"Lynchburg Town"

First published in 1848 and known to have been played by Joel Walker Sweeney, "Lynchburg Town" is an old song with many versions which goes back to the days when batteaux carried tobacco to market on the James River and Lynchburg, Virginia was the largest loose leaf tobacco market in the world. I got my version from my banjo teacher, Joe Ayers, and I'm sure I heard him singing it before I was even old enough to remember. My banjo, made by George Wunderlich in the 1990s, is a replica of a homemade instrument from the 1850s which turned up in Prince Edward County in the heart of Southside Virginia. The original homemade banjo it is based on was designed to imitate the popular instruments made by William Boucher Jr. who was one of the first to commercially produce banjos for sale in the 1840s.