By Lil Rev
Greetings and welcome to the first of many articles that’ll showcase the tunes, traditions, and techniques of our beloved hog fiddle (dulcimer).
This issue’s column will explore the origins and an arrangement of one of the most haunting folk ballads of old, “Asheville Junction,” also known as “Swannanoa Tunnel.”
Asheville Junction is a 2-chord, minor-keyed, hammer song that grew out of the southern convict labor system in the late 1800s.
The Swannanoa Tunnel mentioned in the song is an 1,832 foot tunnel that runs through Swannanoa Mountain near Asheville, North Carolina, and was completed on March 11, 1879.
Its creation is said to have taken the life of almost 300 men, many of whom were African American men, unjustly incarcerated due to the American Jim Crow system that reigned in the 1870s in America. Tunneling was extremely dangerous work and death kept a daily vigil as landslides, blast accidents, weather, and disease all took their toll.
It was originally recorded by North Carolina banjo legend and song-catcher Bascom Lamar Lunsford for the Folkways Records album “Smoky Mountain Ballads” (FW2040).
Like “Shady Grove,” “Little Sadie,” and countless other minor-keyed classics, “Asheville Junction” is right at home in D-A-C on the mountain dulcimer and is written here in 4/4 time for you to explore.
To play this old chestnut, start by tuning to D-A-C and then count “1, 2” and come in on the 3rd beat. The melody itself is very easy to play combining eighth, quarter, half, and whole notes together, for a really sweet little romp, that spans the first through fifth frets. You can play either just the melody notes or add in the drone notes of the middle and bass as it’s written.
The tune is both haunting and repetitive, so when I perform this piece, I’ll often use a harmonica and neck rack for some bluesy effects and then move up the neck and play the melody in the upper reaches, to add a nice variation and avoid too much repetition.
Please note the nature of this song: it is rooted in hard-labor and the longer spaces created by both the half notes and whole notes, served one very important purpose – they allowed for the swinging of a hammer or the driving of a spike in a call-and-response cadence between the song leader and the other workers.
When I play this tune, I use both down strokes (on the quarter notes) as well as down-ups (on the eighth notes). Be sure to note the inclusion of the C chord in the second variation of the score and watch my video to see and hear how it’s done.
Special thanks to mountain dulcimer player and teacher Laurie Alsobrook for transforming my chicken scratch into something that looks legible and intelligible via TablEdit.
Lil Rev Recommends
Here’s some of my favorite versions of this song on YouTube:
- An old-time banjo version by Bascom Lamar Lunsford: bit.ly/ajst-lunsford
- Billy Strings and Bryan Sutton in Nashville, Tennessee: bit.ly/ajst-sutton
- Folklorist and singer Paul Clayton on mountain dulcimer: bit.ly/ajst-clayton
Arrangement: Asheville Junction
Lil Rev is an author, touring clinician, and entertainer. He tours and teaches all over North America. To learn more visit lilrev.com.