on the very day i'm gone

another song research rabbit hole! if you missed the last one, it's here, although they're not really related. except that they're both about nora brown kind of, unclear how this happened, i swear i listen to other music. anyway, definitely check out the songs i link. enjoy!

i watch a lot of music on youtube. this includes following individual artists; watching tiny desk concerts, live on kexp, audiotree live, and similar; following channels that feature artists such as gemsonvhs; and assorted videos that just pop up in my recommended.

the other day, i was recommended a video of nora brown performing a song called "the very day i'm gone".

she also performs it on her tiny desk home concert, as well as on an album that i haven't really listened to. 

i like this song, and i've also heard it before, particularly as the last track of the norfolk broads' album "yonder green grove" i found the norfolk broads through the longest johns (a former [and my favorite] johns' member, anna, was a part of the broads), and i will write more about shanties one of these days, but for now here we are and i have a song entitled "rambling woman" that i first heard through an english folk group now performed by a new yorker who plays appalachian traditionals. what gives, and where did this song come from? i also have a suspicion that i had heard this song before the broads, but i have no evidence to back this up.

my suspicion of hearing this song previously may be related to how familiar the song sounds. it shares many lyrics with "railroader's lament" which you might also know by the name "500 miles". my dad sang this song to me as a kid, we sang it at my summer camp, and while writing this i'm learning that it's actually not a traditional. wikipedia claims it was written by hedy west in the 1960s, and was very much part of the folk revival being performed by cash as well as peter, paul, & mary alongside others.

however, it's likely an adaption of an older song "900 miles" originating in the aughts of that century. here's a recording of "900 miles" from 1924 by fiddling john carson.

 

according to baladindex.org, it's also very related to the songs "reuben's train" (meredith moon performance)  and "train 45" (guthrie performance)

anyway, bringing us back around to "the very day i'm gone," the video description for nora brown's tiny desk cites it as being written by addie graham. i missed the information initially and found it through some other sources after watching a lot of cover videos on youtube. addie graham's wikipedia tells us she was born 1890 in kentucky. there's a tribute album to her i found on bandcamp, but an actual recording of her singing "on the very day i'm gone" eludes me. various sources tell me she has an album entitled "been a long time travelling" but the tracklist provided on discogs doesn't include the song i want. wikipedia links to the digital library of appalatchia but their website is broken and it also doesn't claim to have this song so i haven't bothered to dig in the archives. 

the full album is actually on youtube so you can listen to that if you like. it's got a charm to it. i also found some video of her singing "the old churchyard"

it's fascinating to me that very possibly no one will ever hear the woman who wrote this song sing it again.

outtake

recorded in february.

 

my grandfather's clock

this is not about my grandfather's clock. i imagine my grandfather(s) have clock(s) but i don't know anything about them.

on friday, i distributed zines.

for much of the day, i wandered around campus and gave a zine about housing to admitted students who were visiting. this was really fun. people were by and large curious or interested. i tried to hand out zines to a tour groups, and the tour guides were occasionally upset by this, but never actually did anything. some of the people i tried to hand zines to said they had already gotten one from someone else, which made me happy.

for a couple hours, i tabled with some friends handing out a larger variety of zines. we tried to do it in the student life center but they kicked us out so we went to the library. the library was lovely and gave us no trouble. one of the staff members even came over and said they had to get back to work but they wanted some and they grabbed one of each.

there were a lot of other wonderful interactions that afternoon. i have so much love for all the shy people who came up, grabbed a zine or two, and didn't say much. i used to be there, and sometimes i still am. i had a lot of fun trying to coax square looking guys to come and grab some, and was successful in a few cases. 

a selection of the zines we had

the craziest interaction i had happened maybe half an hour before i packed up. a guy was walking past and i tried to catch his eye, gesturing at the sign we had that said free zines. after a couple attempts, he came over to the table, and i told him about the zines we had. he brushed right past that, and in a very thick english accent proceeded to ask me if i wanted the record he was holding, as he was trying to get rid of it. i asked him what it was, and he said it had some old songs on it including "my grandfather's clock" i told him i didn't know that one, and he broke into song. i don't think i can adequately recreate the experience. i took the record, he didn't take a zine, and he left.

the song, i've later learned, was written in 1876 by henry clay work and is popular among english brass bands and bluegrass musicians. i can't find an online version of the record, but you can listen to johnny cash's version if you'd like. or do your own research and tell me about it :)

the record also has a version of  drill ye tarriers drill on it, which is a song i quite like. you can listen to the uvm catamount singer's version below if you'd like, although it's a bit different than the version on the record. it is a good arrangement though. very similar to what i sung in high school, and really makes good use of splitting along bass/tenor and soprano/alto lines.

