At first hearing, the melodies sound very much European, often beginning and ending on Mi of the Do-Re-Mi scale. Many of the songs are in 3/4 or 6/8 time, seemingly the preferred time signature in German folksong. Many have metric irregularities, changing time signatures in the middle of a song, for example. Someone familiar with American old-time banjo and fiddle music might not find much here to relate to. Not at first, anyway.
It was the lyrics of these tunes which got me to thinking about similarities between this music and American folk music. We have our train songs, murder ballads, mining songs, songs about the Mississippi or Missouri rivers,civil war songs, songs of farm and home, songs about mother, and gospel songs. Schmiedshauers have songs of mountains and nature, songs of soldier life, songs about peasants and nobility, songs about the Danube, songs of parting, songs for worship. There were enough commonalities to get me thinking... could the Schmiedshau melodies find voice with American instrumentation of fiddle and banjo?