Andy Chase

The Royalston Road Roustabouts performing Lucy Neal at the Fall Festival of Forgotten Arts in Rutland, Massachusetts on October 1, 2011.

The extreme damp had made my banjo head a little bit slack, which resulted in a noticeable loss of volume (especially when competing against two pairs of ebony bones!)

Since getting my gourd banjo the other week, I’ve been exploring some old minstrel tunes, played in the so-called “stroke style.” The Banjo Factory’s scans of Briggs’ Banjo Instructor from 1855 are an amazing resource, and I’ve already plugged a few into Tabledit.

If you’re not familiar with the tune, here’s Tim Twiss’ fine rendition on YouTube:

An old-time chestnut played on my new Jeff Menzies gourd banjo. No frets + nylon strings will take some getting used to!

This tune was on my must-learn list a few years ago, and then slipped out of consciousness until I got obsessed with it a few days ago. It’s a crooked tune; the A part has six measures, the B part has 7 measures, and it’s typically played in an ABB pattern instead of the usual AABB. Download in TablEdit or PDF format below.

Ship in the Clouds: Clawhammer Banjo Tablature by Andy Chase is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

This is a pretty simple arrangement, but this tune lends itself to lots of hammer-on/pull-off/double-thumb variations and really, it's all about the slightly dissonant tuning and rhythm.

I started fooling around with this Irish reel in the key of A on mandolin tonight, and decided to see how well it might transpose to clawhammer banjo. This is a fairly literal arrangement and not actually very clawhammer-y, but on the other hand it's not terribly tricky as far as "melodic clawhammer" arrangements go. That's not to say I can play it very well yet myself - but now I have something to work from. PDF and TablEdit versions are available below.

The Mason's Apron: Tablature for Clawhammer Banjo by Andy Chase is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Old-time tune performed by Crookneck John.

Recorded tonight on an iPhone using Four Track, slightly mixed with Garageband. I should really re-record the guitar part, but it’s getting late.