Jody Kruskal

Who makes the lightest Anglo? I’ve been having wrist and finger pain in the last few weeks. Perhaps this is because I’ve been playing in an elementary school here in Flushing (really cute mostly Korean 2nd graders). This means four back to back periods of set, circle, scatter and mixer dances for these charming and energetic children. Because of the pain I’ve been using guitar instead of Anglo which seems a bit more gentle on the hands, at least I don’t have to hold this heavy Jefferies up while playing. Still, I would like to get back to Anglo. So my question is... who makes the lightest Anglo. I need a traveling 30 button C/G that plays well. My 45 button C/G is confusing for classes and teaching so I would use it for that as well as certain solo gigs like my dances in the classroom. The Button Box instruments are great and ultra light... but I would like to have the extra thumb button, a 31 button instrument actually with that left hand thumb button playing F/C. The Button Box does not customize their standard 30 button layout. Edgley instruments are great too and he will make to order, (right Frank?) but known to be on the heavy side. I need very low weight so as not to stress out my poor tendons. Any suggestions?

Yes! Yes! Please more! I love it! There you go Animterra and Stewart, I've sent you a link to that Stump Tail Dog session in it's entirety. If anyone else wants to hear it just let me know. I think I would rather keep unedited personal recordings on a need to know basis, rather than posting them up publicly in all of their raw splendor.

Tom, I may take you up on that. I seem to be getting to that part of the world around twice per year visiting my mother-in-law who lives in Exeter NH. I guess that Portsmouth would be about a 40 drive? Sounds like a fine session. Hooves, you say: I've been peeved by the opposite at Irish sessions where musicians play two times through a tune only. If you are trying to learn something by ear at a session then 7 or 8 times is much better. Even if you know the tune, there is so much that can be done with how you play it that each time through is different, But I've been given the evil eye at many an Irish session for playing too many times through, that is until I figured out how to be polite in such situations... when in Rome you know.

Hi Stuart, I’m sorry that you can’t listen to music during work. How cruel. I’m also sorry to say that the Texas session part that is posted on my blog is only one time through the B section of the tune. If you want to hear more just let me know.

Thanks for your comments all. John - Yep, it's in G all right and though I'm playing it on a G/D, it works pretty well on C/G too if you are willing to jump octaves a bit in the B section. How does Lost Girl go? Chris - sorry about it not displaying well in Firefox. The developers of the software (Rapid Weaver) that made my site, claim that it works on everything, and I did check it out on a bunch of browsers without seeing any problem except for Explorer 5 which is pretty antique by now. I don't know what to say or do. My tech savvy is rudimentary. Any suggestions anyone? Mark - you are right. Banjo would sound good with that tune. I've often thought that old-time concertina sounds more old-time if it keeps the right company. However, I wasn't really planning on doing a recording session, in fact, Paul had never played that tune before, but from the sound of it I guess Stump Tail Dog is just one of those tunes that plays itself, Hmmmmmm...

I finally put up my Tune of the Month blog page for May on my web site www.jodykruskal.com and I wanted to let you all know. I’ve also added some new old photos to my concertina gallery. Here is the text for May. Stump-Tail Dog... the folk process revealed! Stump-Tail Dog is a downstate Illinois tune collected by Garry Harrison in 1977 from the playing of Howard Sims, then 80 years old. Fiddler Lynn "Chirps" Smith was involved in the collecting project and in 1994 recorded the tune on his album Midwestern Harvest. I heard it this march at a late night session at the Palestine Old-Time and Dulcimer Festival in Texas while playing with Mark Gilston and Stephen Seifert on dulcimers. It was clear at the time that Stump-Tail Dog would make a great Anglo concertina tune so I got together with fiddler Paul Friedman back home here in Brooklyn and we tried it out. Here is an mp3 of back to back clips from Chirps’ CD, the Texas session and Paul’s living room.

What a pleasure. Thanks Ed. I've been listening all evening and there is plenty more to hear!

Poor Little Liza Jane: Old-Time Tunes and Songs with Jody Kruskal and Friends is now available as digital download MP3 files from Apple iTunes. You can still buy the physical cd here.

