I learned Clayhole Waltz from Tony Mates, a long-time fixture of the Seattle old-time scene as a musician, caller, and mentor. I don’t remember if I learned this at the all-waltz jam session he once led or if it was at another jam, but it pretty quickly made it into my repertoire. Something about it has always felt sort of cowboy-ish to me, and it turns out that’s probably right: the clayhole in question was (according to the liner notes of Skip Gorman and Ron Kane’s “Powder River“) “an old camping spot near the Arizona-Utah border where lumberers, freighters and cowboys would rendezvous”. There’s a “Clayhole Wash” in the middle of nowhere about 20 miles south of the Arizona-Utah border, so maybe that’s the spot.

I learned the tune from Tony in the key of A, but Gorman and Kane play it in C, as does the Gifford family of southern Utah, which is probably the oldest known source. The Canote stringband class taught it in A in 2008 as learned from the Bunkhouse Orchestra (aka Deseret String Band), so maybe that’s how it made it in this form to Seattle.

I don’t think I’d ever tried playing this in C before today, but here’s my quick take on the Kane/Gorman version: