Senderoff's Farewell to Music is an archival snapshot of music I was playing a decade ago. It includes hard core Mississippi Delta stuff, ragtime hokum songs, old-time songs, clawhammer banjo, Carter Family autoharp stuff, and some of the only known recordings of The Chestnut Hillbillies, a Galax award-winning band that I was invited to join in one of its later incarnations. It ends with a song that sort of became my signature, Bob Coltman's "Before They Close the Minstrel Show".
This CD is available from me for $15.00, plus shipping if you don't get it handed to you. Find me at a party, festival, or drop me an email
This link takes you to some of the insert graphics.
Here is a track listing:
Delia Blues/Weeping Willow/Baptist Shout-Snowdrop/Ramblin' on My Mind/Duncan and Brady/Little Moses-Wildwood Flower/Ain't Got No Honey Baby Now/The Water is Wide/Mobile-KC Line Blues/Cocaine Rag/Amazing Grace/Fishing Blues/Durang's Other Hornpipe/Lady on the Green/When You Hear the Cuckoos/Rylan Spencer/Goodbye My Honey, I'm Gone/Rosin the Bow-For Auld Lang Syne/Terraplane Blues (Live)/That'll Never Happen No More/Before They Close the Minstrel Show
Right click and save target as here to download an mp3 (128kb/sec, ca 4M) of Delia Blues
Right click and save target as here to download an mp3 (128kb/sec, ca 2M) of Ain't Got No Honeybaby Now
If you have Quick Time installed, it'll quasi-stream it on a left click. I hate RealAudio.
Here are the Liner Notes:
In Lieu of Notes
I've been involved with music my entire life.
I started playing classical music in the late 1950s, but became interested in acoustic string music about 1980. Armed with a guitar, I quickly worked through standard-issue acoustic rock pabulum and began a free fall descent into the bowels of American Traditional Music that went through Dylan to Hedy West to Harry Smith to Son House and kept on falling. Much to my surprise, research in Urbana IL, Rochester NY, and Philadelphia PA showed me that acoustic string music was actually a vibrant subculture, and for some reason, the various permutations of the music and people existed in diverse flavors that, at times, didn't mix very well. Like the time I was at a songs-of-freedom-and-struggle conference. An Israeli guitarist and Palestinian oud player were about to throttle each other over sacred land differences, but I got them to play the changes to "The Sheik of Araby" while a Sub-Saharan mbira player rattled his instrument and I sang "…into your tent I'll creep…." at the top of my lungs. A group of long neck banjo bum-tittiers crowded at one end of the hall and bellowed with great sanctimony, "It's a valid expression of the universal language…we're all the same…gonna lay down my sword and shield…" while a hostile group of miscellaneous acapella activists tried to decide if I was a disgusting racist/sexist. On the way home from the conference, Dylan's song about "if ya ain't got a nickel, there's the Staten Island Ferry" popped into my head. I parked at Battery Park, and someone broke into my car while I was taking a joyride on said Staten Island Ferry. He (they? it?) boosted all my stuff. I drove back to Philly singing "…if we all held hands all around the world, two-thirds of us would be under water…" Later, while running a folk music club, I got sick of folk music after an enraged singer-songwriter attacked an Irish fiddler over artistic differences. "…jig and diddle! Bam…when you left me my world turned into my mother! Thud…" "Folk Music" seemed to be about immovable political forces and irresistible movements, or whining about atrophied body parts, or trying to be the next Elvis or Elvis-with-Breasts. So, I locked myself in a room with a Robert Johnson record, a Blind Willie Johnson record, a Hazel Dickens-Alice Gerrard record, a Dock Boggs record, some NLCR and HMR tapes, a Coricidan bottle, a National, an ES-150 into a tweed amp, an old Gibson A-4 mandolin that once belonged to my grandfather, various fretted and fretless banjos, a dulcimer, a concertina, a fiddle, harmonicas, a ukulele…and didn't emerge until they had replaced all of my atrophied body parts. Found the part of the subculture where I fit, met some wonderful people, and played blues and old-time music until my health gave out in 1999. I can no longer play. I write CD reviews for Alice Gerrard's Old Time Herald and hang out.
Some of these recordings were made in 1993 as part of a blues project and a one-take gift of quiet songs for my wife's birthday. The masters disappeared. A couple of cuts were made in a home studio, possibly 1992. One cut was a 1991 radio broadcast. One cut was made live at the Bothy Club, Philadelphia PA in 1991. Guest artists are the Chestnut Hillbillies: Randy Johnson (fdl), myself (bjo, voc), and the late Dan Brown (gtr). The final cut is a snippet of a 1992 Bobville jam session, with Claudio Buchwald, Chad Crumm, John Hoffman (fdl), Mac Benford, myself (bjo), Beverly Smith, Paul Mitchell (gtr), and Alex Scala (bs). By 2001, I had enough computer horsepower to revisit the recordings, overdub some stuff I never got to, and assemble the present collection. It's all that's left. It was fun while it lasted. I just wanted to convince myself that at one time, I could play. And I just wanted to share this stuff with you. Hope you like it.
Steve
I can't really remember when my involvement started.
It simultaneously enriched and destroyed my life, but that's another song.
