O Momma, can't you hear that banjo moan?

Harken

Hunter Robertson Sings Songs for the Masses

Short samples from the CD are given in a number of formats and varying qualities. Choose your poison. You can download entire mp3's of the ones with the titles in puce (click on 'em) with my blessing.

		real mp3 ogg
	1. Threw Down - Clawhammer Banjo	hi / lo hi / lo med
	2. She Had Eyes - Bowed & Plucked Opus (see picture below)	hi / lo hi / lo med
	3. Pretty Polly - Banjo, Voice	hi / lo hi / lo med
	4. Ol’ Virginee - 12 String Guitar, Voice	hi / lo hi / lo med
	5. You Gonna Need Somebody on Your Bond - One man band: Slide Banjo, Hi-Hat, Bass Drum, Kazoo, Voice.	hi / lo hi / lo med
	6. Dom Ospritch - Gut Strung Fretless Banjo	hi / lo hi / lo med
	7. Soldier’s Joy - Clawhammer Banjo, Voice	hi / lo hi / lo med
	8. Banjo Medley (Bonaparte’s Retreat, Salmon Tails up the River, Ducks on the Millpond, Milo Mou Kokkino) - Clawhammer Banjo	hi / lo hi / lo med
	9. Jesus Gonna Make Up My Dyin’ Bed - 12 String, Voice	hi / lo hi / lo med
	10. Crawdad Hole - 12 String Guitar, Voice	hi / lo hi / lo med
	11. Souris Mecanique - Banjo	hi / lo hi / lo med
	12. Will You Go Lassie - 12 String Guitar, Voice	hi / lo hi / lo med
	13. Redwing - Gut Strung Fretless Banjo, Voice	hi / lo hi / lo med
	14. I Did Bide - Electric Guitar	hi / lo hi / lo med
Want to have the CD for your very own? They're $13 + $2 S&H. Drop me a line and it shall be added unto you, or, through Paypal: You can also buy the album through iTunes.	All instruments played by Hunter Robertson. No’s 1, 2, 5, 6, 11 & 14 written by H. Robertson. No’s 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10 & 12 trad., arranged by H. Robertson. Redwing by Mills/Chattaway

Notes on Sings Songs for the Masses

Extensive liner notes weren't on my mind when designing the cover for the CD and space was at a premium. Now however, with effectively endless storage space on this site's server, I can go on at length. I'll try to keep it succinct.

Threw Down - Clawhammer banjo in gDGCD (sawmill as it's often called. I doubt it's actually at that pitch, I like to tune my banjos down, but that's the relationship. This holds true for any other tunings I mention). I can't remember much about coming up with this one. When the Stars threw down their spears/and watered Heaven with their tears/did He smile his work to see?/did He who made the Lamb make Thee? - W. Blake

She Had Eyes - This is played on an instrument I made out of a tin-can after seeing a documentary about Africa with a guy playing something similar. There's a picture below of mine. It has two strings. I overdubbed the bowed part. This was a song that never got off the ground, but I kept the tune.

Pretty Polly - Old-time three finger picking. Sawmill tuning again. Scary old ballad. Seems to be a descendant of The Gosport Tragedy. This version doesn't give much motive, but it seems from older ones that Willie's knocked Polly up and he takes drastic measures to maintain his carefree bachelor ways. A lot of versions end with Polly in the ground, birds mourning overhead and Willie skulking off. I'm glad my version ends with him going to hell. Seems fitting.

Ol' Virginee - This is a great song I learned from a great record put out by Folk Legacy, Traditional Music From Beech Mountain. Go over there and get it. Get Hobart Smith's and Frank Proffitt's albums too. I took some liberties in my arrangement of it. The guitar is tuned CGCCGC (as on all the 12-string tunes).

You Gonna Need Somebody on Your Bond- One-man-bands are so much fun - every limb going at once! Here there's bass drum, high-hat, kazoo and slide banjo. I first heard Captain Beefheart's You Gonna... and eventually Blind Willie Johnson's. I kept the refrain and added the verse.

