Welcome to the fiddle studio podcast featuring tunes and stories from the world of traditional music and fiddling. I'm Megan Beller. And today I'll be bringing you a setting of Shove That Pig's Foot a Little Further in the Fire from an old-time jam at the R House in Baltimore, Maryland.
Hello, everyone, I hope you're well. Today I'm going to be talking about old-time jams. Mostly because this month of November I have a number of tunes from an old-time jam that I recorded and transcribed and I will be bringing to you. The old-time jam in our neighborhood is at a dining hall called R house. It is not my own house. But it is R-the-letter House and in my family sometimes we call it the R house so that it's a little less confusing to the kids. They don't think that we're going out to dinner at R house when we're really just going back home for leftovers.
But I didn't grow up going to a lot of old time jams or even having that much exposure to old-time music because my dad was into New England fiddling and some Irish fiddling and his band played New England music and so that's what I was steeped in. And it wasn't really until college I started going down to Ithaca a lot in New York that I got a lot more exposure to old-time music.
The band The Horseflies was playing in Ithaca at that time. Judy Hyman was the fiddler. And I got to dance to them and hear them and there were a lot of old time jams being played at parties in Ithaca after concerts and events was really a wonderful scene down there.
The horseflies have a great old time sound, both in concert and on the dance floor. It's very hypnotic sound. My favorite album of theirs actually is In the Dance Tent which is a live album. At the same time, as I was enjoying old time music more I started listening to the album The Ways of the World by Rayna Gellert, which I highly recommend, and I really loved Rayna's fiddling. I loved that she sounded very rhythmic and powerful like she played for dances, even though it was still kind of smooth and old timey.
Old time jams can be late at night, often after the concert or the dance ends, people will sit and play old time tunes, Fiddlers and banjo players will tune their instruments to the key that they're playing. And so everyone will tune their strings to notes in the key of A and play tunes in A or they'll all tune to D play tunes, and D. So they tend to stay in that key for a long time. There's a lot less variety of keys at old time jams, just part of the reason that the tunes this month will all be in the key of G, we were in the key of G at the jam that I swung by.
Players will stay in that key until well, basically, until no one else can think of a tune in that key. So it could be a little while or it can be a long while. You also hear tunes repeated many more times and an old-time jam, as opposed to an Irish session where it's three times through the tune and then maybe into a different tune and a different key, three times through that, three times through the next. They'll just stick with one tune at an old time jam and play it eight or 10 or 20 times sort of depends on how late it is and how much everyone's had to drink.
There isn't a ton of variation in the fiddling you can play it down the octave for a variation or experiment with droning. It just goes and goes and goes it is a very zen experience for me to be in an old time jam. And I find it kind of fun because it's easy to pick up the tunes. They don't have as many notes, they tend to be simpler. And then you're hearing them so many times that it makes it really easy to pick them up. Going to an old time jam I know I'm going to be able to play more than if I go to a really high level Irish jam where I just don't know the repertoire for those particular players.
I'm just going to end my old-time jam shpiel with a joke. This is a joke about old-time tunes and by now hopefully you know enough that you'll get why it's funny. How can you tell old time tunes apart?
By their names. I got Charley with that joke.
So today is a setting of Shove That Pig's Foot a Little Further in the Fire from this old-time jam at the R House. This tune is a real in G major.
A pig's foot is a blacksmith's tool resembling a crowbar used to manipulate pieces of pig iron in a forge. My oldest son did ask me if I was playing a fiddle tune based on enhanced interrogation techniques of pigs. But no, it has nothing to do with putting pigs in fires. A pig's foot is a tool.
This tune is often attributed to the playing of Marcus Martin, who was a fiddler from western North Carolina. He was recorded playing it in the 1950s by Peter Hoover in field recordings. Mark had played it as a duet with his son Wayne, and they played it in A major. You can go and listen to the field recording. There's a website called slippery Hill and they have some old recordings. Marcus and Wayne sound really, really good. I enjoyed listening to it.
Another fun fact about this tune the melody is used in the film Cold Mountain, but they called it Ruby with Eyes that Sparkle because I guess they didn't want to deal with the name which is a bit of a mouthful.
Charley and I are going to play it here for you. Our first old-time tune for November.
Thanks so much for listening, you can head over to fiddlestudio.com for the sheet music to this and all of the tunes I teach. I'll be back next time with another tune for you have a wonderful day.
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