 

the record also had some others songs that i liked and hope to get to know better

the whole day was a really pleasant and rewarding experience. it's nice to meet so many new people, if only briefly, and add something positive to their day.

change

big thief cover. really slow. indecisive and forgetful. cozy in my sweater. this was one of the first songs i played consistently on guitar.

 

 

how do you know that?

 i wrote the bit of this before the question yesterday, and the rest just now. i changed the tense.

yesterday i was hanging around after my black feminist anthropology class to tell the professor i like it when she starts class with songs, and specifically talk about music ethnography. yesterday's songs were uncle bud and wake up jacob. both recordings are sung by zora neale hurston who, if you didn't know, was an anthropologist in addition to being an author.

while the music is cool, it's not the point. the point is, while i was waiting another student was talking about how they were confused about the mentions of zombies in the reading. i said something about how zombies have been bastardized by pop culture and are really interesting because of their roots in Haitian plantations. the professor agreed with me, and then the other student asked me a question.

"how do you know that?"

i didn't know how i knew it, and i told them that. everyone laughed. i'm not sure why. it doesn't matter much. i didn't feel like they were laughing at me.

a lot of things i know have no source. i picked them up at some point and they've been floating for that long and the serial numbers have been rubbed off with handling or have been covered in residue from lack of use. then i need them, and i find them, and i can't say where i got them.

other facts are memories. they're tied. i couldn't tear them apart if i wanted to. 

both are fine, and both are useful.

jenny put the kettle on

here i am to document a song research rabbit-hole. this post is going to have a lot of video embeds and a lot of links. i suggest you get your headphones before you read it. you should watch most of the versions i embed, they're almost all good. some of the other songs i link are also worth it.

today i decided to listen to nora brown's album long time to be gone. i quite like the first song, and while it was playing it occurred to me i could try and cover it. i know it's a clawhammer banjo song, but i figured i could probably work something with my guitar.

nora brown's jenny put the kettle on

i went home and looked it up on ultimate guitar and the only option was jean ritchie's version. it had slightly different lyrics, but this is often the case with folk songs so i thought i'd give it a shot. i tried playing it, and it didn't really sound right. rather than doing the sensible thing (going and listing to jean ritchie's version) i decided to look up nora brown playing it on youtube to see if i could find a guitar version. she's not a super well known artist, so there were only a couple live versions of her with her banjo. there weren't many results that weren't her that had guitar, but i clicked on one of the few that did and gave it a watch.

kitty, daisy, and lewis's polly put the kettle on

this is pretty much the same song, but it's a very different take and has a different name. at this point, i decide to search the song on the wider internet, and make my way to the wikipedia page. wikipedia says polly put the kettle on is an english nusery rhyme, but neither version of the song i've encountered (appalachian-style clawhammer, blues) matches this. at this point i make my way over to the video tab, and find a terrrible thing. you probably don't want to listen to this for very long.

appuseries's polly put the kettle on

this hard to watch but it's definitely the same song, albeit simplified. now we have a new character of sukey as well. shit's getting complicated. if you want another, older, troubling in a different way version of the nursery rhyme here you go.

from here, i look further into versions using the name polly and find my way to dom flemons.

 dom flemons' polly put the kettle on

this is similar to kitty, daisy, and lewis's version and sort of bridges the gap to nora brown in my mind. it's very clearly from tennesse, and i know nora brown is from new york but learns from appalachian musicians. jean ritchie, who i have been ignoring a little too much up to this point is from kentucky. at the start of this video, the singer mentions sonny boy williamson i and that's where i go next.

 sonny boy williamson i's polly put your kettle on

sonny boy williamson i is from tennesse. clear heritage here. that's useful. looking at his wikipedia, i learn that he pioneered the blues harp as a solo instrument. that's cool. i think it's time to finally go back to jean ritchie.

 jean ritchie's jenny, put the kettle on

i was very surprised to find the recording was only 23 seconds, and when i listened something clicked. this is the nursery rhyme. there is a connection. but we still have a bluesy version unaccounted for, and i want to know more about how it got from england to the united states.

back to wikipedia! i really was all over the place. wikipedia answers my name questions (sukey is susan, polly is mary, molly isn't to far off, idrc about jenny people love to change names). it also gives me a few leads: a strongly related tune known as jenny's baubie and a loosely related melody known as o du lieber augustin. i look up jenny's baubie and find a few fiddle players, a bagpiper, and a scottish folk dance society. i assume the different spellings are different ways of phoneticising an accented pronunciation of baby.

