Fisher's Hornpipe/Old Leather Britches

Grey: fiddle
Cindy: guitar

Produced by Grey Larsen and Cindy Kallet
Recorded and mixed by Grey Larsen at Sleepy Creek Recording, Bloomington, IN, USA
Mastered by Mark Hood at Echo Park Studios, Bloomington, IN, USA

Here are two more tunes taught to us by our neighbor Joe Dawson. This very unusual version of "Fisher's Hornpipe" seems distantly related to the tune as it is commonly played in the U.S. and Ireland. "Old Leather Britches" is one of a number of Joe's tunes that seems to be unique to southern Indiana. We've never heard it played by anyone but Joe, who learned it from his grandfather. (It is not related to the well-known fiddle tune, Leather Britches.)

For a long time, Joe didn't have a name for this tune. We call it "Old Leather Britches" because Joe's grandmother sang the following words to the first half: "Old leather britches full of stitches, kicked him out of bed 'cause he had his trousers on." In recent years Joe's been calling it "Fleener Dawson Hall." One night he was playing it with mandolinist John Fleener and fiddler Frank Hall, and they took the notion to name it after themselves.