The Great American Tear Jerker by Wayne Erbsen

Rural Roots of Bluegrass by Wayne Erbsen

Fans of traditional country and bluegrass music have always had a soft spot in their hearts for a good ole tear jerker. If you write a song about getting run over by a train while holding a baby on the way to your mother’s funeral, you’re bound to have a hit. Let’s take a little trip back in time and see where the idea of the tear jerker came from.

Mid 19th century America had a lot to cry about. If the high infant mortality rate didn’t kill you, any number of other hazards would. Anyone who lived to be

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Swannanoa Tunnel

Singing Rails (book) by Wayne Erbsen

Shielded from the rest of the state by towering mountains, residents in western North Carolina longed to connect to the rail system then being rebuilt after its near destruction during the Civil War. The chief obstacle to the construction was massive Old Fort Mountain, just east of Asheville, North Carolina. The engineer chosen for the task of building the difficult road was ex-Confederate major James Wilson.

Construction of the road began in 1877. Armed with $800,000 in state funds and 500 black convict laborers, Wilson was undaunted by the fact that his railroad would have to climb some 891 feet

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Pretty Polly

Rural Roots of Bluegrass by Wayne Erbsen

Rising to the top of the most well-known murder ballad in bluegrass music is “Pretty Polly.” Based on an actual murder, legends tell that the cruel murder of Pretty Polly was at the hands of a ship’s carpenter by the name of John Billson near Gosport, England. The ballad was first printed in about 1727 as “The Gosport Tragedy,” and sung to the tune of “Peggy’s Gone Over Sea.” It tells the chilling tale of Billson’s murder of his pregnant girlfriend and the flight aboard the ship M.M.S. Bedford. The story takes a haunting turn when the seaman Charles Stewart

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The Ballad of Frankie Silver

Her real name was Frances Steward Silver, but they all called her Frankie. The words chiseled into her tombstone give us a chilling reminder of what this story is about: “Frankie Silver, Only Woman Ever Hanged in Burke County, Morganton, July 2, 1833.”

I first heard about this strange chapter of North Carolina folklore from a mountain man named Bobby McMillan, whom I met when I lived in Hickory, North Carolina in the mid-1970’s. Because he was the third cousin to Charlie Silver, the man Frankie was accused of killing, Bobby had been collecting stories, songs and lore about Frankie

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Easy Banjo Songs

By Wayne Erbsen

If you’re total novice on the banjo, but want to learn to play, you’ve come to the right place.  I’m going to show you how to be up and playing the banjo in no time flat.

First, you want to get your banjo tuned in what is called G Tuning. Check out my article, How to Tune a Banjo.

Now, set your banjo on your lap in playing position. The short string is the 5th string. The string closest to your feet is the 1st string. Pluck the 1st and 5th strings together at the same

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Easy Two-Finger Mandolin Chords

By Wayne Erbsen

Compared to the guitar, mandolin chords are EASY. In fact, most mandolin chords only use two fingers or sometimes only one.

In the mandolin chord charts below, each horizontal line represents a pair of mandolin strings. The E string is the one closest to the floor, as you hold your mandolin in playing position, and the G string is closest to the ceiling. The numbers represent the fret. Be sure to place your fingers between, not on, the fret. The letter to the left of each chord chart tells you the name of that chord. The letters

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Easy Mandolin Songs

By Wayne Erbsen

In my article Mandolin Chords, I showed you a number of two-finger chords you can play on the mandolin. Armed with that knowledge, there are thousands of songs you can play simply by strumming the chord and singing, humming, or whistling the song.

Before you can do that you will need to figure out which chords to play when.

The good news is that most bluegrass songs can be played with just three chords. These three chords form a little family called a “key.” We often give the chords in this family the numbers 1 4

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Civil War Music

As we approach the 150th or sesquicentennial anniversary of the start of the Civil War, let’s pause to remember an aspect of this tragic period beyond the roar of the cannons and the movement of soldiers across the battlefield. For soldiers on both sides of this conflict, it was the music that helped them carry on. No less an authority than General Robert E. Lee said “I don’t believe we can have an army without music.”

Music touched practically every aspect of soldiers’ lives. They were awakened in the morning with the first call of the bugle, riveted into step

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