Gold Trails Hotel: A Song History

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"Gold Trails Hotel" is one of the Bing Futch originals in his tablature collection All Over The Map, where the DulcimerDownloads listing sets it in DAA tuning and credits the composition to Futch.[1] J.O.B. Entertainment publishes the book, and the download contains the full book, every piece as its own PDF, and MP3 audio of the tunes.[1] Futch's own site describes it as his first mountain dulcimer book and presents it as a companion to his first dulcimer album, Dulcimerica: Volume 1.[2]

Photograph of a hillside town of wooden buildings overlooking a valley, with mountains beyond

Carleton E. Watkins, The Town on the Hill, New Almaden, albumen silver print from glass negative, 1863. Shown for its hillside western town; it has no connection to the tune or to any hotel.

Futch recorded the tune on that album, where it is track five and runs just under two and a half minutes; Apple Music gives a 2006 sound-recording copyright in his name and an April 20, 2007 release date.[3] His own store describes Dulcimerica: Volume 1 as entirely instrumental, built around solo dulcimer, with Charles Stansell adding harmonica on three tracks.[4] The sources consulted here do not say when or why Futch wrote the piece, or what its title refers to.[1][2][3]

Futch is based in Orlando, Florida, and his DulcimerDownloads biography presents him as an Americana performer on mountain dulcimer, Native American flute and ukulele, whose material spans his own blues and roots-rock songs as well as covers of Disney songs and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.[5] The same biography says he co-founded the band Mohave in 1999, playing mountain dulcimer, went out as a solo act in 2006, and has headlined events such as the Walnut Valley Festival and the Florida Folk Festival.[5] At the 2016 International Blues Challenge in Memphis he reached the finals and took the Solo/Duo "Best Guitarist" award while playing only mountain dulcimer.[5]

Our book that contains the song "Gold Trails Hotel"

Sources

  1. Bing Futch: "All Over The Map".
  2. Bing Futch: "All Over The Map: Dulcimerica Volume 1".
  3. Apple Music: "Gold Trails Hotel" (Bing Futch, Dulcimerica: Volume 1).
  4. Bing Futch: "Dulcimerica: Volume 1".
  5. DulcimerDownloads: "Bing Futch".
  6. Image: Carleton E. Watkins, The Town on the Hill, New Almaden, albumen silver print from glass negative, 1863. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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