Shakespeare's in the Boneyard & the Lost Gander's Got the Blues - Marc Nerenberg - 10 March 2025

Sometimes deadlines can be useful in my artistic pursuits. They push me to actually finish things that tend to end up sitting in the limbo of "good enough for now" while I pursue different artistic projects. To this end, I set myself the deadline of my 76th birthday (today, 11 March 2025) to post an actual final, finished version of this song that I've been tinkering with on and off for ten months now.
I thought I had recorded such a video last Friday, and I was saving it till today to post. So I was ahead of the game, until, that is, another stanza idea came into my mind over the weekend that I thought improved the song.
So yesterday I started again from scratch to make a new video of the final definitive version. It took me most of the day to get what I wanted - and this is it! So, I now wish myself a happy birthday and post the final, finished version of "Shakespeare's in the Boneyard & the Lost Gander's Got the Blues" !
This was played on a 1927 Whyte Laydie banjo tuned in Open C tuning (gCGCE), but with a capo on the four long strings at the 5th fret that transforms the tuning into gFCFA (an F9 chord). I use mostly old-time thumb-lead two-finger picking, with brief moments of clawhammer style for rhythmic variety. This was recorded on 10 March 2025, in Montreal West, Québec, Canada.