MP3 Bob Webb - Full Circle: The Solo Banjo Sessions

Drop-thumb clawhammer (frailing) banjo at its best, with tunes drawn on the traditional fiddle-and-banjo repertory plus new "old-time" tunes.

21 MP3 Songs in this album (61:47) !
Related styles: FOLK: Appalachian Folk, FOLK: Traditional Folk

People who are interested in Mike Seeger Bob Carlin should consider this download.


Details:
"A treasure. His playing is marvellous and his choice of tunes is wonderful. Bob Webb is one of the best players in this style." -- Mary McCaslin

Full Circle reprises more than 40 years of clawhammer banjo playing by one of the masters of the technique. Bob Webb is internationally recognized as a singer and presenter of traditional Appalachian ballads and banjo tunes. He has been recorded with his former band, the True & Trembling String Band of Los Angeles, and more recently with fiddler Craig Edwards and guitarist Helen Richmond Webb as "Cluck Old Hen." Full Circle includes 21 solo banjo songs and tunes, 18 from the traditional "old-timey" fiddle-banjo repertory plus three newer tunes by Bob himself. He plays in seven tunings on six different banjos, including two modern 5-string instruments, an Appalachian fretless, a replica minstrel banjo, a wooden-headed Kentucky-style "banjer" and a mandoline-banjo (a wooden-headed, five-stringed instrument that became popular in the 1890s).

Full Circle includes some of Bob's most-requested pieces: "Wild Bill Jones," "Fall on My Knees," "Cuckoo Bird," "Charleston" and many more.

Not just a fine banjo-player, Bob is also a historian of the instrument. His museum exhibition Ring the Banjar!: The Banjo in America from Folklore to Factory at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1984 helped set the stage for the modern "golden age" of banjomaking and banjo performance.

Here's what other listeners are saying about Full Circle: The Solo Banjo Sessions:
"The clawhammer style allows him to strum a danceable rhythm while also picking out a melody. On top of that, Webb often sings, making it a triple-layered audio experience." -- Troy Bennett, Times Record, Brunswick, Maine

"Webb's singing is beautiful. His banjo picking is nothing short of stunning ... a toe-tapper throughout." -- Adam Miller, autoharp virtuoso

"His ability to combine strong melody lines, wonderful drop thumb fills, and the gentle tic, tic of the beat into a multi-layered sound will both intimidate and inspire." -- Monika White, FolkWorks on-line magazine