volume 4 coming early fall! (preview track)

From the outset, Hog-eyed Man has been more of a concept than a band to us, and the CDs we’ve released are not simply collections of tunes. Each volume is an opportunity to cherish the old sounds learned from master musicians now long gone, who themselves were keeping alive the music and memories of yet earlier Appalachian fiddlers, and on back to the immigrants who carried tunes across from the Old World. But at the same time that the projects help focus and refine our conversations with the past, they also allow us to document our present-day musical exchanges, with each volume serving as a reflection of the friends, ideas, instruments, or environments that inspired and sustained us over the past year or so. For volume 4, we invited our friends Tom Baker (banjo), Nancy Hartness (guitar), Charlie Hartness (uke), and Art Rosenbaum (banjo and singing). We all huddled around two stacked Shiny Box ribbon mics without headphones, overdubs or edits. Our friend Andrew Reissiger engineered most of the album in Studio 1093 in Athens, GA, on two winter nights in December, 2017, and then taught us how to record the rest in Jason’s basement. It was easy to make good music with such good souls. We're still narrowing down the final track-list, but for sure the new CD will feature plenty of fiddle-dulcimer duets, along with trios and full-band rave-ups. Maybe a fiddle solo. It will have the usual Hog-eyed mix of rarities, unique versions of classics, and some surprises, mostly sourced from western NC & eastern KY.  We think you'll like it. Anyway, here's a little preview -- an unmixed version of Cumberland Gap from north Georgia's Allen Sisson -- with Jason on fiddle, Rob on lap dulcimer, and Tom on banjo. Art stopped by the studio on his 79th birthday and obliged our request to sing some impromptu verses. It was really fun! Much more to come.