Andrew Jackson, Go Back Home

For the past few years I have been learning to play old time clawhammer banjo. It has quickly become an essential part of my life. My banjo goes with me almost everywhere. My thoughts, both waking and asleep, are haunted by banjo tunes.
Below you'll find a link to a recording of me playing a Mary Z. Cox tune called Andrew Jackson, Go Back Home.

I've played it here on a fretless Enoch banjo, with gut strings tuned (starting from the fifth string) dADGA. This is an older tuning, equivalent to what we call Sawmill, Mountain Minor, G Modal (or A Modal if your banjo is capoed) today. You can't tune gut strings up to today's higher tunings as they would likely break. Playing songs in these older tunings is really evocative, almost foreign to my ears as this is a tuning that probably would have been used about two hundred years ago.

Though I love the sound of those gut strings, I recently put lightweight steel strings on the fretless so that I could play with a fiddler.

For best results, view the above photograph while listening to the tune.