One evening in May, Bob showed up at my door with a banjo in one hand and an egg carton full of gourd seeds in the other. The gourd seeds are now in my garden, hopefully to become full-grown gourds and perhaps banjos themselves one day. We ate some food that night, drank a few beers, played a few tunes, and the result is Seed Time.
Our own seed time, at least for this music, was about ten years ago. Some of these tunes were among the first old-time tunes I learned to play, sitting on the front porch with Bob and a cast of other New River Valley musicians -- Jen, Mary, Leigh, Chris, Abe, and others. To me, old-time music was a new thing, rooted in a geography to which I had freshly arrived. Bob had been around it all his life. Like just about everyone who "discovers" it, we ended up fascinated by playing these old fiddle-and-banjo tunes, partly because they were good tunes, and partly because we made such great friendships while doing it. Since those days on the porch, Bob and I have been in bands and out of bands; in love with these tunes and out of love with them; in touch with each other and miles away. But it's a joy and a comfort to know that thirty or forty or fifty years from now, we'll likely eat some food, drink a few beers, and play these same tunes, not so differently from the way we play them now.
That's the nice thing about seeds. You sow them, they make a plant, and that plant dies but makes more seeds, and the next year you do it all again, trade seeds with your friends, and the gourds you grow fifty years hence won't be so different from the gourds you grew this summer. You'll be a bit older, but the gourds will be gourds. Bob and I didn't write these tunes. We didn't even change them much. They're pretty much the same as when Norm Edmonds or Henry Reed or Tommy Jarrell played them fifty or sixty or seventy years ago. We didn't change the tunes much, but the tunes changed us. We learned them from people who learned them from people, and along the way we taught them to people who will teach them to people. People who will knock on a friend's door some spring evening with an egg carton full of seeds and a banjo, and pass the time in one of the finest ways anybody possibly can.
New on the always-great label Velvet Blue Music is “Slow Parade” from Gileah Taylor, boasting warm songs built on piano and guitar. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 26, 2024
Delightfully unpredictable debut from a New York electronic producer and composer with backgrounds in psychedelic rock, jazz, and indie pop. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 25, 2024
Toronto rivals San Francisco as the North American capital of jangle pop as evidenced by this new record of sunny jams from the Motorists. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 16, 2024
Guitars sparkle like distant constellations on the latest from Scythe, who delivers dazzling space rock on their latest LP. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 3, 2024
