Jody Stecher & Kate Brislin

After a summer in San Francisco, and an autumn on the Albion Ridge in Mendocino County, I found myself in Berkeley, California as the new year 1969 approached. In the year or two that followed I was involved in 3…

Some months after the Bobby Darin fiasco the 5-string banjo player Roger Sprung asked me to play mandolin on his second “Progressive Bluegrass” album.  Roger, aka “Old Sausage Fingers” was the first resident of New York City to work out…

Around the time of the Vanguard fiasco the pop star Bobby Darin heard my bluegrass band somewhere and got the idea that he could make a lot of money from owning the rights to an LP record of our music…

This is a long blog post.  Let me know if it is too long please.

I’ve been writing about my recordings with Kate as a stimulus to memory. Now I’m remembering my earliest recording experiences.  

There were two kinds: in…

My Old Cottage Home

Wherever I’ve lived for the past 45 years or so I’ve had a photo of the Bahamian guitar genius Joseph Spence displayed in a high place somewhere. He was there at first to remind me to…

Beautiful

There are a number of musical settings of this hymn, ranging from maudlin to creepy to just plain wrong. But the way Bill and Earl Bollick did it was just plain beautiful. 

Also just plain wrong is a description…

Hold To God’s Unchanging Hand

I first laid on eyes on Kate Brislin at the great musical confluence of 1974 in Spokane. I was part of a Seattle-based band called Houseboat Music. She was playing banjo in a band from…

There was a ten- year gap between our sixth and seventh duet album. By the time we recorded our fourth one Kate had gotten tired of touring. I’ve said in interviews that I dragged her into our duet kicking and…

We recorded 12 songs on “Songs of The Carter Family”.  We retained elements of the Carter style, but we sang and played as ourselves.

Away Out On The Old Saint Sabbath

I like this mysterious song so much I’ve sung…

Our next two record albums were not of our duet.  First Kate made “Sleepless Nights” with Katy Moffatt.  This project was instigated by Ken Irwin of Rounder Records and released by Rounder.

I played guitar and mandolin and produced the…