It’s impressive just to look around and see an array of amazing musicians I’ll be spending the next 11 days with… Béla, Tony, Noam…Russ Barenberg … Read More
Ted in Arizona writes: Am I ready for Advanced Class??? Concern: Get there and slow your class down because I’m not up to speed.… Read More
I am excited and honored to be part of an unprecedented tour this fall—the New York Banjo Summit. Béla Fleck, Tony Trischka, Bill Keith, Eric Weissberg, Richie Stearns, and myself will visit ten northeastern cities from Albany to Washington DC… Read More
The passing of Doc Watson seems especially momentous to me. Though his banjo playing was wonderful, he was of course known primarily as a guitarist and singer. But I think his significance goes far beyond what instrument he played. … Read More
Everyone has a story about the first time they heard him. When I was 12 or so I was at my friend Jake’s apartment in the Bronx and Jake said, you like banjo, listen to this, and he put on Shuckin’ the Corn from the “Foggy Mt. Jamboree”album.… Read More
Amber Waves is a talented Colorado family band that I started coaching last summer. I met them when one of the teenage twin daughters, Katie Costello, attended my banjo camp on scholarship from the Colorado Bluegrass Music Society. The Costellos are living a version of “the American dream”— traveling as a family (4 kids, the youngest is 6) in an old converted school bus, hitting mostly RV parks in the Sun Belt this winter, busking for a living…and making it!… Read More
Almost every aspiring musician dreams of playing music with other people. And any way you slice it, bluegrass banjo is an element of bluegrass music, a group effort, a teaming of instruments and voices. Yet very little bluegrass teaching stresses interactive skills. But it could, and it should!… Read More
This month I host my 28th annual Winter Banjo Camps, three weeks of full banjo-immersion in Boulder, Colorado. These are about the only Banjo Camps I teach any more, mainly teaching Jam Camps instead. I was recently asked why. Simple: At every Banjo Camp, I kept finding that most students’ main need was to play more music with other people…. Yet many of them rarely if ever did that, and some had no clue how.… Read More
The following ideas have served my students well since I developed them in the 1960s and 70s. They have been presented in my “Bluegrass Banjo” book (1974), my ten Homespun instructional videos, and over 150 music camps I’ve hosted since 1980. The student evaluation forms I’ve used since the late 1980s give clear evidence that they work.… Read More
It’s been an interesting few months lately for the banjo in the media…. A couple of new 5-string stars are burning up the TV waves: One’s a 66 year-old “overnight sensation” Hollywood celebrity who’s blended his considerable creativity, digital dexterity, and off- the-wall humor into (yet another) new career—as the banjo’s Victor Borge, filling concert halls and even holding Paul McCartney’s feet to the banjo fire.… Read More