Cabin Creek

Time for an Old-Timey tune again.  This one's called Cabin Creek.  My version is derived mostly from Adam Hurt's, who got his from Ed Haley.  When you hear Ed Haley play it, you can hear how in the game of "telephone" is a lot like learning fiddle tunes.  Mine and Ed's sound only vaguely similar.

The Cup of Tea

You know, I have no idea how certain tunes get their names.  Over time they change or adopt second and third names, and the tunes change a lot themselves.  Such is life for the Irish tune. This tune, called "The Cup of Tea" also is known by "The Unfortunate Cup of Tea."  You know there's a story there somewhere.

The Drunken Sailor Hornpipe

Not much to say today except that I like this tune.  It's nice swung the way Liz Carroll plays it, or a little straighter too.  It's nice fast and slow.  So all around, a very nice tune.  Plus the key of G minor is so deliciously melancholy.

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.

Mickey Callaghan's

I'm in New York for a couple days and had some time today to sit in my hotel room and do a tune!  Ya-hoo!  We got here expecting a one-room one-bed typical hotel room, but they (accidentally?) gave us a suite with 2 bathrooms, 2 bedrooms, a kitchen and living room.  It's bigger than our apartment.  No complaints!

Templehouse

Reels reels reels. I like reels.  And also, this is a great tune and a quick one to learn thanks to its repeated motifs and the fact that the whole thing is only 16 bars long.  So don't you even THINK about heading over to thesession.org and reading off the notes.  Or else you will get a frowny face.