We feel such joy when we play. Welcome to the Mountain Drifters. Bruce Molsky - fiddle, vocals, banjo (on Old Kimball)Allison de Groot - banjo, vocalsStash Wyslouch - guitar, vocalsAcross The Plains Of IllinoisThis “Girl I Left Behind Me” came to us by way of the great Indiana fiddler Garry Harrison and his daughter Genevieve Koester.The Flowers Of EdinburghFiddler and friend Mike Bryant reinvented Missouri fiddler Art Galbraith’s reinvention of the old Scottish dance standard. Thank you Mike!!Barlow KnifeAllison and I first met over fiddle and banjo tunes, just playing the old-time way. This is one of our favorites, from the quirky and beautiful fiddling of John Morgan Salyer of Kentucky.Between The Wars (Billy Bragg)It’s hard to speak about war and peace in a way that’s timeless like Billy Bragg can. Maybe he wrote Between The Wars in anger over Margaret Thatcher’s actions against the coal miners in Britain in the 1980’s, but for us it’s just as poignant today.Grandad’s Favorite & FlatwoodsErnie Carpenter was a beloved fiddler who left us tunes like Granddad’s Favorite, Elk River Blues, and dozens more, a big and generous legacy. His music was simply for the soul. Flatwoods was learned from a cassette tape of Tennessee fiddler Eldia Barbee, handed to me at the Appalachian String Band Festival in Clifftop, West Virginia about a zillion years ago. The Dreary Black HillsOld pal and musical stalwart Pete Coe from England presented me with his own personal copy of John Lomax’s “Cowboy Songs” when I was visiting him a couple of years ago. He said he just couldn’t sing cowboy songs in the right accent and thought maybe I could do better. Well, The Dreary Black Hills isn’t even really a cowboy song, and Stash and I aren’t exactly cowboys, but we just have to sing this!Metís Set The great Metís fiddler John Arcand gave us the first tune in this set, The Grey Owl, a big favorite in Saskatoon where John lives. Next is The Girl I Left Behind a la Walter Flett from Manitoba. Flett, a very traditional and powerful player, was the father-in-law of Teddy Boy Houle, occasional visitor and performer at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, Washington. The third piece is The Old Reel Of Eight, from Gilbert Anderson, one of Big John’s big influences.Free A Little BirdStory has it that, in 1927, The John R. Dykes String Band (later billed as Dyke’s Magic City Trio) traveled from home in Kingsport, Tennessee all the way to New York to record. Free A Little Bird was part of that session. And on that same trip, one of the trio’s members, George “Hub” Mahaffey also made some recordings with another musician - Doc Boggs!Isambard’s Waltz (Bruce Molsky)I collect strange and old fashioned names and have a small catalog rattling around in my head. Also, I used to be an engineer in a previous life. Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Waltz pays tribute to the British engineer with the strange name, even though it was originally written to honor John Arcand, whose name isn’t so strange except when he uses it in the Arcand-saw Traveler.Old KimballEvery verse in Old Kimball begins a different, unrelated story, and they’re all good! From the wonderful singing of Texas Gladden, (sister of the equally wonderful Hobart Smith) of Smyth County, Virginia.Down The Road Somewhere Eck Robertson and also The Massey Family, all from Texas recorded this mind-bender of a melody. We’ve shortened the title, but not the tune . . . The Old JawboneThe song dates back to at least the 1840s where it was said to have been written by one Silas Sexton Steele, and has been played every possible way ever since. And they say that Samson slew a thousand men with the jawbone of an a**. So the story might even be a little older yet.Pateroller TuneA mystery cassette appeared one day, shortly after I started playing the fiddle. It came sans notes, tune titles, nothing at all, just a blank label. There were three tunes on it - the first, I found out (way later) was Gribble, Lusk & York’s “Rolling River.” Some time after that I discovered the rest of the recordings the trio made for the Library of Congress in the 1940’s. It was one of those musically life changing things that made me really want to play old time music.Please enjoy this journey with us.