I’ve been teaching banjo almost 50 years now. Though most banjo teaching addresses typical technical challenges, I have some pet non-technical topics, to steer a player toward better music and more fun on the instrument.… 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
People sometimes wonder why a well-known banjo player/teacher like me has switched from teaching banjo to teaching mostly “bluegrass jamming”.… Read More
When a student hires me to teach, that is, to direct their learning program, I’m sometimes awed by the responsibility. Time is such a precious commodity, and the student is not just committing to spending classroom time with me, but also to many hours practicing what I recommend.… Read More
The word has gotten around that Hot Rize played at Steve Martin’s wedding, and as with about anything involving Steve, there’s a fair amount of curiosity. For the sake of brevity, here are some sound bites:… Read More