Tuba Skinny with Erika Lewis: ’Six Feet Down’.

One of the lustiest and earliest foot-tappers from the band’s repertoire, ’Six Feet Down’ was composed by Erika herself, and was on the band’s album of the same name, released in 2010. At that time, Tuba Skinny had no reed player, and Alynda Lee Segarra was on banjo. Robin took a chorus on washboard, just as he does in this video. And they played the tune in the key of G. But in later years, as in this video, they switched to F, maybe to suit Erika’s maturing voice. It’s essentially a 32-bar a-a-b-a tune; but at the end of Erika’s first vocal (at 01:15) - and as an instrumental coda (at 03:44) – and nowhere else, we have a further 16 bars, where it appears that she drops down to the note D flat (the chord being B flat minor). So this might be considered as making the song a-a-b-a-c-a, taking the total to a tune of 48 bars. This video was filmed on Erika’s birthday in 2015 by my friend David Wiseman, who sadly died at Christmas 2021. I am so grateful to him for having given me the video.