A couple of years ago, when I began playing a little more banjo than I had for a long time, I started listening to what people had been doing with the banjo since I last paid much attention, two decades earlier. I tend to gravitate toward the progressive stuff, but honestly, as truly great as some of it is, most of the time I still feel like “who really wants to listen to this?” The players I like the best are Jens Kruger, Tony Furtado, Dennis Caplinger, Noam Pikelny, and of course, Bela. That’s just me, of course.

But, then, there’s GODDESS Alison Brown. Now, I know many people say she plays too much guitar-like cocktail jazz, but I don’t see it that way. I guess what I like are little compositional gems, like Jerry Reed’s great guitar tunes. Very few banjo players manage even one of these. I think maybe Tony Furtado has the most of them, to my ear. But this one of Alison Brown’s, Return to Pelican Bay is just a masterpiece. I can’t even begin to articulate why I like it so much, but I think it’s a work of banjo genius (it’s a reprise of her earlier Pelican Bay, also great). Alison manages to create something that remains completely true to bluegrass banjo picking at its core, and yet draws upon the best of “cocktail jazz” with complete musicality. On top of this, it lays great on the instrument, just written on and for it alone. This is the mark of a Platonic Form of a tune, IMHO, of course .  Anyway, I just love this tune, and for that matter, its composer. The head is easy to play, so there’s just no excuse not to learn it!

I know how people are getting about free tab these days. I usually don’t post stuff that’s not in the public domain, and in the rare instance that I do, I hope it’ll sell more CD’s than whatever harm it does, but there’s always the chance I’ll be asked to take it down (or worse). Anyway, here is the transcription of Return To Pelican Bay. I have included the head and first solo, as well as the reprise at the end. There is also some guitar chording to help contextualize the thing. There is other great stuff on the tune on the CD, like a piano solo and some trading fours, but this is enough to get you started! Note 0n 8/8/07: I have played around a little more with this tune and I noticed a few careless tab errors that I fixed. Also, I have now included the final B part and A part from the original Pelican Bay from the Twilight Motel CD (another gorgeous variation).

I have included an exported MIDI of the tab below. It sounds better than when the tab is played directly in TablEdit, but again, it is still nowhere near the actual sounds of acoustic instruments played by people, or a goddess in this case. The fictitious rhythm guitar track is just to put the melody in context, as I said.

Play MIDI of the tab


Download: Return To Pelican Bay tab here     (Note: If you have not downloaded this tab since 8/8/07, you do not have the latest version)

(in TablEdit Format, which you can download a free viewer for)

Enjoy!