Release Date: 30 October 2015
Label: Red Beet Records
Packaging Type: Digipak
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 616892168744
Description
"Hangtown Dancehall" is subtitled "A Tale of the California Gold Rush," and was written by Eric Brace & Karl Straub.
It features them both, along with performances by Kelly Willis, Tim O'Brien, Darrell Scott, Karl Jason Ringenberg, Andrea Zonn, and John Wesley Harding (Wesley Stace), all singing as characters in the story. The musicians include Mike Auldridge (Dobro), Casey Dreissen (violin), Fats Kaplan (fiddle and steel), Tim O'Brien (banjo and fiddle), and many more of acoustic music's finest artists.
"Hangtown Dancehall" is the story of two young lovers, Betsy and Ike, who leave their Missouri home for California during the Gold Rush. Brace first met the two characters in the folk song "Sweet Betsy From Pike" that he heard in his childhood in Placerville, California, the epicenter of the Gold Rush, known in the 1850s as Hangtown. That old song tells the story of Betsy and Ike's trek by wagon train across the continent. The song's final verses tell of their arrival in Hangtown but Brace decided that though that's the end of the song, it wasn't the end of the tale. With "Hangtown Dancehall," Brace and Straub tell the rest of Betsy and Ike's story.
Tracklisting
Eric Brace & Thomm Jutz
Eric Brace & Last Train Home
Eric Brace & Peter Cooper
Eric Brace & Peter Cooper
Eric Brace & Peter Cooper
Eric Brace, Peter Cooper & Thomm Jutz
Eric Brace
The Skylighters
Various Artists
Original Off Broadway Cast
Original Revival London Cast
Original West End Cast Recording
Original London Cast
Various Artists
Various Artists
Various Artists
