Album Notes

"I can't think of a banjo album like this. Peter and Eli's banjos together make a wonderful sound. I recommend this to any fan of old-time banjo or just anyone who enjoys good music." -Dom Flemons of The Carolina Chocolate Drops

This first album by Peter K. Siegel and Eli Smith features the 5-string banjo played primarily in the old-time clawhammer style, as well as 6- and 4-string banjos. The repertoire covers the wide range of music played on the banjo throughout its history, including dance tunes, parlor instrumentals, ballads, blues, laments and spirituals.

Entire banjo orchestras were common in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the 1920s, such bands as Da Costa Woltz’s Southern Broadcasters featured the sound of two banjos on their old time country music records. But the sound of banjos playing old time music together has not been heard in many a year. Now this unique American tradition is available once more on “Twelve Tunes for Two Banjos.”

These are Peter K. Siegel’s first recorded banjo performances since he played on Elektra’s “Old Time Banjo Project” in 1964. Says Siegel: “You play this thing long enough, it begins to sound pretty good!” In the interim, he produced more than 60 albums of traditional and roots-based music. His recent three-CD boxed set “Friends of Old Time Music” was released by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. The New York Times called it “a boxed set of awesome and concentrated power” and The Boston Globe called it “a precious, wildly beautiful document.”

Eli Smith is a banjo player, writer, researcher and promoter of folk music living in New York City. He regularly plays in a string band known as The Dust Busters, as part of the Roots ‘n’ Ruckus music collective and hosts the internet radio show “Down Home Radio.” He also presents “Down Home Live,” every second Saturday of the month at Banjo Jim’s on the Lower East Side. Recently, Eli presented and hosted the first annual Brooklyn Folk Festival.