“Paul David” is a tune by the Toronto banjo player and guitarist Chris Coole. He named it for Paul David Smith, whom he met, and played music with, when both were on the teaching staff of the Augusta Heritage Center in Elkins, West Virginia, in 2006.
The first recording came from Coole’s bluegrass band, the Foggy Hogtown Boys, on their 2007 album Pigtown Fling, made in Toronto with Coole, Andrew Collins, Chris Quinn, Max Heineman and John Showman. When Coole posted the track online in January 2008, he filed it under clawhammer and old-time, and he said it was a credit to the band’s musicianship that “a bunch of bluegrass boys can nail the old-time groove on this tune.”
Coole came back to the tune in 2021 with Adeline, a five-piece that brought together Showman on fiddle, Coole on banjo, Adrian Gross on mandolin, Mark Kilianski on guitar and Sam Allison on bass. They recorded over three days in March 2021 in a cabin on Beaver Lake in Ontario’s Kawartha Highlands. Almost everything else on that album came from the old-time and bluegrass repertoire. “Paul David” was the one piece by a member of the band.
