The John Hartford Stringband

I’ll give a little bit of personal history, as I remember it, for the making of this Grammy nominated recording. The John Hartford Stringband had many forms during my time with John. All of the musicians on this recording appeared on John Hartford’s 1999 “Good Old Boys” recording. I had been wanting to do an old time project and while thinking that through the idea for this came and it immediately felt like the right direction. I called the other members and then started calling the special guests. Nearly everyone I called returned my calls and agreed to be on the recording. After we knew who was going to be on the record, I started polling and getting song lists from everyone who would give me one. With all of those lists I was able to get some idea of what material needed to be on the recording. Some of the songs I just knew before we even started would be on it. “Homer the Romer” was one of those. I also went down to Nashville and spent a good amount of time listening to very rare – as in one of a kind – recordings of John. There were some gems in there and a couple of those made it on the record as well. Also, Mark Schatz had written a poem for John at the time of his death and when he read it to me I knew it had to go on the recording. Mark does a touching rendition of the poem while he dances. Matt Combs found us a spot to setup where he worked teaching music and then David Arnold and got everything together and went down there and mostly David created a studio on the spot. We recorded the record almost completely live in a few days and then some overdubs happened later. Pictures from the session are below