Summertime Stridulations by Jeff Curtis

I started teaching myself clawhammer banjo right around the same time the COVID-19 pandemic struck, with the intention of learning a bunch of old-timey traditional folk songs.. While I did learn a few, I mostly became enamored with the oddity of the instrument compared to anything else I've ever played -- it seemed completely alien to me -- and became enthralled with discovering all the different kinds of sounds, melodies, drones, chords, and rhythms I found while exploring it.

The songs in this collection were recorded from June through August of 2020. Just during that time period, I could notice my playing ability greatly improving, or at least changing, as I became more comfortable and used to it. I fully acknowledge that much of my playing here is flat-out atrocious, and not always completely in tune; but it all feels natural to me -- this is about the sounds, not about being an amazing technical player.

All but one of the songs here are original compositions; the song "Dinah" is an old traditional folk song that I learned from a recording of it by Sheila Kay Adams -- you can find her beautiful rendition of it with a quick YouTube search. I tried not to mangle it *too* much.

Some of the songs are my attempts at working up "trad"-sounding tunes; most of them are completely non-traditional. In fact, the phrase I keep coming back to for this is "Nontraditional Inept Gothic Clawhammer Banjo," so, if you're looking for a bunch of "Cripple Creek" variations or whatever, you should probably look elsewhere. This was recorded in the greater Cleveland, Ohio area.

All of these songs were played in the "Double C" tuning (gCGCD), for extra droniness.

Jeff Curtis is an experimental clawhammer banjo and bass player, and cat cartoonist, in the Cleveland, Ohio area.

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