Album Notes

“Well-known songwriter Mark Simos is also a fine fiddler in the old-time style. His new CDs pay loving tribute to that mysterious Appalachian sound. Between the lines you hear both the roots as well as the fruits of Mark's inspiration.” - Tim O’Brien

“Here is not an oxymoron but a combination full of charm and challenge: modern old-time music. Like all great old-time music, it surges and breaks like the waves of the sea, as layers of groove advance and recede. The difference is subtle; here are strong grownup musicians in their prime, with wide-ranging worldly interests, spinning out byzantine but earthy melody. It's like how you heard this stuff the very first time: half awake, dreamy, freighted, alternately pastoral and frightening with unknown implication, like hiking up a twisting flash flood canyon on a blustery day.” - Darol Anger

The Players:
Mark Simos fiddle
with fellow Cliffhangers:
Brendan Doyle banjo
Karen Falkowski string bass
Rusty Neithammer guitar
Jody Platt tenor guitar
and special guests:
Maxine Gerber banjo (tracks 4, 11, 12)
Rich Hartness fiddle (tracks 2, 3, 12), guitar (track 5)
Deborah (Tolly) Tollefson string bass (tracks 3, 12)
Edwin Wilson guitar (tracks 3, 11)
banjo-uke (track 5)

Produced by Bob Carlin

Well, here it is—the concluding volume of a trilogy of recordings made at Tim Brown’s 5-String Productions in West Chester, PA in October 2005, in a marathon 10-plus-day session with the most rollicking bunch of old-time music companions I can imagine assembled in one rafter-ringing abode.

This album accompanies two volumes released earlier, The Cliffhangers: On the Edge—Traditional Old-Time Fiddle Tunes; and Clifftop Notes Vol. 1: Original Old-Time Fiddle Tunes by Mark Simos. The trilogy as a whole is a tribute to the Appalachian String Band Music Festival held each August near Clifftop, West Virginia. The Cliffhangers record presents some source material that has inspired and instructed us for the past decade or more at Clifftop. The two Clifftop Notes albums, as the name suggests, are selected from tunes I composed at or around Clifftop, played with musical friends who have inspired and midwifed creation of those very tunes over the years.

Our original concept was to do two companion albums, of traditional and original tunes respectively. We wound up with three albums due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle of tunesmithery: try to collect all your tunes, and you invariably write more. The inspiration of rehearsing for these recordings at Clifftop in summer ’05 sparked a flurry of new tunes (including “Big Ears,” “Texas Whirlwind,” “Falls of Mann,” and “Jeff in the Wilderness” on this CD).

There was also the “Rich” factor. Rich Hartness has become one of my major inspirations and influences in old-time fiddling. I invited him to join me on a tune I wrote for him, “Dark of Hartness,” and said he was welcome to play on anything else he cared to. To my surprise and delight, he showed up at Tim’s having learned a half-dozen or more of my tunes, on fiddle and guitar. I’m truly honored that a traditional musician of Rich’s stature was willing to play these newfangled tunes with me—on record, at that!

Then there was the length of some of the performances herein. Old-time musicians tend to play tunes for a long time (especially late at night). I’ve grown fond of the term “campground” for this extended, improvisational, organic form; a sound that can be heard “in the wild” and has been caught rough on field tapes, but has rarely made it onto commercial recordings. Our goal here was to capture the sound and spirit of these late night explorations and misadventures. All the music on these records was played live and for the most part we left tunes at “session length.” So consider this project a seminal recording of genuine “campground-style” old-time music!

For extensive notes on the tunes and tunesmithery, the players, the tunings, campground music, and 111 new tune names thought up while recording these tunes, visit the Clifftop Notes webpages at: www.devachan.com/clifftopnotes