Those melodies are amazing. They go on forever. Have you heard the Shadows?
It's these three teenage sisters from New Hampshire in the 1960s
that put out a record called Philosophy of the World.
And they only played with each other, and they had no music.
They were homeschooled and they lived in the woods, and they didn't have a record.
We've got a radio orchestra.
And their dad made them practice every day.
And played since their dad died in 1975.
For one show that my friend Thomas was at, they went for the Sun Ra Orchestra in 2000.
Really?
They fucking did. They sang five songs. He said they came in, and she said,
Well, we're really happy to be here.
We haven't played since our dad died in 1975.
So we're a little rusty. We don't remember four songs, but here we go.
And he said it was like the impressed play on the record.
Like, it's just sad.
They sing in unison these crazy New Hampshire accents.
These really crazy weird melodies that go, there's no, like, they repeat,
but in really weird places.
Myít my own
Thank you all for coming.
This is the most amazing place in the world,
both the city and especially the Bowery,
and I couldn't wait that long.
So we're just letting it come back, which is really nice.
These are all old folk songs,
mostly application folk songs in the first almost Irish.
I was out walking around one night,
and I came upon a Bill Jones.
He was walking, he was talking with a girl I loved,
and I meant for to live alone.
He said, young man, I'm 22, to go for the big control.
So I drew a revolver from my side,
and I shot at the poor boy's son.
Right, welcome to tone session number five.
Sam Amidon is playing for the second time in Edinburgh
in a very short space of time.
You just decided you liked it and wanted to come back.
It was the Bowery is too awesome.
So was that the first time you'd been to Edinburgh then
in November when you played it?
I was here for one afternoon when I was 14,
and we went to the castle.
That was the last time I was here.
It was great.
Ruth and I went in November too, it was really fun.
Somebody walking out gave me their ticket,
so I didn't have to buy a ticket.
Now the stuff that you play,
you were saying yesterday,
it's none of it is your own material.
You tried writing a song once,
and it was a disaster.
Yeah, I wrote a whole album of songs,
and the whole thing was a disaster.
I tried to write and record it in 12 hours.
Then maybe that was the problem.
Because I find I don't really like cover versions very much.
I always want to hear them,
and whenever I hear them,
I find myself quite disappointed.
But I love folk music,
but folk music is in many ways is cover versions.
Yeah, but there's no original.
Yeah, exactly, nobody, the original gets lost.
But I don't know why I sort of like that.
Or the original never existed really,
because maybe the original was a different song,
and then somebody forgot half the words
and had to come up with new ones,
and then changed some of, forgot the melody.
The next person who learned it
forgot half of the melody,
and then you have a new song.
But you grew up with it in your family, didn't you?
Because one of the songs that you picked to play later
on the podcast is actually your parents, isn't it?
So you grew up around all of this,
and has it sort of just been a natural progression?
No, it hasn't been natural.
I mean, I did grow up with it,
and so in that way it was natural,
but when I was a kid,
I was much more into playing Irish fiddle.
And it was, in a way,
the way I got really into the old-time stuff
was really similar for a lot of these people,
which is that I, you know,
the CD store downtown started reissuing,
like people started reissuing Doc Boggs,
and in a way it wasn't that different
from a lot of people where I was getting into free jazz
and I was, you know, I bought Yola Tango.
I can hear the heart beating as one in 1998
when it came out, and at that same year was also like,
you know, so it wasn't like I was steeped in the songs
from the moment I was born,
but it is true that my parents sing folk songs.
Because it's quite funny, because American folk music
can be quite a weird mixture of something,
because a lot of it seems to come from
a very bluesy sort of an area.
And a lot of it's come from here.
Yeah, and that's what I mean.
You get this, especially, well,
when you play the fiddle, for example,
it's very real-like, and yet some of the other stuff
that you play, like you say, it's more appellation
or things like that, so you get quite a weird mixture,
which, the first song, the first session tracks,
can be 1842, which whereabouts in that spectrum
does that one sit?
It's an old-time song.
I'm not sure where it comes from.
I mean, I learned it from a guy named Jeff Davis.
1842.
I didn't know what I should do.
Sailed across the ocean,
broke on the ground.
Broke sugar, broke sugar, broke sugar.
Sugar in the cream jar, I didn't know.
Just on the railroad,
far, far away dried it comes, picking on a everything girl.
1843, I sat out across the sea,
in a speck of sea.
For me, work on a railroad, broke sugar, broke sugar.
I have to confess, when you brought out the fiddle at the November gig, it was, I mean,
I love to hear beautiful songs and so on, but for me that was actually the highlight
of the show, particularly because you sort of teased people in the sense that you sort
of were sawing away, and you did it for so long that I think, well, Ruth was saying that
you look at the audience, some of them are thinking, Jesus, can you actually play this
thing?
Or has he just picked it up?
Well, absolutely.
It was something that I thought about in high school a little bit.
I mean, that was a great moment because like I started playing the fiddle and it was out
of tune.
And so I had, and it was, I just like hadn't played the fiddle for a while.
So I think there was also a moment where I was wondering if I knew how to play the fiddle.
But it was the only thing I did for a long time and I grew up playing Irish tune.
I grew up in New England and there's a really strong fiddle version there, but it's mostly
Irish tunes, French Canadian tunes and old time tunes, and there's sort of a mix.
So that's what was around.
And I just listened to all that and kind of made a beeline for the Irish stuff.
And but I mean, but then, you know, I got into old time music at the same time as I
got into free jazz in high school.
And for me, they, they were really similar.
They were both really abrasive traditions that took a lot of listening to kind of like
get into because at first it just sounded like noise.
I mean, that was true for Albert Euler and that was true for, you know, old time stuff.
But a lot of your, a lot of your guitar and your banjo stuff is very, it's very straight
out.
Very pretty.
Yeah, yeah.
It's not, I mean, it's not different.
Some people like it.
Some people don't.
But it's not difficult music in the sense, whereas when you play the fiddle both times,
you've sort of like, say, you just sort of tease in and out of tune.
And I mean, do you watch the audience for a reaction to see how they're responding?
No, but you're aware of certain things that sort of nervous laughter as soon as you get
to the stage where there's nervous laughter thing, right?
Let's show these fuckers.
Yeah.
It's like that review.
It's beautiful.
That review is amazing.
I gotta go.
I gotta read it because it has a sense of origin at the end.
Hi.
