Most of the 'traditional' or 0ld-time songs that I know were originally learned using secondary sources. My first exposure to this type of music was in high school during the 'folk boom'. I listened to Peter Paul & Mary, Kingston Trio... groups like that. With a couple of other high school buddies I was in a 'folk trio' with Guitar, Banjo and Bass. We played at 'hootenanny's', etc and we even made $90 once playing at a supermarket parking lot. In college, I also got into Doc Watson, Tom Paxton as well as the Beatles and other 'pop' groups. I also spent time in the summer going to a coffee house in Minneapolis and hearing Dave Ray, Leo Kottke and Blind Bill Lucas.
When Lynn and I moved to Minneapolis in 1970 (after a year of teaching high school in Montana), I started working as a bartender at the Black Forest Inn. There were some musicians among the regulars and workers who would get together and jam. One of the cooks did John Prine songs, a sculptor (Bruce Thomas) knew some Carter Family tunes, Noel Johnson sang blues tunes and I did some Doc Watson and other folks songs (Jesse James, Wabash Cannonball, etc). I did a few nursing home gigs with a college friend and Lynn and I did some duets (like Paxton's "last thing on my mind"). We lived in a house with a bunch of college friends - one of whom had a Green Brier Boys Album which is where I think I got 'Life is like a Mountain Railroad' and 'Amelia Earhart'.
In the 1970's there was a fairly vibrant acoustic music 'scene' in Mpls, especially on the West Bank, but I didn't really get into it; however, I do have a couple of LPs from era: Dakota Dave Hull & Sean Blackburn, etc. I've since gotten to know some of the musicians who were part of that scene, like Bob Douglas & Adam Granger (who were on the early Prairie Home Companion shows). Note that a lot of my listening in the 70's was to pop-folk singers like Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and Fleetwood Mac.
I also turned my focus to classical guitar: taking lessons and Music Theory classes at the U of M. In 1976 or so, a guitarist friend who had achieved what I was going for (MFA or some such), started looking for work in academia - he couldn't find anything so he took a job as a manager at a Perkins restaurant. So when the Black Forest decided they needed a front-in manager, I took the job and quit school (and gradually started playing more folk-oriented guitar).
In the 80's I was again busy with school (training for a software programming job) and kids (Alex born in 1978, Tommy in 1985). In 1986 or 1987 the church Lynn was going to started a variety show called 'The Lynnhurst Home Companion' - Lynn and I with a couple other musicians from church formed the 'Hot Dish String Band' which was the house band for the show. Every year we did 3 or 4 numbers including 'hokey' gospel numbers like 'Drop Kick Me Jesus' or 'We need a whole lot more of Jesus and a lot less rock and roll', but also one or tow folk and blue grass tunes. At these shows Lynn and I would usually do a duet as well.
This got me listening to more acoustic music and on the lookout for 'songs to sing': both for 'Hot Dish' and for the Bob-i-Lynn duet. I started getting CDs by Hot Rise, Laurie Lewis, Alison Krauss (before 'o brother' made her a relative mega-star) and other 'mainstream' bluegrass groups. We joined MBOTMA and started going to the August Bluegrass festival (where we started being 'exposed' to old time music as well as bluegrass ). In the early 90's Lynn and I took a couple of Bluegrass Jam classes with Brian Wicklund and Kevin Barnes (then members of Stoney Lonesome).
Of course, since MBOTMA is a bluegrass and
oldtime music association, Lynn and I were also exposed to old time groups like Big Hoedown, Reeltime travelers and musicians like Bruce Molsky and Rayna Gellert -- we also started catching some of these groups when they came to Mpls to play at venues like the Cedar -- and I started adding "old-time" CDs to my collection.
During the dotcom boom my company split in two and I went with the 'dotcom' company - with the bust in 2001, I was laid off but was fortunately hired by the 'software' side and resumed work within 3 weeks. During my 'career' years I'd spent a lot of time learning new skills on off hours. After the layoff routine, I decided to start devoting that time to guitar, mandolin and learning new songs and tunes. I re-learned words to many songs I'd sung before and decided to learn new songs based on whatever I was into at the time. I was on a Norman Blake kick for while so learned a few he wrote as well as his take on traditional songs.
My mandolin skills were improving playing for folk dances and I started learning more fiddle tunes on mandolin. Although I had been flat-picking a few tunes on guitar for many years, I became more focused in 2003 when MBOTMA started sponsoring the duet/flat-picking contest at the state fair. I started going to flat-picking jams and have 'won' the senior championship for a few years (there have usually been only a couple of entries in the over 56 category). Lynn and I also took part in the duet contests and came in 3rd last year!.
As Lynn and I started playing out, I started looking for songs that would work as duets. Looking for something different, I started getting old LPs on e-bay - in some cases they were bluegrass and old time bands from the 70s and 80s in other cases collections of 78s. A friend also gave me CDs with 4 or 5 of the New City Lost Ramblers (transcribed from his LP collection). I also got CDs of the complete Carter Family and early Delmore brothers. Often we'd learn a song based on a contemporary rendition, but I'd also listen to an older source.
Last November, I got an IPod for my birthday (thanks! Lynn& Alex), and I have put most of my CD collection and some of my LP collection on it. (over 7,000 songs). On walks and at work I listen to it in shuffle mode and make note of something that might work as a Bob-i-Lynn tune. (Especially with CD Collections or CD-ROM mp3's of 78s, I might hear something for the first time on the IPod).
Thus, for some of our recent songs, we are learning songs from an original source (or at least a source recorded in the 20s or 30s), rather than from an 'interpretation'. In at least one case hearing the 'original' has led me to put a song on the 'to consider' list, even though I had heard several other groups do it before (This is 'Bear Creek' from the Carter Family- I'm trying to come up with something similar to Maybelle's guitar part but so far it's still in the 'working on' category).
Currently my way of tracking a song 'to consider' is to create a new document in Google Docs with at least the title (and often with whatever words I can grab on the internet). Of the 60 or more songs I've considered over the last 9 months, about 3 or 4 have actually gotten into our repertoire.
This post has been a sort of musical autobiography - next time I'll talk a bit about bringing a song from the 'to consider stage' to actually performing it and what the heck all this has to do with old-time purists, etc.
