Potatisvals

Last year, I heard Frigg play at a festival in Madison, Wisconsin. What a treat! I had never heard of them, but I love Scandinavian music, so I stopped in to listen. I was blown away!

This tune is the first cut off their album, Grannen and was written by Ale Möller.

Salt River

Finally! An old-time tune! This one I learned off of one of Bruce Molsky's recordings.

Stuck on a Log

Andy Reiner of Tuneswappers wrote and taught me this cool old-timeyish crooked tune in 3.

Ways of the World

Crooked and cross-tuned.

Wolves a Howlin'

Another tune I learned straight for the source of all that is good: youtube. This is an old time tune in G tuning that I learned from a video of Rayna Gellert.

Walk Along John to Kansas

I learned this old-time tune off of Tatiana Hargreaves' album. Tatiana is a young but awesome fiddler. This tune is an old tune, and I don't know much about it except the ibiblio says it comes from "the south."

Callahan

Here's a fun old crooked tune I learned off of a Bruce Molsky recording.

Five Miles from Town

I have Rayna Gellert's recording with Susan Geohring on repeat.  By the end of this project (July 2012), I will probably have done every single tune on that album.  I LOVE IT.  So this is another one, called Five Miles from Town - tuning is standard with the low G string tuned up to an A. (ADAE)

Say Old Man I Want Your Daughter

I'm so grateful for youtube.  More than half of the tunes I've learned so far have come from videos on youtube.  This one came from a video of Stephanie Coleman and Adam Hurt playing live somewhere in the UK.  The tune is cool, open tuning, and crooked.

Ronde de Loudeac

Today I learned a very cool and irregular tune from Bretagne.

Jenny Ran Away in the Mud in the Night

I learned this cool old time tune off of Rayna Gellert's album, which I utterly love.  She plays tunes in a majestic, yet stripped down way that I can't get enough of.  You can find notier versions of this tune, but I tried to focus more on the bounce. The tuning for this tune is Open F (FCFC).

Dad's Reel

I love crooked tunes!  This crooked tune is a Quebecois tune, of which 75% is identical to another tune called Reel Des Eboulements.

John Doherty's

Irish tunes are not often crooked, the style being more closely married to general dance types that require a square meter.  But here's one, perhaps composed in order to trip some dancers.

Reel de Coquin

I did the "Reel of Lies" a while back, so today I did "Reel of Theives."

Le Violon Accordé Comme Une Viole

I was going to sit down and learn a really simple tune today... like a polka or something quick.  But then I stumbled upon this video of Carole Bestvater & Liz Massi with Lucas Thebault playing this rockin' French-Canadian reel and my afternoon was stolen.  It's a cool, crooked Quebecois tune in open-tuning.  It's been recorded by the French-Canadian band Barde (but I can't find the recording anywhere.)  Other than that, I don't know much about it.  It's sure fun to play.

Cherokee Shuffle

I'm on an American kick still with new tunes.  Today I learned a standard bluegrass jam tune.  It's on a list I have somewhere of the 50 Fiddle Tunes You Have To Know or something like that.  So voilà!

Piney Ridge

Another old-time tune?  Why, yes!  I think it'd be easier to do a new Irish tune everyday since that's the genre I'm most fluent in.  But I started this project to stretch myself, after all.  So as flawed as my approach to Old-time may be, I'm going to push myself and learn lots of those kinds of tunes.

Cousin Sally Brown

Time for some more Old-Time!  I really enjoy Dirk Powell's playing and so I learned his version of this tune.  I don't know if I'll ever break the habit of feeling the beat in an Irishy ahead-of-the-beat way instead of an Old-Time behind-the-beat way.  But that's fine.

Crooked "Whiskey Before Breakfast"

Here's a tune I learned at Mt. Shasta Fiddle Camp from the great Bruce Molsky.  It's a crooked version of the popular old tune "Whiskey Before Breakfast."