Hi all,
we will continue to jam during the summer. We will jam on Thursdays from 7pm to 9pm in the Pioneer Building - check the beginner blog to let everyone know you are coming!
Petra

Hi,
I will resume leading the Wednesday and Thursday evening jams on Sept. 4th and 5th.

Until then, you are welcome to continue meeting in small groups to jam in Revitalize Juice Bar's space (the usual space we use for jamming) on Wednesday and/or Thursday evenings, under the following conditions:

1. Unless you are a paying customer of Revitalize Juice Bar, wait until they close (7pm) before you make use of their space: that is, wait until 7pm to bring your instruments into their space, start setting up, moving tables, chairs, starting to tune, noodle, jam, etc., unless you first purchase an item or two from them, in which case you may set up, start jamming etc., at 6:30.

2. If you do start setting up for the jam, etc., before 7, with due consideration of the condition for this given in the preceding point, try to use no more of their space than is needed for the size of the jam group (usually quite small over the Summer when I am not there to lead the jams), being mindful of their other customers who may wish to sit at a table, and have easy access to a table, in the space. For instance, there should be no need to move all the tables and chairs.

3. As always, when moving tables and chairs, always be sure to lift them, rather than push, pull, or drag them. And, also as always, be sure to leave the space just as you found it: making sure at the end of the night that all garbage, spills, dirt tracked in by jammers, etc., are cleaned up when it happens that you are one of the last people to leave the space when the jam is over, and that the tables and chairs are put back in place as much as possible in the same locations as they were before they were moved.

Another option is to jam on the patio outside Wise Guys Pizza (which is right next to Revitalize Juice Bar in the Pioneer Building). Wise Guys Pizza and the manager of the Pioneer Building have granted us permission to do this from 6:30 to 9pm on Wednesdays and Thursdays when space on their patio is available. But, just to be safe, and for the sake of courtesy, if you go with this option, instead of jamming indoors at Revitalize, the first jammer(s) to arrive should check with the staff of Wise Guys each time before starting to set up for jamming.

To help reduce the likelihood of a person going to the Pioneer Building to jam only to discover that no one else is coming to join them to jam, Petra (who emails the weekly IBA calendar of events to everyone on the beginner and intermediate jam mailing list) has created a system on the Idaho Bluegrass Association's website idahobluegrassassociation.org whereby you can check in on the website beforehand. Petra will soon supply you with the details on how this works.

Near the end of August, I will send out the song of the week emails for the two jams, together with the new song lists for each jam for the Sept. - Dec. 2019 phase of the jams, and explanations of a few changes that will go into effect in September for the beginner jam (e.g., lifting of many of the key choice restrictions during the first half of the evening; welcoming people other than myself to lead the singing on some songs during the first half of the evening).

Songs played at the Intermediate Jam two night's ago
15 songs:

Clinch Mountain Backstep - A
Columbus Stockade Blues - A
Down In A Willow Garden - G
Gold Watch And Chain - Bb
Homestead On The Farm - A
In The Sweet By And By - A
Little Cabin Home On The Hill - B
Little Willie - A
Old Joe Clark - A
Turkey In The Straw - G
We'll Meet Again Sweetheart - Bb
Wreck Of The Old '97 - D
Sun's Gonna Shine In My Back Door Someday - Bb
Liberty - D
Little Joe - A  

Have a great Summer!
Happy Pickin',
Jason

The reason why the 6m, 6(M), and 4 chords all work for the measures that I use the 6m in is because the main melody note (in most cases, the only melody note) in those measures is the 6th note of the Major Scale, and all three of those chords contain that note. In the key of G, that note is an E note, and the E note is part of the Em, E, and C chords. Furthermore, the E note forms a dissonance with only one of the notes of the G chord (the D note), and only a mild dissonance at that. This helps to account for the fewer number of changes away from the 1 chord in the Charlie Monroe version.

6m or 4?
If one sticks mostly to playing E and G notes in one's breaks (or backup on instruments that allow for this) on the 'Em' measures, and makes it a point to avoid B notes, then one need not be too concerned whether a C chord is being played in place of an Em in some of those measures.  

Vocals
Down In A Willow Garden is most often sung solo, but some of the recorded versions included or mentioned here are sung with harmony either on all the vocal parts of the song (e.g., Osborne Brothers), or only on the choruses (e.g., Reno & Harrell). 

Breaks
Although on most of the recordings provided here, breaks are played only over the verse progression and melody, I find it tends to work better when I lead the song at a jam to have the breaks alternate between the verse and chorus progressions when two or more breaks are played back to back. In this respect, the arrangement we will use for the song as it goes through its song of the week cycle is similar to how we almost always play Columbus Stockade Blues at the jam, except that I will usually end the song, not with a vocal chorus, but with two 'everybody' breaks played back to back: the first over the verse progression, and the second over the chorus progression.

The only essential differences between the melodies for the two parts occur in the first two measures of the parts, and once one gets past the first two measures of the chorus, the progression for the chorus is identical with the progression for the verse. So, for a chorus break, all one needs to do is to alter the first two measures of one's verse break to make it fit the chorus progression and melody.

