjo players, etc.

David Lynch has a directory on his site at oldtimemusic.com but it is sorely out of date -- he has to make additions/updates manually and apparently doesn't have the time. (My entry is 10 years old and hasn't been updated despite numerous requests.)

Anyway, I decided to take a stab at this and you can see the result at http://otdirectory.sugarinthegourd.com -- please take a look, and if you're so inclined, add an entry for yourself! Or, once we get some more names in, look for neighbors to jam with: it's searchable by state, country, etc.

Please let me know if you have any suggestions on how I can make this work best for the OT community.

Best wishes,

John

Stay the Course?

Iraq for Sale

This has nothing to do with Old-Time music, but I saw Robert Greenwald's latest film, Iraq for Sale last night. It was a very disturbing film that I recommend all concerned citizens should see. It's being screened around the country, DVDs can be ordered inexpensively from the website, and if you'd like to, you can sign up to host a screening in your town.

You can watch the trailer here:



I don't normally talk politics here, but sometimes I feel it's my duty.

John

New Links

Finally found some time to update my links page, and add links to two sites I've been meaning to link to for a long time now: Juneberry78s, and 5-String Productions. Go over to the Links page & check them out.

John

John HartfordDecember 30, 1937 - June 4, 2001

Today is the 5th anniversary of John Hartford's passing.

We will be playing his music all day.

Thanks for listening,

John

New Bruce Molsky CD

Just bought Bruce Molsky's latest, Soon Be Time, and while I haven't listened in-depth yet, what I've heard is really great. If it weren't enough that he's a great fiddler and banjo player, and a fine singer, he's also a really skilled fingerpicking guitar player.

Which reminds me: When Poor Man's Troubles came out, I spent a lot of time figuring out Molsky's guitar arrangement of Henry Thomas's "Fishin' Blues." I actually ran out of steam after transcribing the opening instrumental verse. I keep meaning to come back to it & transcribe the whole thing but who knows when I'll get 'round to that. Anyway the instrumental part has most of what you need to play the verses. So it's here if anyone's interested.

And the new Molsky disc is in rotation along with a bunch of other good recent additions.

thanks for listening,

John

Back From Vacation

We are back from vacation now. Visited family, did a lot of fun stuff with the kids, and had a generally great time. The Sugar in the Gourd streams were down most of the time we were gone -- for some reason my home PC decided to reboot itself & didn't restart correctly. I was unable to resolve that remotely. So apologies for that, but the music is back online now.

Here's a short (silent) video of our son Will playing peek-a-boo in Florida. (It's not the highest quality -- was shot with my digital camera.) You can see a bit of a laughing Jake (our eldest) at the end.



Best wishes,

John

Slide Guitarist Who Uses His Mouth and a Teaspoon

Check out this great video of an African guitarist, apparently named Hannes Coetzee, who plays slide with a spoon held in his mouth. [direct link to the video: 6 MB, mpg format]

Not only is it a neat technique, I think it's a really great song. I must have watched this clip 50 times since I first saw it around a week ago via the Fretboard Journal blog. (FJ is a great new mag for stringed instrument enthusiasts -- check it out if you haven't done so.)


John

Update: here's another means of viewing, via ifilm.com:

Possible downtime this week

I am switching DSL providers and it seems likely that my connection may be down at some point this week, in which case the audio streams will be unavailable. No idea yet if there will be an outage or if it will last for minutes, hours, or days, but it does seem likely.

So if you have trouble tuning in this week, this may be the reason.

thanks,

John

Inspired by Uncle Dave

Old-Time Music Gets Political (Again)

Norman & Nancy Blake have a new track out called "Don't Be Afraid of the Neo-Cons." Read the lyrics and listen to the song.

And John Lilly, another SITG favorite, who recently won the "Ghost Writers In The Sky" songwriting contest, has a new song called "W" which you can listen to here.

Nice to see that the genre that spawned songs like "The Battleship of Maine" and "Breadline Blues" hasn't completely forgotten its populist roots.

John

How many of you use the 24k stream?

Hi all,

I'm looking at ways of bringing the costs of running the site in line with what I get from ad revenues, etc. One obvious thing I am looking at is the 24kbps stream. Before I get rid of this I want to know how many people there are out there who can only listen through this connection.

I can tell that at any given time there are anywhere from 4-12 or so listeners on this channel. What I don't know is if those listeners are all unable to listen on the (somewhat) higher-speed 40k stream.

So, if you are a listener who is able to listen at 24k, but not at 40k, please let me know.

UPDATE 2/15: I am linking the 24k stream button on the front page to this news entry. If you were expecting music, and have been sent to this page instead, please read the item above & let me know if you need the 24k stream. Once you've done that please click this link to listen to the stream -- in a few days I will move the link back to the front page, but for the timebeing, I want to make sure 24k listeners see this message.

thanks,

John