New Technology Helps Me Learn An Old Tune

I didn't grow up with folk music; it was far too liberal for my deadly-conservative parents, and this particular ballad would have been far too grisly for my elementary school music teachers to share with us kids.

What's really strange is, I don't recall Fiona Ritchie ever spinning it, and I listened to Thistle and Shamrock a lot.

So, the first time I heard this song was on this recording, which I stumbled across in the days when eMusic was actually cool, some time back in 2006. To this day, it remains my favorite take on this version.

Multi-instrumentalist, Jody Stecher, has played plenty of bluegrass in his time, and he uses bluegrass drive to keep this tune moving. You could say this is an American folk version of an old tune called “Oh, the Wind and Rain”, which has been covered by many before and since, including bluegrass artists. I’ll follow this with a very different Scottish version.

This is one of my favorite versions of this traditional gospel number. Jody Stecher’s picking is dazzling, and the quartet singing us distinguished by an unconventional but intriguing arrangement, also by Stecher.

If you like this, you’ll love the rest of the album. It’s well worth tracking down.

This is “Going Up On the Mountain”.