By dropping the melody an octave lower than written in the melody sheets, guitar players can confine the melody to the 4 lowest strings of the guitar, which is ideal for creating Carter-style breaks for the song like the ones played by Charlie Monroe on the recording. The very lowest note of the melody as written (a D note: open 4th string on the guitar) cannot be dropped an octave lower when the guitar is in standard tuning. In place of the low D note in the pickup measure for the verse, and in the 8th measure of the chorus, substituting an E note (open 6th string) will work, and in place of the low D note in the 2nd measure of the last line of the verse and of the chorus, playing an A note (open 5th string) is one easy option.

Melody
The melody of the Down In A Willow Garden is Major Pentatonic, which means that it uses only the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th notes of the Major Scale. In the key of G, those notes are G, A, B, D, and E. The melody has an unusually wide range for bluegrass: wider even than (though only by a half-step)  the range for the melody of Wildwood Flower. The melody for Down In A Willow Garden spans the same range as the melody for Fireball Mail. In order, from lowest to highest, the notes for both tunes when played in the key of G are: D, E, G, A, B, D, E, G. 
 
Song List
18 songs were played at last night's jam:

Cherokee Shuffle - A
Clinch Mountain Backstep - A
Cry, Cry Darlin' - A
Down In A Willow Garden - G
Gold Watch And Chain - Bb
I Can't Feel At Home In This World Anymore - D
I'll Still Write Your Name In The Sand - Bb https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5Eo0VE310s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_j5U3mf0oI
In The Sweet By And By - G
Little Cabin Home On The Hill - C https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhJ6r_R8crQ  https://www.youtube.com/watch? 
Old Joe Clark - A
Will You Be Loving Another Man - A
Wreck Of The Old '97 - D
Little Darling Pal Of Mine - B 
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1qz3CW5GE4 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjrzoqbaEBM 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHbW_OeTzDM
Mountain Dew - A
I Saw The Light - B
Roses In The Snow - B https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs-wOyMjJMw
Little Maggie - B
Cripple Creek - A

Here's a more straightforward Hank Snow recording of 'Wreck Of The Old '97' than the one on the record that I played last night at the jam during the teaching segment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNo0cGi1xZU 

Here's a common bluegrass jam standard that I first heard on a Hank Snow record long before I ever heard any bluegrass recordings of it:
I Wonder Where You Are Tonight - Hank Snow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbR7fcb9o70 

I Wonder Where You Are Tonight - Flatt & Scruggs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSN_RIbrLxQ

Here's the original recording of Wreck Of The Old '97, that predates the million-selling Vernon Dalhart record released in 1924 that we listened to at the jam last night on the old 78 in my collection:
Henry Whitter - 1923
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b8fUJT_ZNA&list=PLA566F095F93095ED  

Henry Whitter, together with G.B. Grayson on fiddle, was also the first to record 'Down In A Willow Garden'. 

Rose Conley
Grayson & Whitter - 1927 or 1928
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9HjllAe9oI 

If you look back in the recordings section of this song of the week write-up, you'll notice that the Ralph Stanley recording of Rose Conley (Down In A Willow Garden) is taken from a Ralph Stanley record released in 2005 titled 'Short Life Of Trouble: Songs Of Grayson & Whitter.' 

Btw, the 'Grayson' who is mentioned by name in some versions of the song 'Tom Dooley' (e.g., in the second verse of the Kingston Trio's version, and in the last verse of the Grayson & Whitter version) was G.B. Grayson's uncle.

Tom Dooley - The Kingston Trio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhXuO4Gz3Wo  

Tom Dooley - Grayson & Whitter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9NHKINSKFk  

According to the wikipedia article on G. B. Grayson (Gilliam Banmon Grayson): "G.B.'s uncle, James Grayson (1833–1901), was a Union Army officer who helped organize an anti-Confederate uprising in Carter County, Tennessee at the outbreak of the American Civil War and later aided in the capture of legendary North Carolina fugitive Tom Dula.[4] G.B. and Henry Whitter were the first to record the folk song Tom Dooley— based on the capture of Dula— in 1929.[3]"

Here's the B-Side of the Vernon Dalhart 78 record of Wreck Of The Old '97:
The Prisoner's Song - Vernon Dalhart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TouFORc4tg0   

Just like Wreck Of The Old '97, The Prisoner's Song has also been performed and recorded by many big name Country, 'Pre-Bluegrass', and Bluegrass artists, as well as big name artists from less-closely related genres, over the past 9 decades:

Bill Monroe - studio recording (not exactly the type of instrumentation one would usually expect to hear on a Bill Monroe record)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWhT4XVqZhA 

Bill Monroe - live 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GewNXif75Lk 

The Osborne Brothers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TAut9u1f8s 

Del McCoury & David Grisman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsxiBuSf5wk

Johnny Cash - live
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aooko3XvoxQ  

Eddy Arnold - pop-country
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDLe2vCySFs  

Hylo Brown (with Earl Scruggs on banjo) - live
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlY9WtbpGiY  

Brenda Lee - pop
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75cnhZZpc2Q 

Happy Pickin',
Jason