One of Hank Williams' lesser-known gems.  This may be the archetypal country song, with themes of trains, prisons, violent crime and lost love. 

We love the early bluegrass tradition of mandolin and guitar duets. Tom first heard this old Blue Sky Boys number performed by Doc and Arnold Watson.

Neil learned this beautiful lament from the singing of Paul Brady. It was written in the United States, brought back to Ireland, and collected years later by Irish folklorists.  In the 1860s, the Irish were easy targets for unscrupulous Civil War recruiters, since the Irish economy was still ravaged by the potato famine.  Recruiters for the Confederate Army neglected to tell the recruits that wages would be paid in Confederate scrip, which by 1864 was nearly worthless. Many deserted, and headed to seaports to find passage back to Ireland.

Tom wrote this with a nod to the century-old tradition of genteel parlor music played on the banjo. His wife, Susanne, is from Schoharie County, New York, and this tune is dedicated to her.

From the fertile, if bizarre, mind of Uncle Dave Macon, the first real star of the Grand Ole Opry.  We first heard this tune at the Club 47, in the early 60s; it was a staple of Bob Siggins, banjo player with the Charles River Valley Boys.

Recorded by G. B. Grayson and Henry Whitter in the late '20's, this stark tale of a footloose hero and young love gone wrong, with its eerie accompaniment, exemplifies everything that was attractive about old-time music to our sheltered, suburban adolescent minds forty-five years ago.

This old comic ballad has been found in Britain (sung by Jeannie Robertson), the Appalachians (Uncle Eck Dunford, Sarah Ogan Gunning), and the Adirondack Mountains (Larry Older).

Originally recorded as "Chattanooga Blues" by Ida Cox in 1927.  Clarence Greene, a white fiddle player with Byrd Moore's Hot Shots, changed a few lyrics, retitled it and recorded it a year later. Greene reportedly learned to play blues guitar from the legendary Blind Lemon Jefferson.

Tom learned this from the singing of the Low Gap, N.C. fiddler Tommy Jarrell. It's the kind of song that gives crime a bad name.

Recorded by Lead Belly in Austin, Texas in 1949.  Tom learned it from Happy Traum, and it's also been recorded by our old friends Jay Ungar and Molly Mason, by Jim Kweskin of Jug Band fame, and by Lonnie Donegan, the king of British skiffle music.

Neil learned this song from Bill Nixon, a wonderful singer and guitarist on the Cambridge folk scene in the 1960's.  This was originally a broadside written during the Gold Rush, and published for homesick miners, who would pay dearly for anything that sang of their hardships.

Though we learned this from the New Lost City Ramblers, it's originally from a 1937 recording by the Dixon Brothers.  Some of the lyrics echo the wave of Puritanism that was prevalent during the late Victorian era.  The line "She had the tables all dressed up, had britches on the legs" refers to the prudish practice of covering ornate carved table and piano legs with cloth leggings due to their supposed resemblance to the shape of a female ankle.

Neil sang this for years in the archaic two-chord version that most folks know. In the 1990s, he heard his friend Dave Howard sing the song with a very different tune. Neil liked it and started to sing it Dave?s way. Years later, Dave heard Neil do the song and said afterwards, "Y'know, I don't sing that song anything like you just did it."  Some might attribute that change to failing memory; we prefer to call it "the folk process."

Tom learned this from Paul Geremia thirty years ago, during a break from surf fishing — and over a glass or two of Old Fitzgerald. It was popularized by the great medicine show performer, Pink Anderson. There are many similar tunes in the blues tradition, all deriving from folk tales of a black trickster hero with supernatural power — but normal human temptations.

We originally heard this sung by Joan Baez, who recorded it on her first Vanguard album.  We were always struck by the austere beauty of the melody and the poetry of the lyrics.  Neil forgot this tune for nearly forty years.  Then, while he was driving home from a gig late one night, it sprang back into his mind; he created a simpler arrangement for the traditional instrumentation of the old-time string band.

Neil wrote this for his late wife, Donna, who passed away in 2007. She loved to dance, while Neil preferred to play — so he wrote this tune for her to dance to.

This is an example of a Southern gospel tune that found its way from the family songbook in the parlor to the bluegrass repertoire. For Artie Traum.