Cold Frosty Morn in Central Texas

After writing about Ducks on the Frogpond, I decided to really try to figure out how to get cassette recordings on to the laptop. Turns out it isn't that hard at all, so I spent some time the other night wading through tapes and transferring. There are some good tunes and some interesting ideas that I had forgotten about. Here is one, a rendition of Cold Frosty Morn in gGDGD tuning. It's a great tuning, really low and droning, it almost sounds at times out of tune. Or maybe the sound is an archaic one, foreign to my ears while also sounding 'right'. I learned the tuning from the liner notes to the Black Twig Pickers (see Klang icon in my blog list) album called Hobo Handshake, and figured out the song from listening, listening, listening to Mike Gangloff's playing on said album. The Black Twigs are my all time favorite old time band, and to be honest, Mike Gangloff is my favorite banjo player. The Twigs, and Gangloff, are amazing to me because they often play the songs straight while at the same time exploring them, following the tunes into interesting and incredibly evocative terrain. Because of that willingness to explore, they capture the essence of old time music without simply reproducing the tunes note for note. They'll have a 7" out this Saturday for record store day, which I may review once I get it. And also on it's way to me is a cassette they recently recorded. Needless to say I'm very excited for these new sounds! About the song...one of the first banjo songs I heard that really moved me. Beautiful and lonesome, but with a certain kind of heft that makes it seem strong too. Despite the title, I've never got the feeling of a cold frosty morning when listening to it. Sometimes when I play it here in Texas, I think of it as a form of sympathetic magic, maybe by playing the song we'll have a cold frosty morning here sometime.