Selecting Songs

As mentioned in previous postings, I spend a lot of time listening to songs with an eye (or would that be an ear?) to see(or hear) if a song is suitable as a bob-i-lynn song (or sometimes just a 'bob' song). Recently I started to learn a new batch of songs so I started thinking about how I go about choosing a song to add to our repertoire.

In a new column in MBOTMA's Inside Bluegrass which discusses song-writing, the columnist discussed the importance of a song's melody and how it is the first thing you notice, comparing it to seeing a 'pretty girl' across the room or some such (Inside Bluegrass is not on-line and I don't have that issue handy). Although from the outside, a lot of the tunes for old time/folk music may all sound alike, I am often first drawn to a song because of the melody. For example, both Lynn and I were first drawn to Charlie Poole's Milwaukee Blues because of the tune (which Lynn likes to do on the fiddle). And often there is an instrumental riff that get's me interested - in his version of Otto Wood, Norman Blake's guitar breaks were one of my main motivations. (Although, my breaks have diverged a bit from his).

Sometimes a song grabs me because of some link to my life or to 'contemporary' happenings. Sometimes the link is obscure: I have a brother in-law 'Otto', so Otto Wood is for him. I learned Gillian Welch's song 'One More Dollar' during the dot-com boom and when my son was graduating from college with a degree in computer science. Her song is about leaving 'the hills' to go to California for a 'job in the fruit trees"; I imagined all the young software developers flocking to Silicon Valley. (As it turns out, Alex stayed in Mpls, but works for Adobe, based in San Jose).

Often a turn of phrase is what interests me; although often it is after I've started to learn the song that I'm struck with a certain set of words. Since these are folk songs, some of the phrases occur in multiple songs. Here's a few songs that I'm learning with a turn of phrase that please or amuse:

If I Lose Let me Lose: "The boys was fightin' the Spaniards while I was fightin' gnats "(also in Battleship of Maine which I don't do)

You've Been That Friend to Me: "Misfortune nursed me a child and loved me fondly, too"

One song I have yet to learn has one of my favorites:

Railroad Blues (Sam McGee):"I went to see the gypsy at the fortune telling place/She read my mind...& then she slapped my face".

Since Lynn and I started to play out more, I've started to also consider songs that will expand the 'sound' of what we do. Blue Railroad Train from the Delmore Brothers is an example. When we learned it, it contrasted well to the mostly Carter Family duets we were doing. I learned Bruce Molsky's version of Charming Betsy because it is up-tempo and it works with Mandolin and Guitar. And I'm always looking for something in 3/4 time as an alternative (many of these don't work out).

Finally, any song that I start to work on has to hold up under multiple repetitions. I always have a print out of the words (rarely the chords) and keep singing a song until it is memorized. I almost always play with accompaniment (I tell Lynn I need the Gestalt approach), since I usually sing differently if I'm not playing along with guitar or mandolin. I rarely spend extra time on 'memorization' so if I get tired of a song before it's memorized it doesn't get added to the repertoire. Of course we rest songs, especially if we've had to really focus on them (for example, any song we prepare for the duet contest). And there a few songs that seem to be permanently retired, but usually if I've learned a song it stays in the repertoire.

Of course why I'm drawn to mostly old-time music in the first place is a topic for other posts ;-)