75 Spins Around the Sun - Marc Nerenberg’s 2024 Birthday Concert at the Yellow Door Hootenanny

Having turned 75 the preceding Monday, 11 March 2024, this video of my performances at Montreal’s weekly Yellow Door Hootenanny the following Friday represents what I anticipate will be my last quarter century milestone concert. (Unless, of course, I live to be 100!)
Though my seven songs from that evening (three of my earliest and four of my most recently written ones) have been strung together here as a single roughly half hour set, in reality, they were spread out over the course of the Hootenanny (which I host) interspersed with a bunch of other wonderful songs by about a dozen or so Hootenanny participants (whom I cajoled, along with the rest of the audience, into learning and singing my final song with me).
My spoken introductions, which were somewhat long and loquacious, have generally been pared down to the very barest minimalisms here. (Each of the songs are identified in brief titles in the lower left corner of the screen, along with an indication of when they were written.)
The songs are presented here in the order in which they were performed (in the general chronological order of their original composition - though they all actually received some revisions in the course of preparation for this concert).
The banjos used here are a 1910 Fairbanks, strung with synthetic gut strings tuned lower than modern tuning, and a 1927 Whyte Laydie, strung with steel strings and played here in a variety of different tunings (with all retuning having happily been omitted from the video).
This was recorded on 15 March 2024, in the basement of the Yellow Door building in downtown Montreal. (Apologies for the occasional furnace noises, which are inevitable throughout the winter months here, since the Hootenanny shares the basement space with the building’s furnace room.)

[@KenneyCmusic]

Happy birthday Marc! Great tunes. I've really been digging your music.

[@marcnerenberg1]

Thanks very much!

[@chuckjj5493]

Happy Birthday,what a party.

[@marcnerenberg1]

Thanks very much, Chuck!

[@adamdaniel36]

Happy Birthday, Marc - your channel inspired me to learn the banjo about 12 years ago, and I've been playing ever since.

[@marcnerenberg1]

Thank you very much! Keep on playing!

[@marclattoni1959]

What fun. Nicely done.

[@marcnerenberg1]

Thanks very much, Marc! By doing this chronologically, I was struck by how much darker my songs became over time!