Tomorrow Eve

"Spanish Fandango" is the "Smoke on the Water" of bottleneck guitar in open G. It's the first song you learn, and it's really really rootsy. But it turns out to be a piece of classical music. Here are four pieces of music that straddle classical and roots. Open Tunings & Slide - The American Legacy […]

playing Caffe Trieste tonight

Tonight, July 29, 2010, from about 7 to about 8:30 I'll be playing at Caffe Trieste in downtown San Francisco. 1667 Market St, at Gough, San Francisco, CA […]

Somebody Else Is Gettin’ It

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pals on punk

On punk vs the people - gurdonark: The key, to me, is for a music to evolve which both permits complete participation and provides scope for instrumental virtuosity. I suspect this music will involve software synthesizers, but also give scope to new Yngwie’s. The hip hop folks understood in an earlier time that they could […]

early sacred harp

In this picture of psalm singers in colonial America, notice that they're facing one another rather than an audience. This is still how Sacred Harp is done. Engraving by Paul Revere included in William Billing's "The New England Psalm Singer" (Boston, 1770): The hollow-square seating arrangement for Sacred Harp singing: […]

Spotted Pony tab and sheet music

A piece of handwritten sheet music for a fiddle tune called "Spotted Pony" came into my possession via a mandolin player I jammed with in LA by the name of Bill McClellan. I got to like the tune and wanted to teach it to a trumpeter I've been playing with in Oakland, but my original […]

Gerry on the Sunday gig at Nomad

My friend and former neighbor Gerry Olson blogged up last Sunday's performance at Nomad Cafe. He's a great writer. […]

Thursday night coffee gig / July 22, 2010

Thursday night (July 22, 2010) from about 7 to about 8:30 I'll be playing at Caffe Trieste in downtown San Francisco. I'll do a solo set and a set with the trumpeter Paul Mccue. I'll do the solo set as 100% instrumentals. The creative concept is to focus obsessively on the ultra-narrow niche of music […]

Sunday coffee gig / July 18, 2010

On Sunday morning (July 18, 2010) at 11am I'll be playing solo at a little coffee place called Nomad Cafe. It's on Shattuck in Oakland, a block or so from the Berkeley line. This is the second time I've played there. It's a really relaxed and pleasant thing to do -- have a latte, read […]

Africa Polka

MP3• FLAC• MP4• Ogg Vorbis• Africa Polka is a song I got from Turner's Banjo Journal #10, a British magazine of sheet music from the 1880s or 1890s. I think it was a yankophile thing populated mainly with American music. There was a banjo fad going on in England, an early example of American folk […]