From the liner notes:

Sweet Sunny South is the only song on this album whose author is known; W.L. Bloomfield wrote it in 1853 under the title Take Me Home. I sing lyrics from the original sheet music, which I found in the Library of Congress’s collection. However, the original melody (in waltz time) fell out of favor a long time ago.

When I first heard The Blackest Crow as a teenager, I thought, “Ugh, too sappy, and too many chords.” (There are four.) Then I experienced the subject matter firsthand, and it became one of my favorite songs. I love the poetry in the lyrics. There’s a reason folks have been singing it for centuries!

I’ve Always Been a Rambler dates back to pre-1850s Britain. The British versions often have the narrator finding a new, wealthy lover who occupies his attention completely—until he receives word that his parents and his old sweetheart have all died of broken hearts.

Uncle Dave Macon (1870–1952) is my source for Way Down the Old Plank Road. I gotta say, the last verse is one of my favorite “floating” (traveling) verses.

I learned the style of fiddling and singing on Wagoner’s Lad from listening to Bruce Molsky. Singing with the fiddle is deeply satisfying—it’s like an extension of my voice.

Wind and Rain is ancient; it has been circulating since the 1600s, if not earlier. I borrow from an obscure version recorded in 1969 by autoharp player Kilby Snow (1905–1980). Kilby learned it in the early 1910s from his 95-year-old grandfather, a Cherokee Indian. (The fiddle part is mine; an exception to my “no overdubs” policy.)

A Sailor Being Tired is a poignant ballad which I’ve only heard from Dillard Chandler (1907–1992), a singer of many old ballads, some nearly extinct.

Goin’ Across the Sea is a fun fiddle tune, often played with two parts. I always get the B part confused with Angeline the Baker, so I decided to just give in and play it as well.

Dock Boggs (1898–1971) is my source for Country Blues. He says that this song used to be called Hustling Gamblers, but in the 20’s people were slapping the word “blues” onto any old song in order to make it more saleable. Closely related to Darling Cory.

Willie Moore is likely of British origin. To me, the most intriguing aspect of this song is that we never learn what really happened to Sweet Annie. Though the “Willie” character in a folk song is usually guilty of some crime, that doesn’t seem to be the case here. So, whodunit?

Little Sadie comes from the singing of Clarence “Tom” Ashley (1895–1967). Dedicated to my brother Kyle, who was hip to those alternate-string pull-offs long before I thought they were cool.

I learned A-Rovin’ on a Winter’s Night from a [Doc] Watson Family album. It is related to The Blackest Crow and includes floating verses from many older songs such as My Love is Like a Red Red Rose and The Lass of Roch Royal. Like The Blackest Crow, I sang this song to someone in particular that I love—who, yes, will never be my own. Zollie’s Retreat refers to Confederate General Felix Zollicoffer, who was killed by Union soldiers in 1862. Viola tuned to AAEA. Dirk Powell (my source for Zollie’s Retreat) calls this kind of fiddle tuning “dead man’s tuning.” (Correction: I actually tuned my fiddle to AADA, which made Zollie's Retreat harder to play but opened up some new chordal possibilities in Winter's Night.)

Keep That Skillet Good and Greasy is just plain good advice.

I learned House of the Rising Sun from a Clarence Ashley recording. Funny story: I got so excited when I came up with my guitar arrangement, as I had never heard anything like it with this song. Turns out, the chords I came up with are the same ones used in several “pop” versions. Oh well. It’s still super-fun for me to play... like all these songs, actually.

As for the album itself, it's been a fascinating experience. At some point I'll write it up in detail.

Gratitude

First, the ol' "standing on the shoulders of giants" is definitely in play here. Between all the hundreds of people over the years who crafted, cultivated, and preserved these old songs, to the countless musicians who have influenced me musically, I have a lot of folks to thank whom I've never met. That said, I thought I'd take a few kilobytes to tell you about a few people who played a big role in this album.

Thanks to my bro-steen Kyle for, among many other things (including being an all-around fantastic brother and friend), inspiring me to start playing solo in the first place. Though we shared a love of bluegrass for many years, his musical tastes began to shift away from mine some years ago. It began as an obsession with old-time music—I took a long time to really appreciate the rawness and emptiness of old-time, and I probably still don't the way he does.

Then he got into Japanese Tsugaru shamisen¹ and Tuvan throat-singing², just as I started branching out into old-time fiddle tunes and other, harder-to-categorize stuff³. With our tastes drifting apart—and with our one-on-one music sessions frequently devolving into bickering over arrangements—it was becoming harder and harder to find common musical ground together.

Unable to get his older brother to really participate in earnest, Kyle was forced to play on his own. It took me a long time to realize it, but he really got a lot out of playing alone—and most surprisingly to me, singing alone⁴. I never sang alone at home⁵, but after awhile, I got the feeling that I was missing out. And I discovered that, indeed, I was. The rest, as they say, is history.

I hope we have many days of fruitful musical collaboration ahead of us, and I look forward to hearing his album when it comes out. (You heard it here first…and for that matter, so did he.)

Thanks to Papa and Mama (Carl and Leslie), of course. I can't even begin to elucidate what amazing people they are or the kind of impact they've had on my life, so I won't even try. I will tell you that I'm grateful for the gift of music that they gave me (in an interesting, very effective way—you can read about it here), and for their patience as I obsessed over getting the recording just right, many months more than anticipated.

Thanks to Sharon Martinson, the closest thing this album has to a “producer.” We met in early 2009, just as I was beginning to put together this album. Through our shared passions of music, cooking, dancing, science, and more, we got to know each other very well. Again, elucidation would take too long, but suffice it to say, we matched each other unusually well, and grew quite fond of one another.

Sadly, she moved away from Santa Cruz in the spring of 2010, but not before giving lots of help with picking tracks to use, sequencing, lending me her fretless banjo, shooting photos for the album cover, and so on. I'm glad we got the opportunity to work on this album together before she left; having her around made the album easier to work on, and having the album to work on made it a little easier to cope with her leaving.

Finally, there are a bunch of other folks who played a smaller role in the album who I would also like to thank: Dan Mills for the use of his reference monitors, my group of elite “beta testers”, all the folks on Facebook who gave me production and mastering advice (especially Pete Hicks for reassuring me that I could do it just fine myself), Bruce Molsky for the inspiration to start singing with the fiddle (and Pamela Telford for the encouragement to record it), Kyle (again) for introducing me to (and letting me record) A Sailor Being Tired, and countless musician friends who have made learning music such a fun experience.

1. And by "got into," I mean, built 3½ shamisen from scratch, wrote the first book (in any language) on how to play and make your own shamisen, and became the leading expert on the instrument in the United States. (See his site) ↑
2. He became really good at that too: here are a couple of our collaborations on YouTube. ↑
3. I mean, how to do you categorize Crooked Still? ↑
4. Kyle's always been much more reserved compared to me when it came to singing. But I think Tuvan throat-singing really resonates (no pun intended) with him, at a deep level. You can hear it when he sings powerful, moving pieces like this one. ↑
5. Here's where folks who've known me for years will scoff, but it's true! To me, singing alone was “practicing,” something I was never compelled to do. Most of my musical development was through playing with others. As is (or can be) the case with most everyone, in my opinion. ↑