Murphy Henry

As you may have noticed, we have been rather recalcitrant about blogging this week. Call it the Christmas ho-hums. And it’s not really ho-hums so much—we’ve all got plenty to do—but it’s just that our various schedules are still in interruption mode. Which is wonderful because Red’s mom is visiting us from Tallahassee and Casey is here from Nashville. So we’ve been busy doing things with them, which lives little time for blogging.

I will mention that on Christmas Eve, David McLaughlin had his annual open house, which we have turned into an annual picking party because we don’t know how to behave at a “regular” party where you might have to actually talk to people…about something other than bluegrass! So we hide behind our instruments and this makes us happy and in general pleases most of the people at the party.

Red, Casey, Chris, Jenny Obert, David Himself, Gerald Crowell, Logan, and I rendered tunes for about three hours with no stopping other than the obligatory nature calls. Casey was playing her fretless, nylon-string Fielding banjo which provided a novel element (in a good way!), Logan outdid himself on my Stelling banjo, David played mostly fiddle and a little bass, Red and Chris played mandolins, Jenny played fiddle, and Gerald and I played guitar. I was perfectly content to play guitar, because that enables me to sing more, which seemed like a good thing that night.

My favorite jam sessions feature the old, moldy songs generally from the Stanley Brothers, but it seems like we hit quite a variety of numbers. It’s been several days since the party but I do remember these:

Please Papa Don’t Whip Little Benny (sung by Casey)

Daddy Frank

I Don’t Want Your Rambling Letters

East Virginia Blues (which sounds just like Rambling Letters so we didn’t do them close together)

The Prisoner’s Song

Beautiful Star of Bethlehem

Christmas Time’s A-Coming

Sally Goodwin (so Logan could practice it)

Cumberland Gap (which Logan mixed up with Sally Goodwin, of course—everybody does it)

Cripple Creek (which sounded great on the fretless banjo)

Traveling the Highway Home

Better Get in That Number

I’m Going Back To Old Virginia (sung by Casey and Chris—it’s a number David wrote and they recorded)

Rank Stranger

We ended with Beer Barrel Polka followed by Old Spinning Wheel, for which I took over on banjo

Robyn, Logan’s mother, asked for Blackberry Blossom but, of course, I wouldn’t do it. Later, I told her that the type of jam session we were in made BB inappropriate. So Robyn later asks, “At what type of session would it be appropriate?” Casey immediately says, “One that Murphy’s not at.” I had to protest, but only a little bit, because that is partly true. But on another level, to me, each jam session that’s really rolling has its own flavor, and we were doing old singing songs. Of which Blackberry Blossom is not one (to use good grammar….I think!). Besides, Logan didn’t play it. It just didn’t have the right energy. Besides, it was too early for me to go get a beer, which is what I usually do when BB surfaces!

All in all, a good time was had and we went home and nestled all snug in our beds. And, sure enough, Santa arrived sometime during the night! And we had a glorious time opening presents the next morning! Hope you got everything you asked for. I know I did!

Casey Henry

‘Tis the season when I start trying to remember all the Christmas tunes I know how to play on the banjo. Some work quite well bluegrass-style. Others not so much. The most common, by far, is “Jingle Bells,” which lays great on the banjo. I posted this link last year, but I’m posting it again, because it is so great. Here’s Earl on YouTube playing “Jingle Bells” with some other pickers who aren’t so shabby, either. It’s a fabulous version because he plays a straightforward melody, yet he’s also got some really, really cool rhythmic licks going.

Since there are not really any standard banjo versions of Christmas carols, you can do pretty much anything you want with them. I figured out really easy arrangements of “Silent Night” and “Joy to the World” for a custom lesson student a couple months back. They’re not so much Scruggsy versions as bare-bones melody versions, but they’re very doable for a beginning student. When I play them for myself, though, I’d probably fancy them up considerably.

I’m currently working on “Greensleeves,” also for a custom lesson. I’ve always loved the melody, but never thought to play it on the banjo. Turns out it’s very simple, but it’s challenging to make it sound a little fuller without skyrocketing the difficulty way beyond the advanced student level. That one should be done next week and if I can get a decent recorded version I’ll post it for y’all to hear. I’m doing it in A minor.

On the subject of recorded Christmas music: last night I was listening to a Gusto Records compilation CD called “Christmas Country Style.”  (That link leads to iTunes.) It has several cuts by Jim Eanes on it and on every one of them I remarked to myself, “Wow, I really like that banjo playing,” or “Now that’s a good banjo player!” I had to call my mom to ask who played banjo with Eanes and I found out it was none other than Allen Shelton. There are a couple clunkers on the disc, but it’s totally worth the $8 it costs on iTunes. It also has one of my favorite bluegrass Christmas songs, the Stanley Brothers’ “Christmas is Near.”

Now, just a quickie, so I can get on with unwrapping my presents!

Today I want to revisit the gargantuan task of learning to hear chord changes and the pitfalls of COUNTING the number of beats of G, C, or D. (Instead of learning to hear the changes by ear.)

The unnamed culprit, he of the pointy picks (which I am happy to say he has abandoned!), came in yesterday and played a bee-yoo-ti-ful, flawless version of “Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms.” So, since there wasn’t any further work to do on the break, we moved to the vamping.

