Recordings
While You Were Slumbering
rare ballads and tunes in enveloping settings
With expertly executed regional fiddle and banjo styles, resonant hardanger d’amore, pump organ, guitar, subtle percussion informed by vernacular dance traditions, and bass clarinet, Decosimo fashions the older regional music into the transcendent. Fiddle and banjo tunes become pointillistic explorations in sound—pizzicato, harmonics, and clacking pump organ offer perfectly ambiguous accompaniment for these lonesome studies in circularity. Old ballads and a shape note hymn serve as studies in minimalism—Joseph and Alice Gerrard’s voices float atop clouds of droning pump organ and grainy fiddle textures.
Well-chosen collaborations sustain the rare, powerful magic of deep tradition revisited, realized with able help fiddler and singer Stephanie Coleman and composer/fiddler/pump organist Cleek Schrey as well as from new collaborations with local Durham artists Alice Gerrard (Hazel and Alice) and Elephant Micah visionaries Joe and Matt O’Connell. Alec Spiegelman.
Drawing its title from the final verse of a hard-hitting regional version of the ballad “Man of Constant Sorrow,” While You Were Slumbering meditates on what happens in the lost time of our lives.
the aluminum wonder
rare banjo repertoire and styles
At some point in high school, I scrawled the words "the aluminum wonder" across the head of the cheap banjo that I got in 7th grade. It's a funky, unruly, and completely delightful instrument. Like that poor banjo, this album of rare old-time banjo tunes, songs, and styles is funky, unruly, and (hopefully) delightful. When I pick up the banjo, I'm interested in meandering. Sometimes the meandering leads to special places. Sometimes it doesn't. This album captures some of the more pleasurable jaunts. A lot of these tunes come from the Cumberland Plateau—the mountain range in Tennessee where I grew up and cut my musical teeth.
Over the last year (2020), I started recording this batch of music. I recorded a handful of these holed up in the attic on lonely, balmy North Carolina Christmas Eve. These are some of the pieces that I keep returning to when I sit down with the banjo It's mostly old tunes and songs from TN, KY, GA, and NC. They're played in a range of Old-time styles that I've picked up from listening to old stuff and messing around. Some of these tunes haven't seen the light of day in years—some are tucked away, sitting silently in archives. There's more info on that front in the liner notes.
floral by-catch
Here's some floral by-catch, produced on the way to bigger projects and fresher sounds.
Flowery Girls—A meandering exploration of the fingerboard. Omer Forster, a two-finger banjo genius (and fellow Kay banjo devotee) from middle Tennessee, inspired my rendition. I've messed with it for years, and it feels close enough. It seems to be catching on these days.
Blackeyed Susie—If you like this sound (I do), there's more of it in the works. It's a rough draft of things to come. We've been exploring this pairing and these textures for several years, and we've landed on some sounds that we're excited about. The pump organ has long been used to accompany fiddle music. Luther Strong's setting of this classic fiddle/banjo piece provides a starting point for this ramble.
Sequatchie Valley
“Each tune is like the tip of an iceberg; they’re seemingly short vignettes of Tennessee rural life that actually reflect years of friendships, community life, and good times spent with neighbors… Joseph’s a marvelous fiddler, able to snake his way around the twisted winding rhythms of Southern old-time music with such ease that you find yourself following his path with ease while listening. And he’s a beautiful singer.” Devon Léger, No Depression
Coming from Tennessee's Cumberland Plateau with a handful of beautiful and driving pieces pulled from the old time fiddle and banjo traditions of the region, Joseph Decosimo delivers a fine and thoughtful sampling of the region's traditional music. From solo fiddle and banjo pieces, to singing duets, to fiddle and banjo duets, to raging stringband tunes, the album roots itself in the musical traditions of Joseph's native Cumberland Plateau. Much of the music was learned in the living rooms of the region's older fiddlers and banjo players. Recorded live in one room with no overdubs, this album conveys the magic of Old-time music played in real time.