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REEL CARIGNAN (Marc Nerenberg)
This is a song that I wrote 40 or more years ago about the renowned Québec fiddle player, Jean Carignan, whom I was fortunate to see perform while he was still alive, though old, and when I was still a young man. The magnificence of his fiddle playing cannot be overstated, it was awe inspiring. The origin of the song was my mangling of the tune Old Joe Clark (about a banjo player with a blind horse) when I first tried to figure it out very early on in my banjo playing days. I had heard it was a "modal" tune, and not really understanding what that meant, I worked it out in a so-called "modal" tuning, but I ended up using the wrong mode, so it's a not quite the same tune. After singing the words of Old Joe Clark to it for some years, one day, when walking down the street, the French lyrics that I now sing about Jean Carignan just appeared in my mind, and I went into a coffeeshop and wrote them down. It's the only song I've ever written in French. Interestingly, without much effort, I was able to come up with English lyrics while still at that coffeeshop, and it became a bilingual song. I've sung it that way ever since. Though this song is about a fiddle player rather than a banjo player like Old Joe Clark, I did manage to put my own blind horse into it!

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from Times Ain't Nuthin' Like They Used To Be, released January 15, 2021

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Marc Nerenberg Montreal, Québec

Marc Nerenberg is a veteran Montreal folksinger who plays old time banjo styles and blues harmonica. He has a narrative- centric repertoire, recounting stories in song and wrapping stories around songs. You may “be drawn in by a combination of Marc’s mastery of traditional banjo styles, his idiosyncratic singing, and [his] richly detailed ballads.” (Mike Regenstreif – Folk Roots/Folk Branches 2019) ... more

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