Patti and I have roomed together for the past two years. Here's a little video of what we packed for the week.
Kamp takes place on the campus of Maryville College. It is a beautiful setting. At any hour during this week you will find people playing outside. This is Andy Hatfield picking outside of the dining hall.
Our weekly schedule for Kamp looks something like this:
Breakfast
Slow Jam
Morning Class
Lunch
Tune of the Day Jam
Afternoon Class
Master Class
Dinner
Open Mic
Faculty Conert
Open Mic
Night Jam
The "sleep" portion of the week is optional. There are so many wonderful people to talk to and play with that sleep really does seem like a waste of time.
I had four incredible banjos instructors this week: Gary "Biscuit" Davis, Bill Evans, Alan Munde, Ned Luberecki, and Keith Yoder. Though they each created their own curriculum, everything they taught seemed to flow together.
Biscuit-the only 4-time national banjo champion!
Bill Evans - all around fabulous!
Alan Munde - he has the clearest tone I've heard.
Alan and Don Stiernberg tear it up.
Patti, Kristin, and I worked on "Winter's Come and Gone" with the intention of performing for open mic. However, after being reminded of all the murder ballads in Bluegrass (usually the girl dies), we though it would be fun to write our own Bluegrass murder ballad. All of our teachers were comedians, so we figured if we killed them all off in the song they would appreciate it. They did. Though this wasn't the best musical presentation of the evening it was certainly the funniest!
Ned showed us some string changing tips.
Ned and Steve Kaufman
On Friday evening Keith's "Tune of the Day" class got to perform. This is a safe environment which makes is easy to get up on the stage.
It was hard, once again, to say goodbye to everyone on Saturday morning. But, it's been so nice catching up on sleep!
Val, when I was 16, long before you were even a twinkle in your father's eye, I bought a 5 string banjo and took lessons for nine months (all paid for with money I earned cleaning the house and/or ironing my dad's shirts for $5.00 a week). It was a lot harder than learning the guitar had been, so when I was 17 and I wanted to take a plane instead of a bus to start at Warren Wilson College I sold that banjo to my brother John. He loved playing banjo and he played it until he got so sick from the chemo that didn't stop his cancer that he couldn't get his fingers to pick any more. But neither he nor I ever got half as good as you are because, unlike us, you've got real talent. Thank you for sharing your video, I loved it.
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