Completed at Raney’s studio in Drasco, Arkansas, in March, 2008, this effort features 11 old and new original songs and the inimitable Tim Crouch lead the sessions. The guys gave my songs an extraordinarily rich acoustic sound and, to tell you the truth, I’m kind of proud of this one. It’s available from CDBaby, and you can email me for more information at: charley@charleysandage.com

These are story songs done mainly in oldtime stringband style about people and events in Arkansas’ colorful history, and they are performed by a trio called Harmony that is among Mountain View’s best-loved performers. More about the overall Arkansas Stories projects appears (where else?) on the "Projects" page. CDs are available from the project website: www.arkansasstories.com

In 1973 we were five guys in our twenties and thirties whose collective musical experiences included rock and roll, country, musical theatre, classical, pop, folk, bluegrass, and traditional. Now we are something of an extended family that gets together once a year or so and plays the occasional gig, including weddings for one or another of our kids. Our only rules have been to play music we like and to stay acoustic - but we’ve broken that rule whenever we decided to use an electric bass, so I guess rule number one is the only one standing. The CD is a compilation from the original "Rare Back" project and a later one titled "Cornbread for Breakfast." You can email me if you’re interested, at: charley@charleysandage.com

Beginning in colonial New England, traveling singing masters taught untrained congregations to sing voice parts, modal songs, and "fuges" by using shaped notes to represent tones. The practice and its accompanying repertoire spread with the American frontier, taking root across the south. It was "rediscovered" in recent decades, especially in its four-shape "Sacred Harp" forms, and can now be heard across the USA and in the British Isles. The Ozark Folk Center in Mountain View hosts an "Annual National Shapenote Gathering" on the weekend following each Fourth of July, and four-shape and seven-shape singers of all traditions come together from all across the country. The Center’s resident group performs and records the traditional repertoire in seven shapes, and one CD is available. The National Shapenote Gathering website is www.shapenotegathering.org, and www.fasola.org is all about the tradition and singing across the country and abroad.

Sometime in the distant past (the early eighties), I asked friends from the Sugarhill group and from around Mountain View to help record an LP featuring original songs that depicted scenes and attitudes that seemed about to disappear from Arkansas and elsewhere. That project is now available in CD form, and you can write to me at charley@charleysandage.com for ordering information. By the way, many of those scenes and attitudes still seem to be holding up very well, and that’s good news.

The chinquapin is a variety of chestnut, and folks around Mountain View tell about searching out the tree some years ago, filling their pockets with the tasty nuts. A few specimens were hardy enough to survive the chestnut blight and now the species is making a comeback. That made the name a good choice for our old time string band. We figure that we, and our music, are just too deeply rooted here and too ornery to die out altogether. Never mind about the "nuts" part. We play regularly at the Ozark Folk Center. Here’s a link to the Center’s website and its performance schedule: www.ozarkfolkcenter.com

The mountain dulcimer isn’t ordinarily associated with Celtic melodies but, combined with fiddle, guitar, pipes, and well-suited voices, it works wonderfully on these old tunes - or so we think. This group, led by Charlie Mink, plays at the Ozark Folk Center and "around."