brandonraykirk.com One of the best sources of information on fiddler Ed Haley, including John Hartford‘s semi-obsession with Haley’s fiddling. But there’s a lot more here as well, including solid information about the Hatfield-McCoy feud and the Battle of Blair Mountain. Kudos to historian Brandon Ray Kirk for compiling and curating this resource ...

Old Town School of Folk Music on SoundCloud I featured the Old Town School in a previous post, but today I want to point you to their vast SoundCloud repository. There is more folk and ethnic music than old time, and I didn’t find a good way to search. You just have ...

 Old Time Fiddle Lessons from Chance McCoy Good clear video run-throughs of some tasty tunes. It’s fiddle-oriented but should work for learning the melody on any instrument. The videos are split screen so you can see the bowing as well as the left-hand fingering. This is a valuable contribution by one of ...

Remarkable values from June Appal Bob Buckingham told me about this. Many classic June Appal recordings are available on Bandcamp on a “name your own price” basis. Some are albums and some are individual tracks. Try this search to get a list of the specially-priced items: June Appal “name your price” on Bandcamp ...

SC Fiddling This odd little site hasn’t been updated in over a decade but there is some worthwhile information on fiddling and fiddlers in South Carolina.  It is basically an inventory of all the fiddlers in the state, past and present, with sound recordings of many of them. Bob and Amy Buckingham ...

 Cornbread, Molasses, and Sassafras Tea Music blogs were an Internet phenomenon before streaming. You could say they’re obsolete but I wish they would come back. The blogger usually has interesting historical and personal reflections on the music — something we don’t get as much these days. But the real treasure is the ...

Oldtime Central appears to be a thing of the past — the newest video on the YouTube channel is from 2021. But thanks to the cultural storage facility called the Internet, there is oldtime gold there for the taking. Likewise, the Facebook page linked above. I don’t have Instagram (or FB) but ...

Austen->Contradance->Banjo diva Rhiannon Giddens is a phenomenal artist of our time. This group probably first encountered her as a member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops. In this interview on the very, very pop-oriented podcast Song Exploder, she tells how being a Jane Austen fan led her to a contradance ( which she thought was ...

Country Dance and Song Society This website will make you glad to be a human. We can cherish good things and have fun doing it! There are so many branches coming off this tree! I encourage you to climb and explore. To highlight just one juicy morsel, check out this interview with Asheville dance ...

Dave Brown’s Old Time Resources — and More Here’s an extensive list of resources compiled and maintained by Dave Brown in the Bay Area. There’s a ton to explore here. For even more, check out the home page. The scope of this humble website is enormous! The audio page is the deepest I’ve seen, though there’s a ...