Round Peak, Georgia

The Music

…it is obvious that the Georgia Jays get it. They have the necessary drive and all the signature markers of the Round Peak style.
Bill Wagner, Old Time Herald

 

The Making

“Round Peak, Georgia” is the Georgia Jays’ first album, released into the wild Dec. 4, 2015.

Here’s how we made it.

Ingredients:

1 banjo and its hominid operator

1 fiddle and its hominid operator

1 kitchen, hardwood flooring preferable

2 chairs

2 Bartlett microphones for the instruments

1 Ear Trumpet Edwina microphone for the hollers, bleats, and song-like vocal emissions

1 Shure SM57 microphone for Justin’s foot

1 stomping boot

1 tsp. spirits of Tommy, Fred, Kyle, Benton, Robert,….

Directions for Making:

Step 1: Press record button.

Step 2: Mix ingredients together until they coalesce into an emulsification of sonic bliss, or Justin’s foot spontaneously combusts.

Step 3: Press stop button.

Directions for Listening:
  1. Place CD or digital file in the appropriate playback device.
  2. Turn it up.
  3. No, louder than that.
  4. Press play.
  5. Move body parts.
  6. Repeat ad infinitum.

Suggested Pairing: brown liquor

More words about this album…

While we love just about everything about the old-time music of the American south, we both are especially fond of the style and repertoire that arose from the Round Peak region of North Carolina.

Tight fiddle and banjo pairings. Syncopated melodies. Innovative fiddle bowings and intricate banjo pickery infused with an unbridled enthusiasm for life and the living of it.

And a healthy dose of sheep bleating.

From Round Peak, to Georgia and beyond….

See the player above for samples. The album can currently be downloaded from CD Baby through this link ($9).

If you’d like a physical CD ($12), you can purchase here through this link and one will be shipped to you forthwith.

If you’d like the “Banjo Players Edition Package“, which includes the album, a PDF book of the banjo tabs for all tunes, a video course on “How To Play Banjo with a Fiddler”, and solo fiddle tracks at perfomance and slow speed for play-along banjo-fiddle jamming, then click here.

We’ll be pulling more banjo-fiddle chestnuts from another part of the country for our next project, so stay tuned….

Some People We Love

We didn’t have room on the CD case to thank folks, so we figured we’d put it here instead!

Justin’s Special Thanks: My Family (Marci, Hilda, and Buck) for putting up with my various anachronistic obsessions, David Bragger, George Boggs, Ash Raymond, Joe Willey, Dave Dowless, Dan Gellert, Rick Hocutt, The Darnell Boys, Art Rosenbaum, Jim and Charlie at ASW, Aaron Fu, The McElhannons, The Athens Folk Music and Dance Society, All the Field Recorders that saved our old Southern music from being lost forever, Paw Paw Buck and Granny Ree, and most importantly, wherever he is, Tommy Jarrell, for making me want to pick up a fiddle and wear it out.

Josh’s Special Thanks: My family – Jenn, Jules, and Tucker – for allowing the banjo to be the background soundtrack to their lives, Gima, Bops, my brother Rob for buying me my first banjo all those years ago, my longtime playing companions Joel Groover and Jim Sims, the folks at the 2005 Suwannee old-time banjo camp — Mac Benford, Mike Seeger, Brad Leftwich, et al. — who sent me diving headlong into the old time music rabbit hole, Hobart Smith for showing me who I wanted to be when I grew up, Paul Brown for being born, Aaron Fu for the amazing cover art, all the countless supporters of oldtimejam.com, and all the students of Brainjo, who motivate me to continue to grow every day, and, of course, TJ.