James Bryan played fiddle with Norman and Nancy Blake as part of the Rising Fawn String Ensemble, their music showing strong influences from their native region near Chattanooga where Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee all share borders. He played with Bill Monroe and with Tennessee Ernie Ford and studied for a time in Ireland with the great Bobby Casey. He appears with Carl Jones playing traditional and original music these days.
I had both his Albums "Lookout Blues" and "The First of May" on vinyl but lost them in the shuffle of things. I recently found Lookout Blues on "Take's Bluegrass Channel" and so have listened to that pretty much every day for the last few weeks. So I learned "Off She Goes" which is very different from the version in O'Neils so I am thinking it is really a different tune with a shared title. I also took a stab at Bryan's own "Lookout Blues" which is very indicative of his style and of the music of that Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama border region.
Here's my attempt on Octave
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