vrteach.org

I pretty much learned this by listening to County 2734, "Down to the Cider Mill" with Tommy Jarrell, Oscar Jenkins and Fred Cockerham. The fiddlers companion files this under "Paddy won't you drink some cider", and it has three parts there. Maybe Jarrell & co also do three parts, but I can't tell the difference between the 2nd and 3rd and it just sounds like a double-repeated B. to me. There are some other "Cider Mill" tunes/variations that I'd like to learn.

So I'm at work on a Saturday afternoon waiting for the computer to do something. I think that when I play this with fiddlers we're usually in G, but I'm sort of in double-C tuning on my crummy old aluminum banjo.

I don't usually play this outside of a group, but it was a tune of the week, and I had some time on my hands. You can read the history of the tune at the Banjo Hangout.

I first heard this at a little music party on the evening of July 3, 2009. Dale C. Evans started playing it on my cello banjo, and we all gradually joined in. I carefully kept humming it to myself on the way home so I would not forget it before I could do a quick "remember me" recording.

Last week at the Indiana Fiddlers Gathering (Battle Ground) I bough the first two installments of Billy Mathews "500 Fiddle Tunes" and I've been listing to it pretty much to the exclusion of other music. This is one that grabbed me, partially because the A part was sooo much like the B part of Apple Knockers that I didn't have too much learn.

I learned this tune from Christine Breen, who learned it from Billy Mathews. I think I had heard it before, and it certainly has been around for quite a while. The Fiddlers Companion has a good bit of information.

A redo of my earlier recording, which was in C just because I didn't have a capo at the time. One thing to note, my version may not match other versions because I really like doing a couple of G chords in the A part, where I think the official version does A chords.

A couple of months ago I was in a fiddle workshop given by Billy Mathews in Urbana, Il. This D-tune was the second of 9 tunes that he taught, if I remember correctly. It works out great on banjo, as well as being easy on fiddle. I still cannot be sure of making it through a tune three times on the fiddle without braking down, so I recorded the banjo version first and then played along. I didn't like my first fiddle track, so I did a second, and then decided that I liked hearing both fiddle tracks so I left them in. It sort of cancels out the errors.

A couple of months ago I was in a fiddle workshop given by Billy Mathews in Urbana, Il. This A-tune was the first of 9 tunes he taught. It works pretty well on banjo, and is nice and easy on the fiddle. He told us that an "apple knocker" was a term for a person who picks the apples, and that there is another tune in D by the same name (different tune). I recorded the banjo first so that I wouldn't break rhythm on the fiddle.

I learned of this tune when my friend Lyle posted his version on the Banjo Hangout, and in trying it out I found that it was really fun. It shows up as number thirteen on the list of "C" tunes at http://slippery-hill.com/c in what I think could be the original fiddle version. My version is pretty close to what Lyle plays.