I've decided to post two together here... just to keep up a little with my massively advancing banjo compatriot Brendan.
I decided to play The Battering Ram slowly in order to improve my technique. However,what you will hear is a bag of cats being strangled slowly. Sorry about that.
Secondly, here's my version of Far From Home. A lovely hornpipe... my father does a great version of this one...
This is a real session standard, though people really struggle with the name... is it 'Maids of Mount Cisco', 'The Maid of Monsisco', or the 'Maid of Mount Kisco'?
There is a town just north of New York City called Mount Kisco, and most of the stories about the origin of this tune seem to point directly to that. Of all of these, I think the most likely to be true is that the great Sligo fiddle player, James Morrison (the professor) called the tune 'The Maid of Mount Kisco', in honour of his wife, who was from... you guessed it, Mount Kisco.
Here's a great version of this tune being played on the 'Hammered Dulcimer' - a distinctive and very rare-to-be-seen instrument! The musician in this case is Karen Ashbrook (karenashbrook.com)
God, I've struggled to get any playing done these past two months, so I have a lot of ground to catch up on.
Here's my attempt at the drunken landlady. I've tried to grace the tune a bit more, but I'm suffering from fiddler's squeak... don't know how I'm going to get a sweet, non-scratchy, non bum-notey sound on the fiddle in time for the big session, but I'll keep trying in hope of a miracle!
Although quite similar to the Pigeon on the Gate, the Drunken Landlady is a great reel in its own right. Thought to be first collected by the Dublin piper Séamus Ennis in the 1940s on Inishnee in Roundstone Bay, Co. Galway. It is a common session tune and has been widely recorded: Bothy Band, Out of the Wind into the Sun (1977); Noel Hill &Tony Linnane. Noel Hill &Tony Linnane (1978); Tommy Peoples, The Iron Man (1982); Shaskeen, My Love Is in America (1993); John Carty, Last Night's Fun (1996) and De Danann, Wonderwaltz (2010). Here is the Noel Hill version, in between the Humours of Ballyconnell and Ryan's:
I picked up this version ("with all the bells and whistles thrown in") from tablature in Enda Scahill's Irish Banjo TutorVol. II (p. 79 and CD2 tracks 51 & 52).
