Buy the Mountain Bluebird CD

A couple years ago, my wife and I down to the Shelby area of North Carolina. The trip was a pilgrimage. We wanted to see Earl’s home place for ourselves. We wanted to see where Earl “sat on the old farm fence and played his banjo”, before anyone had ever heard of him. We saw that and more.

I was privileged to jam in Shelby, North Carolina with original Scruggs family friends and neighbors, including one fellow who used to milk cows with one of Earl's older brothers. Another fellow, who’s pickin' sounded so much like Earl it was uncanny, was 10 years old and living in the area when Earl was doing local gigs. He learned things from both Earl and Snuffy Jenkins.

Not only was I inspired musically in North Carolina, but folks treated us so well. It seemed nothing was too good for us. We fell in love with the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains and its people.

When I got back home to Canada, I started doing something I had never really done to any great degree. I started writing banjo tunes. I think it was because I was still seeing images in my mind of the awesome area we had left. I believe music tells a story, Earls playing always has given me images of farms fields, pine tree rimmed pastures, smoky mountains in the distance, old cabins etc.

Even though I had passed through most of the stages of “progressive banjo” playing over the years, my heart went out to the “Mountain stuff”. I was inspired to do a CD. I wanted to do something that hasn’t been done a whole lot in modern times. I wanted to record tunes using the Bluegrass “right hand”, with old timey music phrasing, tunings, and combinations of licks.

I had recorded lots before, but always for other people, or in a band. Newly inspired, I got busy with the tunes I had been writing, and chose some other early Bluegrass favorites to include, but now – where to record?

Of course, the answer was in the South! My wife and I are fans of the fabulous mountain music virtuoso Dirk Powell, and we found out he had a studio. My wife took the “bull by the horns” and made the arrangements

I had a fantastic week in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, with Dirk Powell as producer, and session musician on Guitar, bass, mandolin, fiddle, and clawhammer banjo. Kevin Wimmer, an outstanding bluegrass and Cajun fiddler, filled out our little “group”. Dirk, with his profound knowledge, and feel for Mountain Music, worked his magic and translated my vision for “Mountain Bluebird” into reality.

Each day in Breaux Bridge, as I walked thru the Cyprus and majestic oak trees to the studio with Dirk, I said to myself “I’ve done it. I’m recording my banjo tunes in the South. I imagined I could almost hear the sounds of the Carter family out in the distance.

Mountain Bluebird has seven original tunes, plus several early Bluegrass renditions, along with one sort of “swing” tune, and two on fretless banjo. The songs are:

1. Mountain Bluebird - This tune depicts the flight of a single lonely blue bird over somber mountains and hills, coal mining country, small hard working farms, and folks with years of beautiful mountain music and tradition.
   
   
2. Corner Store - Even lonely crossroads in the mountains have a corner store, where everyone comes to; a beehive of activity and “good vibes”. This bouncy little tune depicts the spirit of a little corner store.
   
   
3. Spirits - This is tune is written in what the old timers called “graveyard tuing”, it is haunting, somber, and has some very different musical dynamics.
   
   
4. Coal Creek Chimes - This is a Scruggs sounding song in the key of D, slightly reminiscent of “Rueben’s Train”.
   
   
5. Hickups - A sort of “slinky” Southern feeling tune, which has, as the name implies “hiccups” throughout.
   
   
6. Fireball Mail - An old classic that players often learn as their first Bluegrass Banjo tune, it is a neat song and always fun to play.
   
   
7. Cuckoo - This is the first of the two tunes on the fretless banjo. It is an extremely haunting old mountain music piece, Dirk Powell plays beautiful old style “Appalacian Fiddle” throughout, and, as in the old days, there is just the banjo to accompany.
   
   
8. My Home’s across the Blue Ridge Mountains - I first heard this charming, old Bluegrass tune on the Flatt and Scruggs Vanderbuilt University Album, (my first Bluegrass record). I just about wore the record out, and took the version I still play pretty much from what I thought I heard Earl playing - this was over 40 years ago.
   
   
9. Babas Tune - I wrote this tune for my wife’s favorite grandma (and mine). She loved music, and always smiled when I picked a tune. She was reminded of the joy that music brought to families during the hard times of the 1930s.
   
   
10. Santa Claus - This is a catchy tune written by the great Bill Monroe. I first heard it played by the “Bluegrass Boys” with Bill Keith on banjo.
    
    
11. Swan River Blues - I wrote this tune to be reminiscent of the music played in the old dance halls in the 1930s and 40s that would hang right out over the bayou. Folks would kick up a storm dancing, and the dust and Chicken feathers would fly. Again, in those days, they had very little variation in instruments. In this case, the “band” was just a guitar and bass for accompaniment.
    
    
12. Clinch Mountain Backstep - Thanks Ralph, this is got to be one of the coolest tunes ever ever written for banjo. On the CD, we do it slower, and a bit more “slinky” than the norm.
    
    
13. Lost All My Money - Again, from the Vanderbuilt University Album, this was the first tune I tried to learn on the banjo using the old folk learning method of slowing the record down, then “listening, and imitating”. It took me months to get Earl's initial kick off lick in “Lost All My Money”. I have been playing this song basically the same way all these years, and I still probably have my own way of doing Earl’s lick, as much as I tried to copy him. I did see Jim Mills’ tab for a similar lick, however, and mine is pretty close.
    
    
14. Breakin Up Christmas - The super fine Bluegrass and Cajun fiddler, Kevin Wimmer, taught me this one – again, just the fiddle and banjo used.
    
    
15. Grandfathers Clock - I love this old tune, it was one of the first tunes I learned that really forces the player to incorporate the melody right within the banjo rolls. When I hear this song, I can almost “see” the old parlor in the farmhouse, with a Grandfathers clock.
    
    
16. Long Road Back to Sally - This is the second tune on the fretless banjo. When my wife and I were on our trip to the mountains of North Carolina, we had a GPS in our rental car, which we affectionately named “Sally”. At one point we took a twisty old road to shortcut across to a little town we wanted to go to. We were surprised to find out that this road did not seem to really “go anywhere”. It wound around for miles and miles with no sign of civilization, or anything, for that matter. Sally got totally mixed up, and we were getting a little nervous. Finally “Sally took back control” and got us to our destination. This song includes a guest appearance by crickets from the bayou - (Dirk and I recorded it on the porch of his studio - the crickets worked for free!)
    

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