Nathan (Nate Nate) is the nine-year-old "caboose" of the family. He's a most excellent kid -- very bright and inquisitive, does well in school, is heavily into nature, and is a dedicated video game addict. Even that last part is OK with me so long as he still gets outside and gets some exercise now and then. In fact, anyone who learns all three-hundred-and-some-odd Pokemon's names, HP ratings (hit power? health power? high profile?), special attacks, evolutions, et al, can only garner my highest regard and respect. Kant's Categorical Imperative was easy compared to this stuff.

So, suffice it to say Nate Nate is smart. He's also as nice as they come. Except for when things don't go his way and he gets cantankerous. Then he can be a bit of a pain and is best left alone until he straightens out. Usually doesn't take long, and he's not one to hold a grudge. But his general mood is a bit darker and less sanguine than his older brother's. His older sister is somewhere in between.

So, I was noodling around on my guitar doing some dropped-D stuff and landed on a bit of a song. Sounded kind of bluesy and, yes, cantankerous. So I decided to name it for Nate Nate. I started out calling it "Li'l Nate's Got Them Blues" but that sounded a bit too contrived. So I ended up with "The Nate Nate Shuffle." It reminds me most of all of when Nate was a toddler -- he would shuffle along, then lose his balance and fall back on his heavily diapered hindquarters, and sit and complain for a minute. Then he would get up and resume shuffling. Kind of like what this song does.

Hope you enjoy it. By the way, it was played on my 1985 Santa Cruz Tony Rice Brazilian, my choice for "Better Acoustic Guitar" and the reason I didn't vote in that poll. Gibson? Say what?

We need to have a mood setting for "tired."

Wanted to jot a few notes about another of my posted songs. I call it "Old Joe Shuffle," and, of course, it's my personal take on the old fiddle tune Old Joe Clark. Like much of what I do, I was noodling around one night and happened upon it. The main instrument is guitar, in this case capoed on 5 with a drop-D tuning.

When I was in high school I landed on a fingerpicking style which remains my favorite. I use a flatpick as the "thumb" and pick with my second and third fingers. That way I can work my way smoothly between fingerpicking and flatpicking licks. I remember seeing Glen Campbell doing that many years ago on TV and since have seen Ricky Skaggs and others do it as well. Works for me. Another advantage is that I can pick the muted bass notes harder with a flatpick than a thumbpick, which always seems to slip if I hit it too hard. I never really got the hang of flatpicking with a thumbpick, though I've seen others (like Eddie Adcock just a few years ago) do it quite well.

As for the other instruments, the second guitar is the same one (see my gallery page) sans capo, plus mandolin and bass. Maybe I'll be able to upload pics of them someday. The bass is a 1938 S-8 Swingmaster that I'm quite proud of.

I really enjoyed tracking this song. I think I got a pretty natural "band" sound that doesn't sound too mechanical or contrived, even though I did use a clicktrack. By the way, I use N-Track Studio on a 2 gHz PC, mostly through a Behringer 1-inch mic. I love N-Track and have used it for several years. It's programmed in Italy (I think) by a guy named Flavio. http://www.fasoft.com

I think there's nothing like tracking in your home studio -- all the comforts of home, plus no timeclock ticking. Makes me glad to be alive right now with such a wealth of cheap technology available.

The top song on my page is called Froggy Went a'Courtin' but isn't the traditional one you might have heard from the folk musicians. The song (according to our late friend and mentor, George Fisher) is one of the two oldest catalogued folk tunes from the British Isles, the other being Greensleeves. But by the time it worked its way through the Appalachians and into the Ozarks, it was better known as Uncle Rat. This is the version I brought to the Old School Bluegrass Band that has become a staple song in our shows.

This version is essentially the version from Aunt Ollie Gilbert as shown here: ftp://nipper.missouristate.edu/ArtsLetters/Music/FolkSong/MaxHunter/0842.aiff

I added a couple of chords and sped it up for a more "bluegrass" feel, plus I added back in the Froggy verse. The tune is a bit different because it's closer to George's version than Aunt Ollie's.

The other popular Arkansas version is from Almeda Riddle, which is quite a bit different, especially in the chorus:

"Hee-mo I-mo keemo kime-o, roddy roddy ray... rop-strop penny-winkle flanna-doodle yellow-bugger, rop-strop by Mr. Gamble"

(no, I'm not kidding.) http://www.lyon.edu/wolfcollection/songs/riddlefrog1304.html

George said during one of his talks (recorded on our "By George" album at http://www.oldschoolband.com that John Quincy Wolf collected over 100 different versions of this song along the White River in Arkansas alone. Pretty popular song, especially for it to go virtually unsung today.

For the recording, Banjo Bill played his civil-war era fretless banjo, which really gives it a neat flavor.

I've been a regular attender of the annual Ozark Folk Festival in Mountain View (Stone County), Ark., for about 25 years now. Since 1963 it's been a pilgrimage for lots of musicians and music lovers, not just in Arkansas but all over the U.S. Lots of folks have written songs about it, but that didn't stop me from adding my two cents.

The stuff about the dogwoods along Highway 5 is still true, though civilization is encroaching at a rapid pace. It's always the dogwoods and redbuds you see on the way to the Folk Festival, and the hickories and sweet gums turning on the way to Beanfest every October. It's a drive I always look forward to. One of those drives you'd do just for the sake of the drive, like going up the Pig Trail or Number 7 or getting off the new Interstate to go through Mountainburg. It's probably prettier going through Leslie or Shirley, but those ways are so curvy and slow, and I'm always impatient to get there, like in the last verse.

It's gotten to the point where there are lots of musicians who show up to pick on just about any Friday or Saturday night between April and October. Sometime there are so many people gathered around the square that they have to rope off the traffic. If it gets too cold they'll fire up the burning barrels and keep picking.

After so many years, so many friends made and so much good music, it started working its way into my heart ("heart, heart, heart" -- Stringbean). So I wrote a song about it. There you go.

By the way, the song is on my CD titled Open-Air Folk which is available at http://www.williamanesbitt.com.

I'm new to this space and don't know all the ropes yet, so drop by and tell me what's new. I don't go to many Bluegrass Web sites, though I do run one for my band... http://www.oldschoolband.com and have for about 13 years. We've had that domain about ten years and have had decent luck with it. I've only recently started doing a bit of SEO with it. If you go there you can read all about me and my mandolin, along with the other members of the band. 

I've never had a MySpace, though I do own a Web site of my own... http://www.williamanesbitt.com where I have some CDs for sale and opinions for free, mostly worship-related.

One more Web site... http://www.thurmanandnesbitt.com highlights the swing music of fiddler Bill Thurman of Little Rock and myself on guitar and upright bass. Pretty fun stuff from the Django Reinhardt school of swing. If I've been dedicating myself to musical improvement lately, it's been in this genre. Helps me keep my fingers tough for the Bluegrass jams, though.

Thanks for dropping by. Hope you go to my main page and download my tunes. I'm going to upload as many as they'll let me. Being the traditional Public Domain kind of feller that I am, I've got a bunch. If I run out I'll make more. They are all recorded onto the very computer on which I write this.

Drop me a line. I'll be happy to offer my opinions about the issues of the day, music in all its forms, religion, war, peace, food...