Tunesmith
  • The Musicians:
  • Ken Bloom
  • Harry Bolick
  • Sam Zygmuntowicz
  • Pat Conte
  • Akira Satake
  • Henry Sapoznik
  • Marko Brehm
  • Bill Christophersen
  • Jim Garber
  • Robin Greenstein
  • Bob Guida
  • Lisa Gutkin
  • Jack Hirshorn
  • Ken Inoue
  • Scott Kellogg
  • Kevin Krajick
  • Bob Melman
  • Shlomo Pestcoe
  • Rena Rubin
  • David Sidman
  • Liz Slade
  • Steve Uhrik

This hour length CD from 1988 (recently digitally remastered) contains 23 tunes by 11 composers in the Old Timey style featuring the playing of New York City's finest old timey musicians:

The Tunes are:

  1. I Think My Brains Fell Out
  2. Walking Past Midnight
  3. Bob On The Job
  4. Bear Claw Necklace
  5. Bustin' Up
    (Recorded by Sam Zygmuntowicz
    on "Jump When The Trumpets Blow")
  6. Stranger Every Day
  7. Roll them Cotton Bales
  8. Countin' On Hanna
  9. Visitor and a Half
  10. Diamond Joe
  11. She's A Keeper
  12. Shake Your Little Foot
  13. Buying Some Time
  14. Jailbait
  15. John Aaron's Farewell to Cuyahoga
  16. Becker's Bop
  17. Jonah
  18. Gravois Creek Pump
  19. Pick of the Litter
  20. Crossing The Rockies
  21. Clogger Ladies/Flatfeet and Bloodshot Eyes
  22. Pygmies on Pennsylvania Ave
  23. The Light Of Other Days
  24. The original liner notes

Several of these tunes are still played in New York in sessions and I have had reports from Ireland that "I Think My Brains Fell Out" was being well used in sessions there. I'd love to receive email from anyone who has encountered these tunes from a source other that this cassette. - Harry

"Sometimes I think about things like that when I take the music farther and do my own composing. I mean, I compose with the old-time style, but there are differences. In that sense, I would ally myuself with people like the Horseflies, because we have the old music as our foundation, and we'll study it assiduously. and we'll painstakingly try to get it perfect, and for years we'll try to play it exactly the way the old-timers used to play it , but then eventually, we're bound to keep on walking. I think what it comes down to is that we're devoted to the old music,, but still we unabashedly admit that we prefer to let be a part of our lives right now, here in the nineteen-eighties. Because when we're playing what we want to play, and livin who we are today, we're not really trying to imitate some kind of music. We are the music. That's what keeps it alive. - New Yorker Magazine, July 20, 1987