I Was Born Long Ago in Nineteen Forty-nine (updated for 2026) - Marc Nerenberg (Jan 2026)

Описание: I wrote this song, originally, in May of 2025, about how bad that year was turning out to be. It was a new song built on the bones of a 95 year old, anonymously written song, about how bad the year 1931 had been in the depth of "The Great Depression".
By the end of just the first two weeks of 2026, I felt that this new year was looking to be even worse than last year, and I added a new stanza and ending to update the song, while keeping the same (hopefully, optimistic) message.
The day after I completed my update, I performed it as the Opening Song of Montreal's weekly Yellow Door Hootenanny, which I host, and this video is of that first performance of the new , updated version.
I introduced the song with a fairly long introduction, the tail end of which is included at the start of this video, wherein I set up my song by singing the first verse and chorus of "Bean, Bacon and Gravy" the early 1930's song upon which I based mine (and I was gratified to hear someone say, at the end of my song, "That was worth the long introduction").
This was recorded on 16 January 2026, on a 1910 Fairbanks Banjo, strung with artificial gut strings, tuned at eAEAC# (using mostly old-time thumb-lead two-finger picking, with a few smidgens of clawhammer technique scattered about throughout) in the basement of the Yellow Door's old brownstone building on Aylmer Street in downtown Montréal. Québec, Canada.