Friends and acquaintances:
Rob, he's a crazy (or is that crazed?) composer. We go way back. He has a studio. And a pyrophone.
Another old friend (he's got dibs on my skull), Josh Neilson, painter.
David French, musically inclined cousin.
Andric Severance, another musical
cousin (praise god we're a musical family!). Red hot piano playing.
Dominic Turner, the ultimate Multimedia Oddjobs Man. Not only beautiful photography, no, not just a good graphic artist, but a damn fine musician too.
Moniker is/was a band, with good music you can listen to on their site.
Matt Texter - New and used traditional American roots music.
Bill, Stacy (tin can banjo group, the internet truly is a weird and wonderful thing) and Steve, fellow trawlers for cookie tin banjos and other junk instruments.
Aram Bedrosian - this guy's such an incredible bass player, I turn green with envy at his technical ease every time I listen to him.
Dave B, idiosyncratic commentary on life, the universe and everything.
Stefani Sasser - Art and tales of motherhood.
Jonathan VanBallenberghe - director of The Ostrich Testimonies, for which I recorded music.
For old-time themed t-shirts and design, check out Old Groove, they also have a nice directory of old-time music on their site.
My wife Féréale has been making some beautiful hand-embroidered dolls and sachets recently, check them out on Etsy.
Music
Good music... among the myriad: John Fahey, The Incredible String Band, Henry Burr, Hobart Smith, Jacques Brel, Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, The Holy Modal Rounders, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Dock Boggs, Bukka White, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, Blind Willie Johnson, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Buell Kazee, Charlie Patton, Psarantonis, Leonard Cohen, The Pogues, Steve Reich, Aşık Veysel etc.etc.
There's
some great music to be found out on the internet, if you have the
connection speed and patience
(unlike me) to sift through it all. Curtis
Eller's
American Circus (with songs about rampant elephants
no less,
banjo and yodeling never sounded so good), The
Can Kickers, Tamara Nile, Mickey
Pantelous (blues in Athens and I don't mean Georgia) and adam
kay
come to mind.
If American field
recordings are your cup of tea, the Max
Hunter
Collection and The
Library of Congress Lomax archives are well worth going
through.
Also Folk
Legacy's
Beech Mountain albums, which is where I got Ol' Virginee. They have
Hobart
Smith
and Frank Proffit albums too. They're also just up the road from my
Grandfather's place. Music Traditions has a lot of
information on
traditional
music, including album reviews with samples. Some of the Sardinian
recordings
listed there are truly beautiful. Honking
Duck has a bunch of commercial recordings
from
the 20's to the 40's available.
For older commercial recordings, dating back to the late 1800's, have a
look at Tinfoil.com, Le
Gramophone Virtuel and Cylinder Preservation and Digitalization
Project, University of California.
Instruments
There are some excellent luthiers around, making instruments as good or better than those produced in the past.Bob Flesher makes beautiful banjos (though I haven't heard one live, where's a fat wad of cash when you need it?). Johannes Bonefaas makes some very nice banjos based on the old Dobsons and he has the distinction of being one of the few people around not churning out one of the "holy grails" of old time banjodom, the Tubaphone and Whyte Ladie. I suppose that's what's in demand (not to mention the Masterclones. Or Monstertones as my father's banjo - an old flathead Gibson pot, for which he made a neck - was once sneeringly referred to by some Folk Nazi. I betcha Wade Ward woulda given his eye teeth for it.) Buckeye Banjos by Greg Galbreath are also mighty fine lookin'.
The slotted head and narrow waist of the old 12 string Stellas, like Leadbelly played, make for a very pretty guitar, not to mention their sound qualities, and there are a few people making re-productions that I know of: Ralph Bown, Michael Hauver, Fraulini Guitars and Dell'Arte. Have a look at R.E. Phillips for resonator guitars.
Now, Dennis
Havlena is my
kind of person, instruments made from anything and everything. Also to
be seen, Experimental
Musical Instruments. Harry Partch... what
a guy.
For old instruments, Bernunzio, Mandolin Brothers (worth reading just for the commentary), and Marc Silber have simply amazing stuff.
Both Mugwumps, and Banjo-l are good sources of banjo information, each with a wealth of links ever onwards. I have to mention David Hyatt's gourd banjo site while I'm at it (this is threatening to start going on and on...), very attractive site with pictures and sound files.
Other
Scientology - the science of knowing how to know answers. It is a wisdom in the tradition of ten thousand years of search in Asia and Western civilization. It is the science of human affairs which treats the livingness and beingness of man, and demonstrates to him a pathway to greater freedom.
So many bright
and shiny things...see facsimiles of William Blake's
books, read Jean
D'Arc's trial transcripts, learn how to
make sulfuric acid, listen
to T. S. Eliot read The Love Song of
J. Alfred Prufrock etc. etc.
Recordings
The software I used for the recordings: N-Track (a multitracker, excellent, cheap), Sinus's PeakComp and FreeverbToo. Lame, Razorlame, and Musicmatch Jukebox for making the mp3's, oggdropXPd and Audacity for the ogg vorbis files, and TagScanner for the tags. Gotta love these people for putting such good, free software out.