About the Old Time 100
The Old Time 100 is a collection of the 100 most popular old-time tunes played in jam sessions across the United States.
It started with recording 100 of the most commonly jammed old-time fiddle tunes in one day because we thought it'd be funny (it was) and we could create a lot of educational material from it (we have). We filmed ourselves during the recording and have posted the videos of us playing on our Patreon pages along with some basic transcriptions. I originally wanted to release them all on a single 100-track album, but due to logistical constraints we've been releasing the recordings in volumes, twenty at a time.
Picking the tunes
We drew on our knowledge of this music as people who travel the country performing and jamming, as well as the knowledge of a wide network of friends and colleagues. Even if this isn't a perfect list of 100 old-time tunes, it's the perfect list for someone trying to learn more about old-time. Generally, people mostly play the tunes their friends play, and people usually only play about 30 tunes. I corresponded with friends who host old-time jams in different parts of the country and whittled their responses into a list that would capture the most shared tunes. George found interesting versions of the tunes for us to play and record.
The recording
George and I became friends once I moved to Nashville in 2018. There used to be an old-time jam every week at a dive bar north of town called Dee's Country Cocktail Lounge. I brought up the idea for this project to George, saying I'd handle a lot of the logistics and he'd be in charge of the music. George knows a lot more about old-time than I do.
We enlisted our friends Amy Alvey (who was running the old-time jam), Frank Evans, and Eli Broxham. They agreed to play all of the tunes with us, and we also invited a bunch of friends to the session so we'd have a second string in case any of us needed a break (which we did).
We wanted the recordings to feel like being in an old-time jam, so every track is one take. There are mistakes, and you can occasionally hear people in the background. Our friend Jake Stargel set up the mics and our friend James Kee let us use his living room. (They're both great musicians but, ironically, don't appear on any of the recordings.) Seventeen hours later, the Old Time 100 was born.
About this bibliography
For each tune, this site lists the source recording our version comes from or was inspired by: who played it, where they were from, when it was recorded, and the record it was issued on. The information is based on my own research, but my starting point was almost always the Traditional Tune Archive maintained by Andrew Kuntz. Slippery Hill is a very useful resource for finding and listening to these recordings.
Who we are
Tristan Scroggins
I grew up playing bluegrass mandolin in a band with my dad and have spent the last 15 years as a professional performer and educator. I've gotten to play with lots of great bands and musicians including Missy Raines, Robbie Fulks, Sister Sadie, Steve Martin, Molly Tuttle, Chris Jones, and Bronwyn Keith-Hynes. I served on the International Bluegrass Music Association board of directors from 2020 to 2023, and for a number of years I worked as the personal archivist for the family of John Hartford. I've interviewed artists for No Depression, Fretboard Journal, and the Bluegrass Situation, and in 2021 I received IBMA's Writer of the Year award for that work.
George Jackson
George is a Nashville-based fiddle player and the 2022 IBMA Instrumentalist of the Year Momentum Award winner. He grew up in New Zealand, moved to the U.S. in 2016, and has worked as a fiddler for hire with groups including the Jacob Jolliff Band, Jake Blount, Peter Rowan, and Missy Raines. He has released many albums featuring his own compositions, including his tune "Dorrigo." Hundreds of musicians learned it and posted videos of themselves playing it online as the "#dorrigochallenge." For a group of people who mostly play tunes so old that we don't know who wrote them, a new composition becoming that popular is extremely notable.
Art
All of the Old Time 100 artwork is by Gina Dilg, an old-time fiddler, dancer, and illustrator.
The zine
The Vol. 3 zine is published by High Occulture, a small record label and zine publisher in Los Angeles run by Alex Steed.