What’s in a name?
The first thing you may be wondering, what’s with that title, ‘Macon as in bacon’? Well it comes from a conversation I had with a friend about the old time American musician Uncle Dave Macon. I had seen his name on many CD cases, and listened to him, and decided I liked what he was doing (apart form the obviously racist nature of many of his songs) but had no idea whether his name was pronounced Macon as in bacon, or as in Mason, or even as in the French pronunciation of the town of the same name, Macon.
Anyway, I think it’s as in ‘bacon’, but the point of all this being that it’s pretty symptomatic of the way I got into this kind of old time folk and country music. It wasn’t part of my upbringing - I was brought up in Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire, UK, not a log cabin in the Appalachian mountains. It probably started with the film O Brother Where Art Thou, and I know that’s not a very credible thing to say but there you go - no shame.
Now I play open back banjo and continue to enjoy the music in the same way, mostly through CDs and things I’ve picked up on the internet, including many great performances on Youtube. Oh and Pat Costello’s Youtube videos were a big part of that.
But now I’d like to carry on sharing and finding out more. This is intended to be contributed to by a larger number of people than just me hopefully, so if you’re interested in helping out with this, let me know.
That’s surely enough intro for now!
