I've
been playing and writing folk music since I was a teenager playing in our
family band, the Outhouse Shouters, which included
my two brothers and our father, and sometimes my mother's first cousin Bill
Keeler, the famous Cussin' Bill, who passed the tradition
on to us. My brothers and I still play at family gatherings, and some of
our children and nephews and nieces now are carrying it on with us. And I've
played in more than a dozen (I've lost specific count) folk bands since the Outhouse
Shouters reverted
to only family entertainment. (You can read about the current ones HERE).
Meanwhile, the tunes and songs keep coming. I have gathered many of these
together into a tune book, New
Rosin for an Old Bow, which can be downloaded for free.
(It's folk music, after all.) You can also download many of the them tune
by tune. Something like 20 of them have been recorded by various artists
over the years, and in 2002 I got to perform one of them ("The Cloud
Forest")
on the NPR show A Prairie Home Companion, with my old band, the Barn
Owl Band .
Class-Grass Compositions
My most recent compositions have been a hybrid between classical and
grassroots music with the band Graminy. Check out the Graminy
website to hear some of that, and to buy the music. Some of it is also on
iTunes and CD Baby under Graminy.
Barn Owl Salad Mix
Here are some sample recordings of my folk tunes that you can listen to,
performed by the Barn Owl Band. (For the full tracks,
you have to buy the
albums, alas.)
Plus here is a complete unreleased track by the Barn Owls from
about 2004, which contains Ralph's Leather Britches (whose origin I don't
know), Jason's (by the ever-hot fiddler Jason Huntley, who plays on the track),
and Unreel (a co-composition by me and Merle Hall, the banjo player in
the Barn
Owls back when I played regularly in the band). We start with
a wacky little intro, sort of 12-tone folk music.
I've
been playing and writing folk music since I was a teenager playing in our
family band, the Outhouse Shouters, which included
my two brothers and our father, and sometimes my mother's first cousin Bill
Keeler, the famous Cussin' Bill, who passed the tradition
on to us. My brothers and I still play at family gatherings, and some of
our children and nephews and nieces now are carrying it on with us. And I've
played in more than a dozen (I've lost specific count) folk bands since the Outhouse
Shouters reverted
to only family entertainment. (You can read about the current ones HERE).