Joseph Decosimo - Will Davenport's Tune [Official Video]

"Will Davenport's Tune" out September 16, 2022 on Sleepy Cat Records. From the repertoire of Clyde Davenport, Monticello, KY Full Release Notes, vinyl/cd preorder here:
https://www.sleepycatrec.com/scr019-1...
https://josephdecosimo.bandcamp.com/t...
Here's the first single for my new album "While You Were Slumbering," coming out 11/11/22.
I learned this 19th century banjo piece during my visits with the great fiddler and banjo player Clyde Davenport in Jamestown, Tennessee. An unnamed tune from his father Will Davenport’s (1868-1950) repertoire, it existed only in the Davenport family. I began visiting Clyde and his wife Lorene in the early aughts. Clyde was in his 80s at the time, had received a National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellowship, and probably maintained the largest repertoire of old fiddle and banjo music of any traditional musician in Southern Appalachia. It was magical to sit with him and absorb the intricacies of his playing and twisty repertoire. He died in February 2020 at 98 years old, and Lorene died later that October. I miss visiting them. They were profoundly generous people.

Over time, the piece shifted in my hands. I recorded the banjo part in my attic with a beautiful on-loan gourd banjo made by friend and banjo maker Jason Romero. Composer and fiddler Cleek Schrey’s pump organ part, played on a 19th century pump organ offers a fresh take on an instrument that has long been a part of Southern vernacular music. Elephant Micah’s Matt O’Connell adds understated percussion—an interpretation of the finger knocking hand percussion of Eastern North Carolina’s Walter Raleigh Babson, who would rap his knuckles on a table, mimicking the percussive flatfoot dance rhythms that often accompany Southern fiddle and banjo tunes.

https://www.josephdecosimo.com/
Arranged by Joseph Decosimo

VIDEO CREDITS
Footage, direction, editing by Gabe Anderson//Strange Bug
Assistant editing by Kethan Fadale
Watercolor assets by Larissa Wood
Filmed at Eno River in Durham, NC

SONG CREDITS
Banjo - Joseph Decosimo
Percussion - Matthew O’Connell
Pump Organ - Cleek Schrey

Recorded by Joseph at home in Durham and at Princeton University and by Matthew in Raleigh


Mixed by Alec Spiegelman
Mastered by Mike Monseur

Sleepy Cat Records
Vinyl, CD, Digi, Release Notes
https://www.sleepycatrec.com/scr019-1...