Half the fun is getting there. Nice chochkies though!

Hi Rachel, Nice to see you posting here. Good luck with your workshops.

Thank you Dan. A splendid piece of research. Your clear and organized presentation makes this complicated and interesting subject a pleasure to read. You make a very convincing case for the wild popularity of the Anglo in the US. Alas, that popularity faded before the era of recorded music, so we’ll never hear what folks were actually playing on the Anglo here in the US back then. Oh well, I guess we’ll have to figure out how to play American music on the Anglo without them. What fun!

Yes, Sam is much in the news these days which means that he has less time to play music with me! Shucks. But we still manage to do a few things and he is one of the the featured fiddlers on my Poor Little Liza Jane CD released last month. Check out this fascinating article and video at Newsweek, filmed just a few days ago as part of the media blitz around John Marchese's book release of "The Violin Maker" that follows Sam step by step as he makes a fine violin. Lots of time spent on Sam's research including some nifty animations of how a Strad vibrates. Isolating the Violin's Song Sam Zygmuntowicz is one of the world's great violin makers and even he has a hard time saying exactly what makes a great instrument sound so magical.

How about if the paddle thing that separated the two bellows were an upside down T with the vertical part sticking up between your legs and your thighs holding down the horizontal part against the chair. The upside down T shape would make the paddle very stable. There could be considerable stress if both hands wanted to move left or right together. The whole thing sounds kind of clumsy and not a very elegant solution but I think it would work and could be very cool to play. I think that you would have to take it apart to put it in a case for transport. Airport security would certainly look at you funny.

What a fine festival in Palesteen! I want to send my thanks to Dan Worrall and all the participants with their various kinds of concertinas. A very friendly bunch and diligent. I worked them hard and got no complaints. You can read all about it on the Tune of the Month blog page April entry at my web site: www.jodykruskal.com I’ve included mp3 files and photos from the trip. The festival took place in a very interesting building, The Museum of East Texas Culture. This used to be the local high school but now all of the classrooms display unusual and ordinary artifacts from bygone days. Each room has a theme and you can see and even touch the old stuff. Some of the examples are: pharmacy, dentist and hospital equipment, school supplies, yearbooks and lots of athletic awards, railroad ephemera like actual old tickets that you can punch, cameras, rooms devoted to local personalities and much more. What a great place! There was also a beautiful hall with very good acoustics for the concerts. The other non-concertina musicians were very welcoming and there were many fine sessions aside from the programing. The organizers Jerry and Margaret Weight throw this party every year in Palestine, and the fact that they have included the local concertina contingent at an old-time festival is unique in my experience. Go to their web site and read what Jerry has to say about welcoming beginner musicians and you will get a sense of their commendable inclusiveness. Bravo Palestine!

But the original (1- or 2-row) button layout does emphasize chords... just a limited number of them. Well... you are right Jim, but isn't it remarkable that the Irish figured out a great way to play that did not emphasize that chordal/harmonic capability? Quite a nifty little instrument we Anglo players play. So Mike, when are you going to build one of your bisonoric concertinas? Until you make it, you will only be guessing at how it might change your playing.

Well, I guess I could imagine anything, but would I? No, probably not. The reality is that one free reed instrument is enough for me, thanks. If I was to learn yet another instrument I would want something that sounded quite different, like... theremine perhaps. Still, your idea has some merit. I guess you could play it just like a regular Anglo except for when you wanted to take advantage of it's unique abilities.

As it turns out I will not be going, though I had planned to. I got a lucrative gig here in NYC for earthday where (shame shame) I will not be playing concertina. Have fun!

I confess. It was me that brought my symphonetta to the Squeeze-In a decade ago. Good memory Rich! This exotic beast is not really a candidate for bisonoric playing as the two bellows are connected by a pressurized reservoir so that both bellows drive any button’s reeds. There was some discussion of this here last year.

