Topic: What tunes are you working on?

[Norfolk Slim]

I am drawn to Ghostriders suggestion that posting in this thread might help force me to finish the tunes in question :-)

Therefore I am going to admit to working on:-

Wabash Rag and You're gonna Quit Me Blues by Blind Blake

Dry Spell Blues by Son House

Future Blues by Willie Brown

[uncle bud]

I am drawn to Ghostriders suggestion that posting in this thread might help force me to finish the tunes in question :-)

Slim, as the person who started this thread over three years ago, I can say I'm still working on Lemon in C. Best of luck. 

The other day I began some kind of version in Spanish tuning of Don't You Leave Me Here by Papa Harvey Hull and Long Cleve Reed.

Cheapfeet: Lonesome Road Blues, one of the great vocals in CB...

[CF]

Cheapfeet: Lonesome Road Blues, one of the great vocals in CB...

Yeah UB it is great, one can only hope to sing it in tune! Sam plays it pitched at Bb or something but i'm trying to keep it at C standard so I won't have to tune down in the middle of a gig . . .
& re: Lemon's playing in C, I've gotten a pretty comfortable grasp of it, for me, (altho' now trying to play licks learned on flatpick with fingers & thumpick), recently learned 'Mosquito Moan', but then you'll hear Lemon do something different & ridiculous . . . I try to approach Lemon's songs in C with the idea that there is a family of licks in that form that are somewhat free to use in all his C songs no matter which they may be . . .   

[Prof Scratchy]

My current works in progress are Bo Carter's 'Beans'; Big Bill Broonzy's 'Pigmeat strut'; Charley Jordan's 'Hunkie Tunkie Blues'. I think the guitar's almost there on all three, but the lyrics (on the songs that have lyrics), phrasing and vocal pitching etc. take longer!
Prof S

[dave stott]

since I can't seem to find a recorded copy of the original version , I am working on Hot Tuna's version of "99 Year Blues".

Which is eerily similar to MJH "Spike Driver Blues"....

Also working on RGD version of "Death Don't have no mercy"

[Rivers]

Travis stuff mostly, extending what I learned from Eddie at Port T. Having big fun with Too Much Sugar For A Dime in the key of Bb, a great little study in closed jazz chords around an unusual ragtimey sequence.

I've also been working on Lemon in E from Ari's DVD, merging into what I already had figured out for One Dime Blues, the ending is cool with a passing F# partial chord and a final high long E

[uncle bud]

since I can't seem to find a recorded copy of the original version , I am working on Hot Tuna's version of "99 Year Blues".

Dave, it's available on the Atlanta Blues boxed set from JSP. Or the Document Georgia Blues and Gospel CD.

[dave stott]

hey cool... Thanks

All my google searches turned up overwhelming references to Hot Tuna...

I also totally forgot that I can still search tunes on Weenie, even if I can't get them played. thanks again

After listening to a portion of it via Amazon:

The guitar work for 99 Year Blues and Spike Drivers Blues sound even more similar...

The only real difference being that Julius capo's at about the 4th fret and MJH played it in 1st position.



Dave

[Stuart]

"99 Year Blues" is also on the "Anthology of American Folk Music" (Vol. 3-B).

[Rivers]

This one's been dormant for a while and I'm curious to know what you're all working on.

I'm into "Don't Tear My Clothes", a Big Bill piano tune in G that crawled out of the speakers the other day and totally slayed me, and two 8 bar classics, "Trouble In Mind" in E and "How Long Blues" in D. I'm having a lot of fun with the latter two while giving a friend weekly guitar lessons, and at the same time benefiting myself from looking at them in great detail.

Also, I finally got down to playing Fuller's Keep On Trucking properly, complete with the stupidly cool intro and all the other little flourishes he does.

Teaching is great, I'm ending up with some relatively well-known but nonetheless cool new numbers in my repertoire.

[Norfolk Slim]

Well....

I've just about got the first section to Blake's Too Tight sorted, and need to go back to the cd to transcribe the rest.

In the meantime, attempts at Big Road Blues, Love Changin Blues (preparation for Mctell posting day in August!) and Down the Dirt Road are beginning to settle in.

[onewent]

Love Changin Blues (preparation for Mctell posting day in August!)

..lovin' that!

Well, my so-called retirement (and my wife re-hired again) has provided me with some unbroken stretches of time in the mornings to work out new tunes  ..so far three McTell slide pieces:  River Jordan (which I read that he and Blind Willie Johnson had actually shared, as they were friends), You Got to Die and Savannah Mama.  Plus, working out bits an pieces of Coolin' Board, especially the little runs he uses, plus, based on the thread in Georgia Blues, the ironing out of Crapshooter, among others.

Plus, I think I'm going to order a cheap set of Peruvian quills..was going to try to make a set, but it would be embarrassing to be caught some night in my ninja black, cutting my neighbors bamboo 

Tom

[dj]

Mississippi John Hurt's "Payday" on the banjo. 

[Rivers]

So this begs the question is there a formula or pattern of behavior for locking-on to new pieces? Creative/improvement streaks always follow getting enthused about something new, to me. I listen to a lot of stuff all the time but one song will unexpectedly totally grab me and send me off in a whole new direction, like Dorothy and the tornado.

Rhetorical question, feel free to comment, or just take it as a rhetorical question.

[uncle bud]

So this begs the question is there a formula or pattern of behavior for locking-on to new pieces? Creative/improvement streaks always follow getting enthused about something new, to me. I listen to a lot of stuff all the time but one song will unexpectedly totally grab me and send me off in a whole new direction, like Dorothy and the tornado.

Rhetorical question, feel free to comment, or just take it as a rhetorical question.

Not exactly sure what you mean by locking on -- finding a new song to work on or mastering that new song, for my comment will assume the former -- but your experience sounds very similar to mine. The tornado has taken me in quite a few directions.

I have a playlist in iTunes I've named Songs to Figure Out. Basically, whenever a song jumps out at me for whatever reason -- great guitar part, fun piano song I'd like to try transferring to guitar, irresistible melody, might work well with other players, groove whatever -- I dump the song into the playlist. There are currently 329 songs in the list (I never said I'd learn all of 'em). I have separate lists for banjo guitar and lap guitar, and mandolin. Basically, I'm set for several lives with these.

This all helps my terrible memory, because God knows I'd never recall that some day in the past several years, I thought about trying to do an adaptation of Hattie Bolten's Down Home Shake. I've probably worked on over 50 of the songs to varying degrees, from figuring out and quickly forgetting basic riffs (the majority) to working up half decent versions of the complete song (definitely the minority).

I need to focus.