The Wind That Shakes The Barley Irish tune arranged for mountain dulcimer in DAD tuning

Tribute bands-why?

I have just received the listings of upcoming  events for my local theatre for the next six months. I am amazed to find the majority of them seem to be for Jukebox musicals and tribute acts. We have tributes to Elvis, the Eagles, Buddy Holly, Rod Stewart, Dire Straits (featuring former member Chris White, who played sax), Queen, Pink Floyd, Roy Orbison, Simon & Garfunkel, ELO, Level 42 (!), Take That, David Bowie and T.Rex, not to mention more Jukebox musicals than you can shake an ice lolly stick at. And my local theatre is actually quite classy, a neighbouring, less fussy one, recently had a Proclaimers tribute act and a guy playing the music from Genesis keyboard man Tony Banks' solo albums! Bet that was a sell out...Mind you my local theatre does also have some proper acts, at least they appear to be, though probably only with one original member, if that. They've got Chas & Dave too, at least I think it's them and not a tribute act. It's hard to tell these days. A couple of years ago I took part in an event featuring a member of the Incredible String Band and we played some of their songs. Perhaps that makes me part of The Incredible String Band Experience?

I was in Scotland last year and saw a news item about the Alexander Brothers finally hanging up their kilts. Remember them? Their biggest hit was the mawkish "Nobody's Child", a sad tale of an illegitimate, blind orphan. (Nobody's Child was an archaic Victorian legal term for a child born out of wedlock). I remember seeing them with my parents in The Winter Gardens, Rothesay in the late 60s. Anyway, they said that they still got offered plenty of bookings, but people were amazed to find they were the real thing and not a tribute act!

I really can't see the point. I'm sorry you never got to see T.Rex at Wembley in 1972 or Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett (would you have gone if you could have?) but these things are in the past, and until time travel becomes affordable, no-one can ever experience them again. Even when the original bands have reformed, it can never be the same. You can enjoy recorded music many years after it was first created but neither the listener nor the musicians are the same people.

That said, do you think there would be any demand for a Dr Strangely Strange tribute band? Bags I be Tim Booth!

  

The South Wind Irish tune aranged for Mountain Dulcimer in AAD tuning

An arrangement I have just completed for a lesson. The notes in circles are optional but add nice chordal harmony.

The Barnes & Mullins Skiffle-jo

I have a friend who has a great urge to reacquire one of the guitars he used to own in his youth. He recalls they were invented, and sold, by Art Nash, who used to run a music shop in Croydon Road, Penge, London SE20. He described it as a banjo neck on a round guitar body, named a Skiffle-jo. He was reminded of it by that advert "You can switch on your hot water while embarrassing your daughter..." where the narrator plays a round-bodied acoustic guitar, though the body is a lot larger than on the Skiffle-jo. Anyone seen one recently, or even got one for sale? I found a couple of photos on Google Images, and they were actually built by Barnes & Mullins in the late 1950s. B& M made banjoes anyway so this was probably a cheap way to cash in on the skiffle craze. According to one commentator, they do sound quite like a banjo despite the wooden top.
More info welcome! Help make an old man (well, older than me) very happy.

Grahame
 

Why Hollow Hill?

The name has appealed to me for many years. It relates to the belief that fairie folk lived in hollow hills, and that what we now think of as barrows etc were often portals into fairy land. The one shown on my Logo is Silbury Hill, on the A4 road between Calne and Marlborough, a site linked to others including the Avebury Stone Circle and a similar hill in Marlborough itself, though the latter has been landscaped and planted with trees. Coming into Marlborough from the West it can be seen on your right in the grounds of the college.

In fact the belief probably stems from the existence of nomadic tribes,who wandered Britain and largely herded deer, which provided them with milk and meat. They would never stay anywhere long enough to raise crops, and their diet would make them very small of stature. Though they probably avoided settlement they inspired fear, hence the poem ; 'Up the airy mountain and down the rushy glen/we dare not go a-hunting for fear of little men'. When they did stop anywhere they would make huts of branches covered in turf. They were not averse to improving their own blood-line; there are many tales of human  babies being stolen or exchanged for fairy children, often called changelings. Eventually the tribes died out or were gradually integrated into the human population.

Who I am and what I do....

hollow hill music

 



Welcome to Hollow Hill Music!

My name is Grahame Hood and I am an acoustic musician, playing guitar, mandolin, banjo and Appalachian Mountain dulcimer.
I buy, sell and repair instruments, and have a longstanding interest in writing about acoustic music in the UK, with a particular leaning towards the "progressive folk" era from c. 1969 to 1972.

I intend to show the instruments I have for sale, offer playing tips, show videos of my own playing and to publish articles and reviews.

I live in Bromley, Kent but was born in Peebles, about twenty miles South of Edinburgh, in Scotland. I started playing guitar at the age of fifteen (1973..!) and had my musical tastes shaken up by the son of my next door neighour lending me the Incredible String Band album 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion, which was like nothing I had ever heard before. I later got a mandolin for £2.50 in a Guru Mahari Ji charity shop for £2.50. I played in a few rock bands around Edinburgh but fell into the folk scene when I moved down to London with his job. I played guitar and mandolin by then but so did everyone else, usually better, so I took up the Appalachian dulcimer, buying  a £28 model from Hobgoblin that I used until recently.   

I went on to play in various acoustic and folk based groups around the South East, including Gilderoy (similar to The Boys of the Lough and featuring Northumbrian Smallpipes) Mooncalfs, The Flying Chaucers, Joe Bazouki & The Missing Puddings and Walking The Witch (not be confused with the later Waking The Witch!), who played folk-based acoustic rock and performed well over 300 gigs around London and the south. More recently I formed a function band in which I played mainly bass, playing in many styles from pop through soul and Motown to jazz standards. 

Me and my dulcimer.

As well as playing music I write about it. In 2008 “Empty Pocket Blues” a full length biography of the Incredible String Band founder Clive Palmer was published and gained universally good reviews, leading to me being asked to research and write numerous CD sleeve notes. I have had pieces published in many mainstream magazines including Folk Roots, Rock & Reel, Shindig, Be Glad (the ISB fanzine) Traditional Music Maker and the American-based Dulcimer Players News as well as editing the Nonsuch Dulcimer Club magazine for three years.

I gratefully accepted early exit from my job in 2014, and I am now available full time to offer one-to-one tuition on guitar, mandolin and dulcimer, being particularly keen to host dulcimer workshops at clubs or festivals. In October 2015 I started Hollow Hill Music to purchase, repair and restore acoustic instruments for sale.