Civil War Music. 2nd South Carolina String Band

Powerful, high energy Double CD with 26 songs recorded LIVE at two back-to-back, sold out shows. Over 2 hours of favorite Civil War songs played on period instruments in authentic arrangements. Bobby Horton says, “It’s like eavesdropping on history.”

In this their fifth album, the 2nd South Carolina String Band once again brings you the songs and music that moved the American people of the early and mid-eighteen hundreds. They play the music that was in the hearts and minds and on the tongues of the citizen-soldiers that made up the ranks of the armies of the North and the South as they marched off to take part in the cataclysmic struggle that was to become the defining event of our nation’s history. They play it on instruments of the era and in an authentic manner and style that carries the listener back to simpler times.

IN HIGH COTTON will bring the listener back more than 150 years to hear music that was essentially laying the foundations of American popular music in the years leading up to the War Between the States. You’ll hear timeless melodies created by American musical icons Stephen Foster and Daniel Emmett, such as The Old Folks at Home (Swanee River) and The Blue Tail Fly. Songs about life on the nation’s earliest highways of commerce – America’s mighty rivers.

In November, 2001, the 2nd South Carolina String Band recorded (with musicians David Kincaid and John Whelan) “The Bonnie Blue Flag” at Sound on Sound Studios in New York City. This was soundtrack music for a scene in the upcoming Turner/Warner Brothers film, “Gods and Generals” directed by Ron Maxwell. In December, they travelled to the film set in Maryland to appear in a concert scene with actors Robert Duvall, Stephen Lang, Patrick Gorman and hundreds of Confederate reenactors.

“Southern Soldier: Favorite Camp Songs of the Civil War” is a collection of songs and melodies which were well known to Southerners and Northerners alike; tunes that were a familiar and comfortable part of life in the years leading up to the War Between the States. Many of these compositions were written by the likes of Stephen Foster and Daniel Emmett, giants of the popular music industry of their day.