Pete's Bluegrass Weblog - or Blog

Subjects: bluegrass, old time music, and vaguely related items. You are invited to join in, as you wish. E-mail them to us and we'll add your comments, which are very welcome.

Beside getting ready for our show tonight at Soho, I've been scanning some old negatives of some photographic adventures of the past 40 years or so, and placing some o fthe better photos in our new gallery section. Feel free to take a look. I have hundreds of pictures ... it's just a matter of finding the time to scan the things and add them to a web page. Many bring back all sorts of memories, such as this one of JE Mainer, with one of his sons, taken in 1963 at the UC Berkeley Folk Festival at a morning workshop. JE, as I remember, was concerned that members of his band had gone into the big city of San Farncisco the night before and had "cut up". Nevertheless, he and band did a great workshop and show later that day.

Stopped by the 32nd annual Old Time Fiddlers' Convention, held in Goleta CA Oct. 12th. Further down this page, you can see a photo of one of the first of these events, which were then held on the UCSB campus. This time, there seemd to be ample contestants in fiddle, banjo, singing, guitar, etc., as the event ran on until dusk. I got a chance to catch half a set by Tom Sauber, Brad Leftwich, and Alice Gerrard, who were performing on an auxilliary stage next to the Stow House lawn.

Tom's son Patrick was also there, and we got together afterwards for a nice jam session, along with bassist Mel Durham. Here's a photo of Brad, Alice, and Tom, checking out an old truck (perhaps a "Rio"?), which was parked in the Stow House garage. (Click on photo for larger image).

Old time music with an old time truck

I've been traveling recently, so haven't had much of a chance to work on this website. However, this Sunday will mark the 32nd edition of the Santa Barbara Old Time Fiddlers' Convention, and it certainly brings back memories of its early days, when it was hosted by UCSB at the lagoon, just outside of the UCEN building. In those days, we got several thousand attendees, and the proceeds went to fund several music events promoted by Arts & Lectures, featuring mostly classical music.

Here's a photo from one of our first few Conventions. As I remember, this was the year I was visited by Doug Dillard, who showed up before the contest started and helped set up the speakers, then departed for destinations unknown. Click on the photo for an enlarged version.

View from the stage in front of the UCEN, ca. 1973

There's been a nice discussion lately in the old time music newsgroup concerning early country guitar styles. Various fingerpicking styles seem to have been popular at the time recordings were first being made (the 1920s), as very few flatpicked examples can be found.

One of my favorite guitar players was Maybelle Carter, part of the original Carter Family, along with her cousin Sara and Sara's husband Alvin Pleasant, known more commonly as "A.P." Carter. While she did on occasion use country blues fingerpicking styles, her main contribution to country guitar playing was in popularising her thumb-lead picking style, sometimes known as the "Carter lick". In this style, it is the thumb that picks single note lead melodies (usually on the lower-pitched strings of the guitar) while the first or second finger brushes down across the strings for rhythm. Many country performers from the 1920s used a thumb pick (often made of metal in those pre-plastic days of yore) on both guitar and banjo. In fact, many of the most "famous" guitar players started on banjo and later switched over to guitar, taking the thumb pick with them. This included not only Maybelle Carter, but also Riley Puckett and Lester Flatt.  

Both Riley and Lester tended to use the thumb pick to brush down across the guitar strings, rather than using their fingers, as Maybelle did. They also incorporated a single, usually metal, finger pick which was used to pick up against the thumb for syncopated notes. Riley Puckett was especially noted for his use of this thumb and finger combination to create fast, booming bass runs on the guitar - listen to many of his records with the Skillet Lickers, for example.

For information on my own instruction CD and booklet on Maybelle's guitar playing, see [HERE].

Thanks to all the folks at San Diego Folk Heritage and the Inter Faith Council for having us at their show Saturday. We had a great time, once we actually got there. I'm not positive, but there may come a time when traffic will not allow a Californian to travel between Santa Barbara and San Diego without an overnight stop in Los Angeles! We certainly saw a lot of cars...

Last Thursday Saravanapriyan Srirman, who recently earned his PhD in Chemical Engineering at UCSB, gave a presentation on Carnatic music to an interested group at the music department. Besides the slide - illustrated lecture, "SP" as we call him, gave a wonderful though brief concert of some South Indian music, ably assisted by Jim Wimmer. Below, SP sings the notes of a ragam before playing improvisations on it.

If you'll look closely at the instruments, you'll see that these are not ordinary fiddles. Rather, they're a new version of the old baroque Violin d'Amore, with sympathetic strings (4 on SP's fiddle and 10 on Jim's) strung under the fingerboard. Jim builds these amazing instruments, which in way, feature built-in reverb..

A closeup of the peghead of Jim's instrument is shown here. Count the pegs to check out all the strings! The four regular playing strings are nearest his hand.

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