J.S. Bach: Suites For Mandolin, Volume One

Suite 3 Prelude

Nickel Creek has given this great old song a shot in the arm in recent years, but I first ran across it in my parents' copy of The Burl Ives Songbook back before I even really knew what folk music was.

Fox Went a-Hunting on a Chilly Night

A composition by one of my early guitar heroes and still one of my favorites, in fact probably the guitarist who influenced my own playing the most: John Fahey. I based my performance of this piece as closely as I could on his two recordings of it, the studio version on his 1967 album "Days Have Gone By" and a live performance from 1968 issued in 2004 on the CD "The Great Santa Barbara Oil Slick."

Joe Kirby Blues

The first song here, "My Home's Across the Blue Ridge Mountains," is so ubiquitous in the American folk tradition that I can't possibly remember when, where or from whom I first learned it. The second, "Poor Boy Long Ways from Home," is a guitar blues that's been around for a while under various titles; although it's sometimes attributed to John Fahey, he admitted to learning the song from the 1927 recording by blues 12-string guitarist Barbecue Bob (as did Doc Watson, who called it "Poor Boy Blues"). Furthermore, Fahey's version is only a slight variation on early Grand Ole Opry guitarist Sam McGee's adaptation, "Knoxville Blues" (which Fahey also recorded), which in turn is pretty much identical to the 19th-century parlor guitar piece "The Siege of Sebastopol" (which Fahey also recorded). Such is the slippery nature of the folk process...

Long Way From Home Medley

An original composition that I first recorded on my 1995 CD "Midnight Howl." After many requests for it as a guitar solo, here it is again. Lost Hollow was my private name for my secret wooded refuge in southern Maryland as a child, which seemed to make this piece reasonably appropriate for an album of American music on guitar.

Lost Hollow Lament

It wouldn't be a true American Guitar Album without some influence from Maybelle Carter and the original Carter Family. The first melody, one of the hundreds they recorded between 1927 and 1941, is an American folk/blues standard with many identities, including "Railroad Bill," "Solid Gone," "White House Blues" and no doubt many others. The second comes from, and is sometimes attributed to, another great lady of American folk guitar and the composer of "Freight Train," Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten (although I first heard it played by that legendary folk group the Grateful Dead).

Cannonball Blues/Oh Babe It Ain't No Lie

This is my third recording of this great American evergreen, the first two being on my 2005 CD "The Enchanted Woods" and Tom Paxton's 2009 CD/DVD "Live at Huntingdon Hall." I like the idea of continuing to re-record it from time to time as an ongoing musical diary, since this arrangement seems to have a life of its own; it continues to grow and evolve through the years and I make new discoveries every time I play it. This song, for all its apparent simplicity, is surely one of the most profound pieces of music America has given to the world.

Shenandoah

The classic American "dying cowboy" song. A requiem for the death of dreams.

The Streets Of Laredo

One of my favorite Stephen Foster songs (and if you haven't heard the Red Clay Ramblers' version on their album "Hard Times," drop everything right now and go hunt it down and check it out). This performance is dedicated to the hope that someday humankind will evolve enough that the lyrics will no longer still be relevant:
"Though we seek mirth and beauty and music bright and gay,
There are frail forms fainting at the door.
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
Oh hard times, come again no more."
"Twenty centuries of Christianity with its relics of bloodshed, its architecture and acres of linen madonnas hanging in all the mausoleums of art the world over. And still it is permitted that women with white hairs should sleep in the cold." – Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

Hard Times Come Again No More

Tied with "Hard Times" as my favorite Stephen Foster song, I'd say. This is said to be the last song he wrote before he died at age 37. Both the music and the lyrics hint at a serenity removed from this life...
"Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,
Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee.
Sounds of the rude world heard in the day
Lulled by the moonlight have all passed away..."
...did he sense that he was soon to leave this world and its cruelty behind?

Beautiful Dreamer

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Suite 3 Prelude

Robin Bullock

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