Columbus Stockade Blues

Columbus Stockade Blues

Way down in Columbus, Georgia,
Want to be back in Tennessee.
Way down in Columbus stockade,
My friends have turned their back on me.

Chorus:
Go and leave me if you wish to,
Never let me cross your mind.
In your heart you love another,
Leave me darling I don’t mind.

Many a night with you I’ve rambled,
Many an hour I’ve spent with you.
Thought I’d gained your heart forever,
Though you have proved false to me. (Chorus)

Last night while I lay sleeping,
I dreamed I held you in my arms.
When I awoke I

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Yes, There Were Cowboys in Bluegrass Music

Hopalong CassidyBy Wayne Erbsen

As a kid, I desperately wanted to be a cowboy.  I dreamed of owning a horse, riding the range, and doing what cowboys did. And why wouldn’t I? Every night I slept under a cowboy blanket and my lunch box was fully decorated with a decal of a handsome cowboy twirling his lariat. Growing up at the dawn of the age of television, all my heroes were cowboys: Hopalong Cassidy, Shane, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and John Wayne. I watched Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel, The Rifleman, and Bonanza while eating my TV dinner.

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How to Tune a Ukulele – Your Ears Will Thank You

By Colleen Kinsey, editor-in-chief of Coustii.

ukulelesEven if you are a professional ukulele player, having an out-of-tune instrument is going to make you sound horrible. We’ll teach you how to tune your ukulele and keep it in tune. Different ukes will hold a tune better than others, so it’s best to check every time before you play.

How is my ukulele tuned?

The most common tuning for a ukulele is G-C-E-A. This tuning is pretty typical for soprano, concert, and tenor ukuleles. If you are used to playing a guitar, the four-stringed concept with a uke is much less

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Log Cabin Songs

By Wayne Erbsen

I have a thing for log cabins. Always have. To me, they symbolize almost everything I’m trying to say when I play old-time mountain and bluegrass music. In fact, that’s why I named the band of students I work with the “Log Cabin Band.” 

Log cabins have long been a symbol of frontier America. Their sturdy construction of handhewn logs are a true representation of the tough and independent pioneers who built them.

One of the strongest and most enduring themes of traditional bluegrass music has been the lost son who wanders back to the old log

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How to Play Banjo

By Wayne Erbsen

So you want to play the banjo. That’s handy, because in one short lesson, I’m gonna teach you to play one.

Contrary to what you might think, it’s way easy.

The first thing is to tune your banjo. Check out my article “How to Tune a Banjo.”

I’m going to teach you to play banjo in what is called “Bluegrass Style.” The first song you’re gonna play is I’ll Fly Away. It’s easy. As you hold the banjo on your lap, the 1st string is the one closest to the floor, and

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Easy Fiddle Tunes

Old-Time Fiddle for the Complete Ignoramus! instruction book by Wayne Erbsen

By Wayne Erbsen

The Internet is abuzz with people wanting to learn to play the fiddle. My guess is that you are one of them! Of course, you want to learn the easiest songs possible. Who wouldn’t?

The songs that are the easiest to play are the tunes you already know. They’re the ones you’ve had in your head for years. So instead of having me teach you a totally unfamiliar tune on the fiddle, let’s get you to learn how to play the tunes you already know.

I suggest you start making lists of your favorite songs. If you

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Ernest ‘Pop’ Stoneman

Rural Roots of Bluegrass

By Wayne Erbsen

We couldn’t quite figure out who he was. As the lights were dimmed and the audience hushed, my sister Bonnie and I sat in suspense at the West Hollywood club known as The Ash Grove. All at once, the band started to play and even as our attention became riveted on the spectacle unfolding before us, we wondered about the little old man sitting on stage in a hard-backed chair with an autoharp flat on his lap and a little black hat stuck on his head.

We got a hint when members of the Stoneman Family eventually

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Darling Cory

Clawhammer banjo for the complete ignoramus cover

Darling Cory

Wake up, wake up, darlin’ Cory,
What makes you sleep so sound
When the revenours are comin’
Goin’ to tear your still house down?

Dig a hole, dig a hole in the meadow
Dig a hole in the cold, cold ground
Go and dig you a hole in the meadow
Gonna lay darlin’ Cory down.

Go away, go away, darlin’ Cory
Stop hangin’ around my bed
Bad liquor destroyed my body,
Pretty women’s gone to my head.

Don’t you hear them bluebirds a-singing’?
Don’t you hear their mournful sound?
They are preachin’ Cory’s funeral
In some lonesome graveyard

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Little Birdie

Little Birdie

Little birdie, little birdie
Come and sing to me your song.
I’ve a short time for to be here
And a long time to be gone.

I’d rather be in some dark holler
Where the sun don’t ever shine
Than to see you with another
And to know that you’d never be mine.

Married woman, married woman
Why don’t you settle down
You are like a little birdie
A-flyin’ all around.

I don’t want your greenback dollar
I don’t want your watch and chain
All I want is your heart darlin’
Won’t you take me back.

Little birdie,

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Arkansas Traveler Skit

Rural Roots of Bluegrass by Wayne Erbsen
arkanas-traveler-art

By Wayne Erbsen

The Arkansas Traveler is one of most recognizable and popular old-time fiddle tunes played today. The tune was first printed on February 23, 1847. The skit that goes with the tune is said to go back to the 1820s, and some have credited it to Colonel Sandford C. Faulkner, who became known as The Arkansas Traveler. The setting of the skit is a farmer playing the fiddle on the front porch of his ramshackle cabin in rural Arkansas. Up rides a city slicker on a horse who is beyond lost. Their conversation is captured in the

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