Perry, I don't think I know the author but I wonder... Gary R. Hoffman Speaks About The Case Of the Wheatstone Concertina: Deputy Sheriff Frank Graf usually likes Sunday morning duty. All the “crazies” from Saturday night are at home sleeping off their celebrating. On this rainy Sunday morning, however, he gets a call to go somewhere he has never been before. It is a meeting of people who like to play concertinas. This story is based, loosely, on an actual event that occurs once a year in the Northeast part of the United States. It is also a classic Sherlock Holmes type story in that Frank narrows his suspects down to ten people. Through the process of interviewing each of them, and listening to truth and lies, he figures out who committed two crimes. What else could this meeting be but the Button Box North East Squeeze-In?

"The processor you use: can it be used right of the box to control volume? That's my first priority. Then, your patches: how are these implemented? Pardon my complete ignorance, this stuff is way above my pay grade. The idea of producing a wetter sound to cut through the wall of sound is intriguing." Jim, no not right out of the box. You have to set it up the way you want to use it. Perhaps an hour of reading the manual and learning the machine would do you for something as simple as 4 pedals with varying volume levels. Fancier stuff is not hard, RTM man. If you just want volume, get a simple foot pedal just for that, but be warned, they take practice to use them musically.

Jody-- You've played Glen Echo; is this processor something that connects to that kind of system without a lot of hassle? I don't want to fuss with a lot of electronics, but I'd love to be able to control the Microvox volume with a pedal. Hi Jim, Grand Picnic played at Glen Echo in Washington two weeks ago. It's huge, 300 could dance there, though we had somewhat less than that. Their hall acoustics, sound system and technician are all excellent. I could hear everything clearly. In that situation mics alone would have worked fine. I really need my board when we play those echo filled gyms with poor sound systems and amateurs running them. Yes, it’s easy to plug right into the mixer or better yet through a direct box via 1/4 inch phone jack. I used my board to get louder and also to gain presence for solos. My patches have a lot more that just volume though. EQ, reverb, compression and much more. One patch I use effectively but sparingly allows me to get a wetter sound (two notes close but not identical in pitch). The harder I press on the pedal, the more the two pitches diverge, up to about 15 or 20 cents ie. very wet. Light pressure is more like 5 cents. This is how some accordions are tuned, so the sound is traditional, that is to say, it’s not a concertina sound but it’s not so weird either and it works well with our five piece band. Seven at Glen Echo because Danny Novick and a local sax player were sitting in. The wetness really cuts through our wall of sound without actually being louder, just much more present. Another patch is highly compressed so that I have almost no dynamic control and lots of attack. That one is great for tunes that go into the low range on my G/D. If I’m playing melody it keeps the low notes from getting lost. When I play other stuff I don’t use that patch. Using the board does take some practice at home and attention at the gig, but it's not really hard. You just whack the pedal with your foot and presto, there is your new timbre. My board is lots of fun. I think midi would be too for the same reasons. Some day I’ll try it so I can be the horn section.

I wonder Jim, can one control the volume level, say for back up rifs and chording? Yes, but you have to reach down to the power supply on your belt. I'm getting better at doing it on the fly, but it's still somewhat awkward. A foot pedal would be nice, but I think that's beyond my current electronics capabilities. When I need reinforcement I use the microvox mics on little two inch arms that I made myself. The arms velcro to the box and even out the volume differences between reeds somewhat. Pedals are cool. I use this one, a Korg Toneworks-AX30G-Guitar-Processor. You have to program your own patches as none of the presets are very appropriate, but once you have worked out how to do it, there is a whole new dimension to how to approach playing at a gig. There are lots of these kinds of toys around, but what I like about this one are the dedicated pedals and the pressure pedal that lets you dynamically control any parameter you want, be it volume, vibrato, reverb, wetness or whatever. I use it at noisy gigs and dances mostly. I prefer no mics at all, but sometimes that's not an option.

Boney, thanks for ordering my Liza Jane old-time CD. As for the rest of you... the store is back in stock so you too can get yours here.

You'll find it in the Concertina FAQ here. Chris There it is. Thank you Chris.

So sorry, Liza Jane is temporarily out of stock at cdBaby. Try back again in a few days. Our ice storm this weekend must have messed up the postal service in ways I can’t even imagine.