Arthritis Brothers Website
Welcome to the Arthritis Brothers Web site
We play old time music. Stuff that was popular in the late 1880's and early
1900's; music that postdated the minstrel era and preceded bluegrass.
The Brothers are musicians with rural
roots. Banjo picker John Clabourne was
raised in the country in Sussex County,
Virginia. Fiddler John Beland was raised
on a Mitchell County, Iowa farm. Earl Rigg was
born in the mountains of Virginia and grew up in Eastern North Carolina
on a tobacco farm. All three live in the semi-rural
countyside east of Sierra Vista, Arizona. Clabourne is retired
from both the U.S. Army and the Sierra Vista police
force. Beland is a retired electrical engineer and
contractor. Earl Rigg spent 30 years as a technical expert for a Wisconsin phone company.
The Arthritis Brothers are
located in rural
Sierra Vista Arizona where the weather is always sunny and the plants
are mostly thirsty. Technically, we may not be hill billies,
but
we do live in the mountains and have pickup trucks and dogs.
Photo above
is the Arthritis Brothers out standing in their field (L to R) John Beland, John Clabourne and Earl Rigg
Old-time music is traditional music that developed in rural and often
isolated areas of the Appalachian and other regions before radio,
record players,
and other modern inventions. The two main strains of the music come
from the banjo brought with many of its common playing styles from
Africa by Africans, and from the fiddle, which came from western Europe,
particularly Germany, Scotland and Ireland. The fiddle and banjo were
played separately and together, particularly for dancing, in the
nineteenth century when music was used for house raisings, husking bees
and community entertainment. It was played by
persons with
ordinary jobs for their own entertainment. Songs and ballads, many
imported from the British
Isles and many written on these shores, are also an important part of
old-time music.
For a better detailed definition, try Mark Humphreys' definition at http://www.oldtimemusic.com/otdef.html ; there is an
excellent history at http://www.blueridgemusic.org/AboutMusic.asp An excellent summary is on Gordon Bank's page here http://www.gordonbanks.com/gordon/interests/otmusic.html If you want to know more about the relationship between Bluegrass and Old Time go here http://www.dwightdiller.com/bluegrass.html
The Arthritis Brothers
String
Band learns their tunes by aural transmission from our predecessors. We also
occasionally
get tunes from book and sheet music of traditional public domain tunes
and from early recordings. Web sites such at the Library of
Congress http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html
are particularly usefull. Fascinating even! The
Arthritis Brothers String Band performs traditional and folk music that
is free of Copyright and in the Public Domain.
Check our schedule page at |Schedule
|
for
times and places.
Some links of interest
http://www.oldtimemusicradio.com/Welcome.html
http://bayouseco.com/004_content.shtml
http://www.turquoisevalley.com/
http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/
To contact us
directly try this stuff
e-mail Arthritis@powerc.net
John Beland 520 266
0697
John Clabourne 520 378 0691
Earl Rigg 520 803 9918
Would you like to be on the FAB (Friends of Arthritis
Brothers) E-mail list?
Just send an email to Arthritis@powerc.net.
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