An excellent Thanksgiving weekend. Over the years of playing together, any time we gather for holidays, special events, or just wanting to see each other we spend a large portion (if not all) of our time together going over old and new songs. These jam sessions can last for hours. However, this Thanksgiving holiday we focused our attention on family as John’s new grandchild made her first trip to West Virginia. Even as a 4 month old child, she is already responding to the Old Time music we play as she smiles when someone sings “Going Down to Cairo.”
Now that’s not to say we did not get in a least a short but fruitful music session. Members of our band that live in West Virginia have begun to establish regular Old Time jams with others that live there. So, they are learning new songs so fast it is hard to keep up. Our time was spent just going over and recording many of these new songs for John to learn. This included tunes such as “Boatman,” “Cumberland Gap,” Indian Ate the Woodchuck,” “New Five Cents” and “Twin Sisters.” John attempted to show off his playing skill with the Appalachian Dulcimer. Well, his skill has a ways to go but was able to show the band a new song, “Shoo Fly.”
Just hope that everyone else had as good a holiday as we did.