Clifftop Notes Volume 2: Big Ears

The Clifftop notes players are (clockwise from top left) Brendan Doyle, banjo; Karen Falkowski, bass; Jody Platt, tenor guitar; Maxine Gerber, banjo; Rusty Neithammer, guitar; Deborah (Tolly) Tollefson, bass; Rich Hartness, fiddle and guitar; Edwin Wilson, guitar and banjo-uke; Mark Simos, fiddle; and Bob Carlin, producer.

Well, here it is—the concluding volume of a trilogy of recordings made at Tim Brown’s 5-String Productions in West Chester, PA in October 2005, in a marathon 10-plus-day session with the most rollicking bunch of old-time music companions I can imagine assembled in one rafter-ringing abode.

This album accompanies two volumes released earlier, The Cliffhangers: On the Edge—Traditional Old-Time Fiddle Tunes; and Clifftop Notes Vol. 1: Original Old-Time Fiddle Tunes by Mark Simos. The trilogy as a whole is a tribute to the Appalachian String Band Music Festival held each August near Clifftop, West Virginia. The Cliffhangers record presents some source material that has inspired and instructed us for the past decade or more at Clifftop. The two Clifftop Notes albums, as the name suggests, are selected from tunes I composed at or around Clifftop, played with musical friends who have inspired and midwifed creation of those very tunes over the years.

Our original concept was to do two companion albums, of traditional and original tunes respectively. We wound up with three albums due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle of tunesmithery: try to collect all your tunes, and you invariably write more. The inspiration of rehearsing for these recordings at Clifftop in summer ’05 sparked a flurry of new tunes (including “Big Ears,” “Texas Whirlwind,” “Falls of Mann,” and “Jeff in the Wilderness” on this CD).

There was also the “Rich” factor. Rich Hartness has become one of my major inspirations and influences in old-time fiddling. I invited him to join me on a tune I wrote for him, “Dark of Hartness,” and said he was welcome to play on anything else he cared to. To my surprise and delight, he showed up at Tim’s having learned a half-dozen or more of my tunes, on fiddle and guitar. I’m truly honored that a traditional musician of Rich’s stature was willing to play these newfangled tunes with me—on record, at that!

Then there was the length of some of the performances herein. Old-time musicians tend to play tunes for a long time (especially late at night). I’ve grown fond of the term “campground” for this extended, improvisational, organic form; a sound that can be heard “in the wild” and has been caught rough on field tapes, but has rarely made it onto commercial recordings. Our goal here was to capture the sound and spirit of these late night explorations and misadventures. All the music on these records was played live and for the most part we left tunes at “session length.” So consider this project a seminal recording of genuine “campground-style” old-time music!

The Tunes

1. There It Is (:10)
2. Aladdin’s Laugh (2:24)
3. Big Ears (6:41)
4. Cry Uncle Adam (4:19)
5. Texas Whirlwind (4:14)
6. Say That Again (3:31)
7. So Here So There (3:04)
8. Falls of Mann (1:48)
9. Found Indian (3:26)
10. There It Is Again /
Second Chance at Breakfast (4:48)
11. Clear the Palate (4:36)
12. Jeff in the Wilderness (6:11)
13. One More Too Many (5:46)

Total time: 51:16

Click here for detailed notes on the tunes

The Players

Mark Simos fiddle