Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues - a new arrangement & adaptation by Marc Nerenberg

Рет қаралды 1,313

7 ай бұрын

Bob Dylan's song "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" was the first song I ever performed on stage in front of an audience. It was more than 50 years ago, at a particularly crowded Yellow Door Hootenanny, in Montreal, and I recall feeling terrified when I stepped in front of the floodlights that lit up the stage in those days. Blinded by the light, with my knees shaking, I launched into my ultra fast, heavily rhythmic, loud frailing version of this song, trying to sound like a whole electric rock band on my lone banjo and harmonica.
This is a song that I've revisited often over the intervening decades, mostly just for my own entertainment, with new arrangements appearing and disappearing from time to time through those years. This video is of yet another new arrangement. In marked contrast to my earliest way of approaching this song, I'm playing it here as a fairly minimalist laid-back, soulful, two-finger-picking song, emphasizing the inherent pathos of the lyrics. I've also done some tinkering with the lyrics, adding or changing a few words here and there, changing the order of the stanzas, and even changing the order of the lines within one of the stanzas. Essentially, as I do most of the time, I’m trying to emphasize the underlying narrative that’s sort of hidden in the somewhat disconnected lyrics.
This was recorded yesterday, 16 November 2023, in Montreal West, Québec, on a 1927 Whyte Laydie Banjo, in Open C tuning, with a capo at the 3rd fret of the long strings, raising it into the key of E flat (without rising the 5th string, leaving is as a G note). There's a reasonable chance that I will play this as the opening song tonight at this Friday's Yellow Door Hootenanny, which I host, marking the end of our first full year being re-opened post-pandemic, by harkening back to the first song I ever played on that same stage almost a lifetime ago.

Пікірлер: 8

@elizavetamixailova3848 7 ай бұрын

Excellent job. I'm your age and love covers of the music I love.

@marcnerenberg1 7 ай бұрын

Thanks so much!

@chuckjj5493 7 ай бұрын

Right on,so the Yellow Door Hootenany has been going on for at least 50 years,wow,keep on playing those songs on the banjo there,we benefit from the youtube videos you do there,listening to them and enjoying your playing and singing.Wonderful.

@marcnerenberg1 7 ай бұрын

Thanks so much! The Hootenanny started in 1966 or ‘67. The first time I played at it was in 1970, I think. A big highlight for me in running the place these days was organizing a huge 50th anniversary weekend that brought back people from near and far, and got performers from the earliest days performing, together on the same stage as the young current crop of performers. I’m trying to remain involved long enough to organize a 60th anniversary reunion!