The first two times we played it through, the vamping was perfect. But as we continued to play, the vamping completely fell apart. At first I couldn’t figure out what in the world was wrong. How can a person go from precision vamping, with all the changes in the right places, to staying in the G chord too long and changing to C at the wrong time?

Then, like a lightening bolt, this thought occurred. “Are you COUNTING?”

Sheepish grin. “Yeah.”

“BUSTED! You lost the count, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s why counting doesn’t work. If you lose count, you are….well, you’re in a pickle!

So, we went back over the song with him not counting, and honestly, it wasn’t that hard. I mean, you’ve only got three chords and he had vamped to other songs before. If you get lost, you just go back to G and stay there. Everything always comes back to G!

As he and I discussed later, you can’t possibly memorize the chord changes to all the songs you’re gonna be playing. You just have to learn to do it by ear. One song at a time. I can pretty much promise that this works. And I can almost guarantee that counting doesn’t! So, if you’re a counter, make that leap of faith, go back to the two-chord songs, and start learning to do it by ear. In the long run, it’s so much easier!

This is a post I wrote last year for the folks over at the Bluegrass Blog. This year our Christmas Eve will be sadly different, since there will be no party at Dalton’s shop. We’ll just have to party twice as hard at David’s!

Christmas Eve for my family has always been about playing music. There is a close-knit bluegrass community in Winchester, Virginia, where we moved in 1986. Every year since then we’ve attended two parties on the 24th, and the day wouldn’t seem right without them. Dalton Brill is a local barber, banjo player, and, as one newspaper article put it, if the bluegrass scene was the Mafia, he’d be the Godfather. His barber shop brims over with food, music, and eggnog as everyone he knows drops in, musicians and non-musicians alike. There are people there I only see once a year, people who used to come every Wednesday to watch us play downstairs in the basement of that shop. And every year there are people we miss, who have moved on from this life to whatever lies ahead. We always pick a tune and have a drink for them.

After Dalton’s we move the party to David McLaughlin’s house where his wife Gay arranges a beautiful spread of seasonal goodies, on which we stuff ourselves before migrating to the other room to play some more music. David sometimes plays, sometimes doesn’t. Usually he’ll play guitar or bass. Sometimes he’ll flatpick the banjo or play snare. One year Tom Gray came, and that was great fun. When Bob Amos (of Front Range) lived in town he’d always stop by before going to the Christmas Eve service. We cherish the chance to all be together at the holidays, (Except for the year his kids gave us the stomach flu. I really wish he’d cancelled that year.) and we miss Lynn Morris and Marshall Wilborn, who are always in Texas with their families. As we drive back to our house full of Christmas cheer, through the luminary-lined streets of David’s neighborhood, we think of Santa making his rounds and hope that he won’t forget to stop at our house.

If you’re shopping for a Dobro player on your list, maybe I can make some suggestions. Andy Hall has a new CD on Sugar Hill Records, The Sound of the Slide Guitar which has been in constant rotation for me since I bought it this year IBMA convention. [Note: it won Instrumental Album of the Year]  It is a very simply produced elegant project that really does present the Dobro in the forefront without a lot of studio bells and whistles.

The new Jerry Douglas CD, Glide is also a must have for all Dobro players. His compositions are some of the most significant modern music across all genres of instrumental composition. Listen to it at Jerry’s MySpace page. [Also worthy of mention is that Earl Scruggs makes an appearance on a lovely version of his classic "Home Sweet Home."]

I happened upon a very cool CD at the local bookstore last month, Charlie Haden, Family and Friends, Ramblin’ Boy. Of course, Jerry Douglas’s playing drew me right in and I sure enjoyed the place I ended up in. Needless to say, this is one of my new favorites. Listen to a sample at Charlie Haden’s website.

If you are looking for a real lasting gift for that special Dobro player, how about the stainless steel Scheerhorn Dobro slide. It is a bit more than other slides, but it lasts much longer. They sell for about $80 at Elderly Instruments.

If your favorite Dobro player is just a beginner, remember the Beginning Dobro DVD that I did for the Murphy Method gets you started on the right foot. I have made some supplemental DVD lessons that you can find at my website.

Hope your Holiday Season is full of music, love and joy.

Mark

Next we have Jingle All The Way from Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. This is not your average Christmas album, and it has some stunning playing on it. Their version of “Sleigh Ride” has just been nominated for a Grammy. They do “Twelve Days of Christmas” in twelve different keys, and twelve different time signatures. You pretty much have to hear it to believe it. And Victor Wooten’s solo rendition of “The Christmas Song” is so amazing you won’t believe it is being played on a bass. And Christmas really wouldn’t be Christmas without some Tuvan throat singing, don’t you agree?

And two of my all-time favorite Christmas CD staples are Tony Trischka’s Glory Shone Around, and Bobby Horton’s Songs of the Christmas Season. Tony’s has a great variety of cuts from an all-out bluegrass “Precious Child,” to shape-note singing, to solo minstrel banjo, to a wonderful story, read by John Hartford. Bobby Horton is a musical historian and renders Cival War-era carols on mostly period instruments, as they would have been played in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. It is lovely, peaceful music. I highly recommend it.