1. Julie Ann Johnson is a dance tune that fits well on the autoharp. It gave me a chance to call in an old friend, Dave Leddel, with whom I have enjoyed playing since we met at Sweet's Mill music camp around 1975. He's the best oldtime banjo player I know. It has been a real pleasure working with him on this project. He played all the banjo on this CD. (Evo's banjo is featured on Lyquid Amber's CD Drops of Rain.)

2. Old Rub Alcohol Blues from the Kentucky banjoist and singer Dock Boggs (1898-1971). In the late twenties Boggs, a coal miner from Virginia, who played banjo at parties, recorded a dozen songs for a couple of labels. He had a brief musical career and was beginning to have hopes of gaining enough fame not to have to go down into the mines any more when the depression hit. It knocked the bottom out of the record market, nobody had money to spend on entertainment. Boggs spent time moonshining and playing shows, but his wife gave him an ultimatum­quit the music or lose me. Boggs chose a home life and pawned his banjo­not doing music at all for 25-30 years.

3. Shady Grove ­ a version I learned from my autoharp inspiration, the late Kilby Snow (1905-1980). I owe much of my own style to the work of this innovative musician from North Carolina/Virginia.

4. In the Pines features the natural and pure voice of my sister, Frayda, who has sung folk with the Bluestein Family and, later, jazz in the Chapel Hill, NC area. The Leadbelly chord progression is a refreshing take on this old favorite, with a nod to The Strange Creek Singers. Randy Kohrs put in some hot bluesy licks on his dobro-style guitar that he made, himself.  

5. Sandy Medley is my pairing of the dance tunes Forks of Sandy and Sandy River Bell. I play fiddle and autoharp. Dave Leddel is on banjo and Dennis Crouch plays bass.

6. Flying and Drowning, a Lyquid Amber original, puts the autoharp in a different context. Listen to Lyquid Amber on their CD, Drops of Rain.

7. Down South Blues is a Dock Boggs classic first recorded in 1927. Boggs, born and raised in the mountains of southwestern Virginia, was an exceptional and seminally important banjo player and singer, unknown to most people. His music is a unique combination of old time mountain and blues. "I have never worked for pleasure, peace on earth I cannot find, the only thing I surely own is a worried and troubled mind," Boggs sings in "Old Rub Alcohol Blues."

8. Crockett's Honeymoon is a fairly well known American dance tune with Irish counterparts.

Photo left:I have worked with master mandolinist Kenny Hall for nearly 30 years. He performed on my first autoharp recording. Kenny has influenced scores of musicians involved in traditional music. On this CD he sings and plays on "My Ozark Mountain Home."

9. Facing the Chair is a hauntingly beautiful song, written by Irish singer/composer Andy Irvine, in memory of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Bob Reiser writes in Carry It On:

"In the United States, anti-Red hysteria swept the country following news of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. The wartime fervor carried over into a domestic war against Communists, Socialists, labor organizers, and 'free thinkers of all kinds.'

In 1920, a factory worker and a fish peddler, both active in labor causes, were dragged off a streetcar in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts, and booked for murder. Witnesses swore that Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti had been nowhere near the scene of the crime.

The prosecutor and judge didn't dispute this, but insisted that Sacco and Vanzetti, though innocent of this particular crime, were 'morally guilty because they are enemies of our existing institutions.' Political leaders and unions demonstrated and petitioned for a retrial, but in 1927, Sacco and Vanzetti faced the electric chair.

Fifty years after their execution, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis pardoned them and proclaimed August 23, 1977, "Sacco and Vanzetti Day," removing all stigma from their names."