Dom Ospritch - I have no clue anymore as to where this name comes from. It's played on a fretless banjo my father made, strung with gut. gDGBD

Soldier's Joy - gCGCD, clawhammer banjo. A concatenation of my father's playing, Hobart Smith's and John Burke's with hopefully my own personal touch.

Banjo Medley - again clawhammer in gCGCD. Learned Bonaparte's Retreat from that Folk Legacy album by Hobart Smith (he plays it on fiddle). He's by far my favorite fiddle and banjo player. He was also a great guitarist and piano player. There are a lot of versions of this tune, I like the way this one rolls along. Salmon Tails up the River is a tune I heard played on the Northumbrian smallpipes by Jack Armstrong, Northumbrian Minstrelsy the album might have been called. It was a fleamarket find. Great music from the north of England. Ducks on the Millpond is a well known banjo/fiddle tune from the Round Peak guys, I learned it from my father and John Burke's arrangement. Milo Mou Kokkino (My Red Apple), a song from the north of Greece. If I could play these "exotic" tunes on the pipes and clarinet I would, but I think they translated to banjo well enough.

Jesus Gonna Make Up My Dyin' Bed - I first learned this from a Bob Dylan album, but in quite a different form. This one is from John and Ruby Lomax's '39 recording trip in the South, sung by Dock Reed, Vera Hall & Jesse Allison.

Crawdad Hole - I don't recall where I got this from. Nice song though. "What you gonna do when the crawdads die? Sit on the bank until I cry, honey, sugar baby mine".

Souris Mécanique - gDGBD. Must have come to me after listening to lots of Henry Burr. Along the lines of When You and I were Young Maggie and In the Good Old Summertime. Someone told me it sounded like mechanical rodents. That, roughly translated into French, sounds pretty spiffy as a title. I believe this was Frank Zappa's most hated chord progression.

Will You Go Lassie, Go - From another flea market find, a tape of snippets of Scottish folk songs. It was very strange, I still wonder what its purpose was. But this was sung beautifully on it. Oops, I lied in the CD's liner notes when I said that She Had Eyes was the only one with any overdubbing - the pseudo throat singing at the end of this is overdubbed.

Red Wing - gDGBD. I learned a clawhammer arrangement of this somewhere, and eventually turned it into three finger picking. Versions by Harry MacDonough and Buell Kazee informed it. Played on my father's fretless gut-strung banjo. A real tear jerker.

I Did Bide - Electric guitar tuned GGDGBD. I say this is one of my own, and it is to a large degree, but it's based on We're No Awa Tae Bide Awa. I don't know how it came to be in my head, but I had worked it out somewhat and asked my father what it was, and he sang a bit of We're No Awa Tae Bide Awa. What a tune! I mixed this up with another dim memory - a friend had a wind-up doll which played some melancholy melody. As it wound down it would slow and falter. It was one of the sadder things I've heard.

I had some recordings kicking around after finishing up the CD. Some are a bit rough around the edges, think of them as ethnomusicological documents and everything will be ok.

Click on the title for to play it in realplayer, or on mp3, for, well, an mp3.

Summertime (G. Gershwin) - Gut strung fretless banjo, 12 string guitars, jews' harp, kazoo, hi-hat, voice   mp3

Soldier's Joy (trad.) - Clawhammer Banjo   mp3

Sittin' on Top of the World (trad.) - 12 string guitar, voice   mp3

All the Friends I Had (trad.) - Fretless electric guitar mp3

Fog Dog 1 (H.R.) - Drums'n'kazoo, electrolized slide 12 string. mp3

Old Joe Clark at the Battle of Mylae (doing the seven-step stomp) (almost traditional - O.J.C. in 7/8 time) - Clawhammer Banjo mp3

D is for Dishabille (H.R.) - Fretless tin can banjo mp3 (see the banjo here)