The Old Time Herald – online and complete This week’s resource is a doozy! Thanks to Bob Buckingham for the heads up. All the back issues of The Old Time Herald are now available online. Started in 1987 and spearheaded/edited by the inimitable Alice Gerrard, this magazine has been a nerve center ...

North Atlantic Tune List “Dance & fiddle music from Scandinavia, Ireland, the UK, Canada, Appalachia and more. A resource for traditional musicians.” Clearly a labor of love, it includes MP3s, notation, an interesting blog of music-related topics, and an extensive list of other resources. Check out the page for Cuffy, a tune we’ve played lately. The site ...

Parlor Pickers Society Yet another source for MP3s of tunes.  I counted 143.    Many of the tune names are new to me; maybe we need to learn’em.   These folks are out in Centralia, Washington.  They have a long-running festival/campout that is a favorite of Susan Brown, if I’m not mistaken. There’s another feature ...

 TrailJams  is a really interesting group in the Portland, Oregon area.  They started during COVID playing old time and have branched out into Irish, which seems to be their main emphasis now.  They have several slow jams and sessions around, plus some tech-y resources. The most interesting old time resource is the list of ...

Old Time Resource of the Week: YouTube channel: Old Time Music — and more This resource got deeper and deeper. The newest video is from 2020 so I’m not sure if it’s still being updated. It has some fun vintage music clips culled from Western movies, a cleverly animated one about the Skillet Lickers, and more ...

Old Time Resource of the Week: The Old-Time Fiddler (with Matt Brown) Matt Brown is a terrific old time fiddler and teacher.  He has been posting good instructional materials on his YouTube channel and recently has started a podcast format where he has in-depth interviews with other fiddlers.  He has four episodes up at this writing. For a sample, ...

Old Time Resource of the Week: Jake Blount Circling back to Black History Month, there is one artist that I meant to highlight — Jake Blount.  He has really dug into the backstory of string band music and its connection to African-American culture and history, good and bad.     Check out this extensive Black Stringband ...

  I’m going out on a limb here and give my un-researched, un-fact-checked version of African Americans in old time music.  Blues was such a strong marketing label that every Black artist was marketed as blues (or jazz or spiritual) even if their actual repertoire was much wider and eclectic.  Elijah Wald ...

We conclude our exploration of the African American presence and contribution to old time music with a documentary film I ran across this past week.  I haven’t watched it myself yet but it looks good.  Some members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and their mentor, Odell Thompson (his cousin Joe, the fiddler, ...

Old Time Resource of the Week: Featured artist: Rhiannon Giddens   We continue honoring African-American musicians in old time music.  In one way, Rhiannon Giddens [Wikipedia] is a come-lately, but I believe she is the key to the complete sea change in understanding of the old time music heritage.  That shift was brought ...