The Clifftop Trilogy Recording Project BREAKING NEWS! Clifftop Notes Vol. 2- Big Ears is a finalist in the IMA Independent Music Awards, in the category for World-Traditional Album. This is a major contest sponsored by the folks who publish the Musician's Atlas. It's a great honor to have traditional (well, actually original) old-time music honored in this contest. We need you to go visit the IMA Website Jukebox and vote for Big Ears, so that we have a chance at the Vox Populi part of the contest. Judged winners will be announced in mid-December. This past summer, at Clifftop ’07, saw the release of Clifftop Notes Vol. 2 – Big Ears (5-String Productions 5SP05006, Aug 2007)—the final CD in a groundbreaking trilogy of traditional and original old-time fiddle tunes by acclaimed roots songwriter, fiddler and tunesmith Mark Simos. The trilogy is a tribute to old-time music’s Mecca—the Appalachian String Band Music Festival held each summer at Clifftop, West Virginia. The all-instrumental triptych of recordings features Simos on fiddle with his band the Cliffhangers and other friends from the festival. The Cliffhangers: On the Edge (5SP06004, released Aug 2006) features the Cliffhanger’s distinctive renditions of traditional old-time tunes, drawn largely from Kentucky and West Virginia solo fiddlers' repertoire. Clifftop Notes Vol. 1 (5SP06005, also released Aug 2006) and the new Clifftop Notes Vol. 2 – Big Ears release present a selection from more than a decade’s worth of “original old-time” tunes composed by Simos at the Clifftop festival, many written “on the spot” in the midst of late-night sessions with the Cliffhangers and others. Since the Cliffhangers first formed as a "campground band" in 2001, Simos and the band have consistently placed as finalists in the prestigious Clifftop contests for traditional fiddle and band (Simos took 1st in fiddle in 2003). Besides Simos on fiddle, the band includes Brendan Doyle on 5-string banjo, Jody Platt on tenor guitar, Rusty Neithammer on guitar and Karen Falkowski on bass. For the two Clifftop Notes albums of original compositions, the Cliffhangers were joined by several other respected old-time musicians, including legendary Greensboro, N.C. fiddler and guitarist Rich Hartness, Maxine Gerber on 5-string banjo, Tolly Tollefson on bass and Edwin Wilson on guitar and banjo-uke. All three CDs were recorded in the fall of 2005 in a marathon two-week live recording session in West Chester, PA., presided over by producer Bob Carlin with engineer and 5-String entrepreneur Tim Brown. Besides documenting a significant body of Simos’s original tunes, they set out to capture a distinctive sound emerging in contemporary old-time music. This “campground sound” blends strong fidelity to traditional sources with an improvisational trance-music spirit more akin to world music styles than to most modern acoustic-folk. Juxtaposing traditional and original tunes, and featuring unusual fiddle tunings (some traditional, some invented by Simos) and instrumentation, the trilogy as a whole reveals the intimate connection between the exploration of deep archival source material and the creation of new material—a bond that defines the art of neo-traditional tunesmithery. Virtuoso fiddler Darol Anger says of the project: “Here is not an oxymoron but a combination full of charm and challenge: modern old-time music. Like all great old-time music, it surges and breaks like the waves of the sea, as layers of groove advance and recede.” And songwriter Tim O’Brien says the CDs “…pay loving tribute to that mysterious Appalachian sound. Between the lines you hear both the roots as well as the fruits of Mark's inspiration.” About these Web Pages |
THE CLIFFHANGERS: On The Edge
CLIFFTOP NOTES VOL.1
CLIFFTOP NOTES V2: BIG EARS