Big Ears — Notes on the Tunes
Tunings are listed for fiddle(s) (low string to high) and banjo (5th string to 1st). Jody’s tenor guitar is tuned to match the fiddle tuning, an octave below. Jody's Fletcher Instruments (fletcherinstruments.com) is now hand crafting short scale tenor guitars patterned after her original 20's SS Stewart. We predict these little 'TenorTone' guitars will be old-time music's Next Big Thing. 1. There It Is
When we last left our heroes… 2. Aladdin’s Laugh (2005) 3. Big Ears (2005)Fiddles ADAE, Brendan aDADE “Big Ears” is for Edwin Wilson. Once at a particularly spirited late-night session with Rich, Edwin wasn’t playing but sat listening silently just outside the circle. At one point Rich paused, put up his bow and said: “You there, Ed-ween? You sure have big ears, man!” That phrase conjured for me so much of Edwin’s amazing way of listening, and stuck with me; this portrait emerged on our last night at Clifftop, 7 Aug ‘05. Indian musicians use the term rasikas for those virtuoso listeners who are essential to the life of every deep tradition. (Edwin just happens to play real good too!)
Rich, Tolly and Edwin arrived at the West Chester sessions playing Rich’s setting of “Big Ears”—that is, thoroughly en-Riched, Ed-ified and Tolly’d-up. For our rendition on the record, we reined back in to something like my version, but you can still hear the spaces between pretty clearly— an expanse almost, but not quite, as big as the universe of attention and humility that lives between “Ed-Ween’s” two Big Ears.
“Aladdin’s Laugh” — For the spacious, expansive feeling I wanted for “Big Ears” I naturally turned to our old friend the Lydian mode. On the spur of the moment Rich and I improvised an introductory passage in the spirit of an alap, a slow, free-rhythm exploration that introduces the raga at the start of a classical Indian music performance. (Apologies to any listeners knowledgeable about Indian music! Rich plays the part of the tambura; all the lapses in taste are mine.) 4. Cry Uncle Adam (2004)EDAE, Maxine aEAC#E
Adam Rose is a fine West Coast fiddler (and guitar-maker), a devotee of the Zen-simple yet striking repertoire of “Uncle” Norm Edmonds. On the fateful evening of 6 Aug ‘04 (birthnight of several other tunes here), Adam and I played a bunch of Uncle Norm tunes. “Later that same midnight” I penned this particularly crooked tune which I called “Uncle Adam” (though it was more a tune from Uncle Norm’s worst nightmare). After Bob Carlin helped me figure out the chords we renamed it “Cry Uncle Adam.” Adam says he loves the tune and expects to never play it in his life. 5. Texas Whirlwind (2005)GCGE, Rich on guitar, Edwin on banjo-uke
Once you get a reputation as a tunesmith it seems that friends come trotting up to you with tune names begging for tunes, like eager puppies with sticks to be thrown. Maxine was tickled by Caleb Clauder’s (Foghorn String Band) description of two banjos playing together as “Texas Headphones” and requested a tune by that title. I wrote this in hopes of getting Maxine and Brendan to actually play two banjos together (a rare treat); they liked the tune but somehow it didn’t sit on two banjos the way I’d hoped. Rich, however, liked to play guitar on it; aided by Edwin, this provides a chance to hear the sound of an unusual C fiddle tuning which I invented or at least independently discovered. I re-named the tune, leaving the “Headphones” for another day (and another tune?). 6. Say That Again (2001)GDAE, Brendan gDGBD
Over the years I’ve written a number of tunes for my friends Rusty and Nancy Dols Neithammer. Though Rusty was pressed into service on guitar for the Cliffhangers, many’s the Clifftop night I’ve spent entranced by the hypnotic wave-curl of Rusty and Nancy’s twin fiddling. I wrote this tune (1 Aug ‘01) as a humorous nod to Rusty’s penchant for what Nancy calls “Oddly Repetitive” tunes. Put through the tunesmith’s looking-glass, with some staggered repetitions and a hint of an Indian “ti-hai” thrown in at the end, we wind up, oddly, with a tune that is perhaps just repetitively odd. 7. So Here So There (2003)AEAE, Brendan aEAC#E
Written while playing in a session with Brendan and Beverly Smith on 29 July ‘03. So there. So here! (So short, so right…) 8. Falls of Mann (2005)FCGD, solo fiddle
Some of my favorite pieces of music are solo field recordings of fiddlers playing a tune through only two times, never the same way. This tune is dedicated to the lovely falls along Mann’s Creek Gorge Trail at Babcock State Park, which leads to Camp Washington-Carver where the Clifftop festival is held. I’ve walked this trail only a few peaceful times, to clear my head from the campground twang and hum. I’ve never yet stumbled across the bathing wood-nymphs that legend says can be seen there on moonlit nights. 9. Found Indian (2002)GCGE, Brendan gCGCD “Found Indian” was written 1 Aug ‘02, the same day as “Because It’s There” (which leads off Clifftop Notes Vol. 1) in the same special C tuning as that tune and “Whirlwind.” The effect is reminiscent of the “Calico” tuning (named for the tune which concludes On the Edge) which Ed Haley used for his immortal setting of “Lost Indian”; hence the name (first of my “Found” series), though the tune bears no melodic resemblance to any of the several traditional “Lost Indian” tunes. 10. There It Is Again / Second Chance at Breakfast (2004/2003)ADAE, Brendan aDADE
Saturday night, 7 Aug 2004, the Cliffhangers sat down for a little reunion jam, our first session together in a year. We’d been talking about our elusive band sound; the minute we all started playing together we looked up and said “There it is again!” We start this one off here with just fiddle and Jody’s tenor guitar.
“2nd Chance”: My friend Brendan is not best-known for a propensity to rise and greet the sun at dawn (unless he’s still playing from the night before); a familiar lament heard around 1:00 in the afternoon is: “Damn! Missed breakfast again!” Some years ago, I “penned on” Brendan a tune by that name. “2nd Chance” first came to visit in a session with Jody and David Lynch, also on 29 Jul ‘03. (Busy night!) Writing it down the next morning, I realized it was “Missed Breakfast Again”—again… in a different key and with new B and C parts as the tune wanders off looking for more food. I believe Brendan still regularly misses breakfast. 11. Clear the Palate (2004)AEAE, Maxine aEAC#E Dedicated to 5 String Productions impresario Tim Brown, whose life mission at Clifftop appears to be to feed all the hungry of, if not the World, then at least the Campground. Written in a session Aug 6 ‘04, playing with Rich, Maxine, and Karen Heil. I have on mini-disc not only the premier performance but the actual writing of the tune in real time! 12. Jeff in the Wilderness (2005)Fiddles ADAE, Maxine aDADE This one’s for Rusty and Nancy’s son Jeff, who got lost in the woods with his friend Chris Misenheimer for a worrisome long 7 hours the afternoon of 5 Aug ‘05. Clearly a tune was required to provide them a homing signal back to safety. In our rendition here we manage to get ourselves lost all over again. But have more fun I think! 13. One More Too Many (2004)GDGB, Brendan gDGBD
We conclude with a tune in G Calico tuning, written 2 Aug ‘04 at Clifftop in a session with Brendan, Karen and Dan Tenenbaum. It’s traditional in old-time music to play one tune too many, to play that tune one time too many (and to have one too many fiddlers show up to play it). A theme emerges… I made the same joke about “The Last Straw” on Race the River Jordan, which goes to show that telling a joke one too many times is also part of the tradition.
So, again—is it here? Here it is—again!
|