berkhamsted strathspey and reel club's jenny's bawbee

 

i give up on this lead and head to the mainstay of anyone doing research on folk music, the beautiful mudcat.org. i want more details. the first thread i find has an interesting allusion to the song being sung in british columbia in 1861, but no further details. i love mudcat, because people will just name random people as sources and i have no clue who they are.

the second thread i find has a lot more information. it gives me another alternate spelling (jinny) and through this a find a loc recording even more firmly linking the song to jenny's bawbie. this thread also mentions o du lieber augustin, and i give a few versions a listen. this vocal performance doesn't sound quite right, but this orchestral one does. mudcat claims that dickens may be responsible for the change from molly to polly via the raven grip in barnaby rudge. they also say jrr tolkein used the tune to make a song arguing for philology in literature. cool random facts.

they go back and forth on if it was scottish first or english first. given that i'm disinclined to trust english nationalists about scotland, i'm gonna go with it being from scotland in 1778. they also correct my notion about babies, and inform me that a bawbee was a scottish coin worth half an english penny. references to the german predecessor continue (apparently the beatles played it), as well as the children's songs the more we are together and did you ever see a lassie which i'm sure you've heard. lastly, it mentions a song called old molly hare. this sounds pretty similar, but definitely has some embellishment.

all the predecessors are in waltz time (3/4) but jenny is in reel time (4/4). no one knows when the change occurred. my last bit of info from mudcat is that leadbelly's song ha ha this a way has a similar tune, but this is really just an excuse for me to listen to leadbelly.

casting out again, i make my way to a page calling it jenny hang the kettle on, that corroborates wikipedia's references. i find a reference to another name, bring me a bottle. the leake county revellers have a version of this, and it pretty much sounds the same as jenny.

that's pretty much it. i know a lot more than i did at the start, but i don't have any answers for the migration of the song to the US or when the melody changed from 3/4 to 4/4. i also don't know how to play it on guitar. my fiddle has a broken string and i couldn't play it if it didn't. guess that's all there is. sometimes folk music is just like that. good song. i'll leave you with a couple more versions.

virgil anderson's jenny hang the kettle on

the skillet lickers' molly put the kettle on

 

i'm worried i need a banjo.

studying songwriting

i've been studying songwriting lately. mostly this takes the form of thinking about songs while i listen to them. sometimes while they're stuck in my head.

it's nothing clinical or professional. sometimes i write. false starts, finding what feels right. often, nothing does. often, i write about writing. i'll write about that someday.

some songs are conversational. others are poetic. i look at rhythm and syllables. i find myself starting lines in the same sorts of ways, and i'd like to diversify.

today i was particularly focused on rhyme schemes. there are many classic patterns to be explored. rhymes feel clunky to me, childish. i struggle to write without them. i write a line, and my brain gets stuck on a rhyme (un/intended). some of what i listened to today barely rhymed, but slanted a lot.

sometimes a good melody can substitute for a rhyme scheme. i don't know how to write melodies. a week ago, i worked on it in the shower. i found i went down a lot. i found myself limited by my vocal range and comfort. a piano might help. comfort with a fretboard might help. diversifying is a continuing struggle. vision is another.

i spent a while writing fragments in my notebook in class. i'm not going to transcribe them for you, but you can try and decode my scrawl if you'd like. no promises as to what you find.

 

 

i listened to wayward jane while i wrote this. i didn't think about it too much, but i enjoyed it. youtu.be/7yOOPnNt2Co

dying pen + late january music log

 

there's a kind of way

that i tend to write when singing

and it's different than how

thoughts come out when i'm simply sitting

or when i put my pen to paper

stare and lined pages long

i'm sitting here to replicate

the way i write a song

 

sometimes you just have to start singing in the shower

if you write about your writing eventually you'll find the power

to write something meaningful and if it makes you cringe

then that's ok it's good you tried.

my pen is dying

 

music log

i listened to this music over yesterday and today. the first 3 were on vinyl.

- firewatch score chris remo

- the navigator hurray for the riff raff

-  wounded rhymes lykke li

- squeeze + sidney gish w/ robin + aspen

- jenny from thebes the mountain goats in the car with robin

- toddy pond max garcia connover

- ash/aster wickerbird

- long time to be gone nora brown

- vivian girls vivian girls

- a sides adrianne lenker

- bright future adrianne lenker

- seed of a seed haley heynderickx

 

 

i am coming to paris to kill you

timbre timbre cover. ignore the jump cuts and the terrible fingering of the first e minor. i'm prone to wander but sometimes i think it's nice.

 

hi

what is clay & silt?

it's me, and also my blog

what are you going to put here?

i'm not sure. if i was sure, i wouldn't tell you. i don't want to feel trapped.

anything else?

you should go listen to this song: https://youtu.be/dzXLDwa1od8