Stumbling Toward Competence

This the first in a series inspired by this post, about how learning the mandolin can be complicated by learning "mandolin music" (a topic that has come up again recently in the forums). When I first started playing a more experienced player made available to me 50 CDs of what he considered the best recordings of the mandolin. I wish to pay this forward by providing my personal favourites from these and more recently released music. And away we go...

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I was back in Toronto over the Christmas holidays, and was able to catch the weekly Wednesday night show by "Crazy Strings", a collection of local acoustic music figures that feature in several of the local acoustic bands of different genres (Creaking Tree String Quartet, Foggy Hogtown Boys, Old Country Rehab, Emory Lester Unit). From the stage that night the lead vocalist and guitar player/clawhammer banjo master Chris Coole mentioned that they had been playing there for 11 years now...and sure enough, after a quick calculation I had been attending shows there for at least 8 of them off and on (and I'm still delighted they did away with the smoking. I was stunned to see there were murals on the walls. But I digress...).

Andrew was my first (if you discount a workshop I attended with Radem Zenkel), and remains my most influential, instructor. So, yes, I may be a little biased, but be that as it may, I think all mandolin players need a copy of his first solo album Little Widgets.

This album is a genre busting collection of mandolin goodness, including bluegrass, jazz, old time, and classical cuts. Andrew plays many of the instruments himself, but also has his long time Toronto collaborators lending their own unique voices to various cuts (and they provided him the necessary backing for the CD release concert at the CBC's Glen Gould studio).

I will spare you the cut by cut analysis, but a few deserve special mention. "Pendelton Murray" is a bluegrass "run" styled tune dedicated to the son of fellow Cafe member (and student of Andrew's) Craig Murray, who was born prematurely and spent some time in hospital. "The Yellow Barber" is an old time tune that really deserves some extra time in the local session rotations. "Bottom's Dream" has Andrew playing mandocello, mandolla, and mandolin (John Showman joked about "the shrinking Andrew" at the CD release show as he was switching to progressively larger F style instruments).

My personal favourite cut is "Riding into the Sunset", which features the clawhammer banjo of Chris Cool. This minor keyed tune is really evocative, and I can easily see it in the soundtrack of a western--the party riding through hardships to a promised new life, but will they make it?

You can purchase your own copy of Little Widgets at CD Baby.