Ojai Sessions

04/10/2023

This face! , ,

04/05/2023

Duncan on fiddle Robin Riley !

From the upcoming album On Banjo, releasing May 5, 2023Pre-Save/Pre-Order here: https://found.ee/onbanjo“Foggy Morning Breaking”(Alison Brown/Steve Martin) B...

03/06/2023

Worth a listen, story and music about a real life song catcher.

The doc on folk song collector Sidney Robertson Cowell is out now on BBC Radio 3! Had a blast working with Clare Walker on this!

Traveling thousands of miles all over the US in the depression era, Cowell was willing to track down songs in unlikely places, once writing "I don't scare easily." She spent a night riding in a hearse in Wisconsin just to question the driver and hear his songs, walked up mountains to record lumberjacks and traditional Appalachian singers and poled three miles downriver after dark on a makeshift raft to find a famed fiddler in his goldmine in California.

Listening to her recordings is like traveling back in time; they capture the voices of so many different nationalities that emigrated to the US, but she also made recordings on the Aran Islands in Ireland. During her lifetime Cowell was marginalized like so many women collectors of that period, but in this celebration of her recordings and observations, we're giving her work the attention it deserves.

Edited to make sure the great Clare Walker gets her dues! —RG

Listen in here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001jlm9

03/06/2023

03/05/2023

Just had to share my overlapping worlds of music and art. Made this soul collage at a workshop at , ,
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05/23/2022

Nice tune

The Bridestones are a chambered cairn, dating from the Neolithic Age and situated in the hills on Biddulph Moor. It is open and not covered, so it is possibl...

05/03/2022

Awesome performance

A selection of three tunes to play in a short set. The first tune is called 'Snow on the Tops, which I originally recorded in late 2021, https://youtu.be/Reo...

04/21/2022

Wow!

The Hutchins Consort plays on the eight scaled violins of the violin octet deigned and built by famed luthier Dr. Carleen Hutchins. The instruments are the first successful attempt to create an acoustically balanced set of instruments that can sound truly like violins across the entire range of written music producing an astonishing palette of sounds.

Experience the sound of The Hutchins Consort at hutchinsconsort.org or LIVE at one of their upcoming events in Southern California.

🎻 Thank you, The Hutchins Consort, for your incredible contribution to the Arts and support of the Ojai Music Festival.

04/21/2022

Fun

04/20/2022

We will be meeting at the Ojai Art center for our Sunday session May 1 at 11 a.m. Here’s a list of tunes we’ll be sharing. We meet the first Sunday of every month and all are welcome!
Session list
Tonight the bottle let me down
Give me your hand
Kesh jig
Lilting Banshee
The Rakes of Mallow
Lord Mayo
Banish Misfortune
Raglan Road
Danny Boy
Connaughtmans Rambles
Cooleys Reel
Wild Mountain Thyme
Merry Blacksmith
There’ll never be anyone else like you
Bushes and briars
Blackberry blossom
Maid behind the bar
Inisheer
Lark in the morning
The Mist covered mountain
Sunny Side of the Street
Sugar Mountain