released April 2, 2021

Sally Anne Morgan: fiddle, vocals
Mike Gangloff: Hardanger-style fiddle, octave fiddle, vocals, singing bowl, sruti box
Nathan Bowles: banjo, washboard vocals
Isak Howell: guitar, harmonica, sruti box

with Andrew Zinn: guitar, tenor guitar, vocals
and Joe Dejarnette: bass

Recorded and mixed in Topeca, Floyd County, Virginia, by Joe Dejarnette/Studio 808a; Mastered by Harris Newman/Greymarket; Cover by Sally Anne Morgan

Laid down before the Great Isolation and offered in hope for the community to come. MOONSHINER: Sally and husband Andrew sing words from West Virginian Currence Hammonds’ version of this widespread song, with a melodic structure from John Gallagher. If you haven’t heard Currence, or John’s album with Scott Prouty and Chris Coole (or with Dwight Diller and Tom King), you should. MONEY MUSK/ICY MOUNTAIN/TOMMY HAWK: Sally and I start the song with Money Musk, inspired by Dwight’s recording of James Hammons (a cousin of Currence and son of fiddle giant Edden), then everyone joins in for Icy Mountain, learned partly from the recordings of WV/Ohio fiddler Ward Jarvis. The medley’s third part is Tommy Jackson’s (and maybe Hark Garland’s) song Tomahawk that Jackson had on one of his 1950s square dance albums and which entered the folk repertoire in the fiddling of Ward Jarvis, among others. We’d heard recordings of Ward playing it at his home but it was Steve Kruger’s playing at Blacksburg, Va., sessions that started us. CARA’S WALTZ is one of my songs inspired by my wife and has been played many times for the dancers at the Floyd Country Store in Floyd, Va. SHEETS OF RAIN, STREAMS OF SUN is a dream of changes of cloud and light across the mountainsides, sometimes slow, sometimes less so. WILL YOU MISS WHEN I’M GONE? is one we’ve sung for years and always is better when Andrew is with us to knit together the harmony, as he does here. ROAN MOUNTAIN SALLY ANN comes from the mighty Roan Mountain Hilltoppers, whose skill and power and sheer welcoming exuberance should be inspirations for anyone playing this music. KNIGHT ON THE ROAD: First heard from Maddy Prior and Tim Heart, but Sally found a version collected by Artus Moser of Western North Carolina. BARNSWALLOW: Isak calls this an inadvertent tribute to our pal Charlie Parr, also part of a long, ongoing attempt to catch some of the sweetness, simplicity and dissonance of Elizabeth Cotten’s beautiful playing. ST. VALENTINE’S MARCH & ELLISTON JOY: Two love songs -- one grew from the other after Cara asked if the tune had words. The banjo sticks came later. DAN FRIEND’S PIECE is a West Virginia tune we picked up years ago from the magnificent recordings of Ernie Carpenter. For us, it became a lament for our friend Jack Rose when we played it at memorials a decade ago. Then it opened farther and farther, taking us into all sorts of spaces, a winding path to renewal.
-- Mike Gangloff, Ironto, Virginia, August 2020

Tunings: Instruments were mostly in usual old-time A, D or modal tunings, dropped a half step. So fiddles were either (low to high) G#D#G#D# or G#C#G#D#, with sympathetics on the hardanger setup
spread across those tunings. Banjo was (5th string first, then low to
high) g#D#G#CD#, g#C#G#C#D#, or g#D#G#C#D#. Guitar was EADGBE, capo’d somewhere to fit the song. Harps were A-flat, D-flat
and F#. Bass was EbAbC#F#. Andrew tunes on the spot.

All songs traditional, these arrangements © 2018/2020 Black Apple, except Cara’s Waltz; Sheets of Rain, Streams of Sun; St. Valentine’s
March; and Elliston Joy by Mike Gangloff, © 2018/2020; Barnswallow
by Isak Howell, © 2018/2020; Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? by
A.P. Carter; and Tomahawk by Tommy Jackson.

With thanks and love to Cara, Chris, Elsa, Ivy, Andrew, Brittany, Joe, Bill, Josh Willis, Paul Vials/District 6, Charlie Hearon/Nightlight, Dylan Locke & Heather Krantz & crew/Floyd Country Store, Kevin Long & crew/Cellar, Kate Denwiddie/Chesterfield County libraries, Dave
Jackson/Black Iris, Dare to Be Square DMV folks, dancers, listeners and fellow pickers all.