On Friday, October 18 at 6pm, Taps at the Guardhouse presents a return solo performance by Jeanie Murphy with old time banjo tunes and songs, and the stories that accompany them. Old-time music fans are well aware of Murphy’s work, whether her role as an instructor around the nation at events like the Festival American Fiddle Tunes, or her performances at square dances or her duo project with her husband Scott Marckx, a fiddler and luthier.

When Murphy first approached playing banjo, it was to accompany her singing. Now, it is a rare treat to hear her perform old-time songs with solo banjo — or more appropriately, ‘banjos’. She will bring several banjos from her home on Dundee Hill, from fretless minstrel banjos to instruments that mark the golden age of banjo making in Boston at the turn of the last century. One of the banjos in her performance collection is a “modern” fretless made in Port Townsend with a banjo head made from sailcloth.

Jeanie Murphy describes her solo sets as comprised of “old tunes, new tunes,and lots of different spooky sounds to the beat of the clawhammer, the strum of the old style picking.” She will include “nods to Hobart Smith, Dock Boggs, anonymous players caught by the Lomaxes, and the first banjo tune Doc Watson ever learned.” The songs cover a wide variety of subject matter, she says, including “songs about dying cows, water that tastes like wine, rocky hills, wild hogs, bobbed hair.”