The Murphy Method Blog

At Thursday night’s awards show one of our favorite banjo players took home the award for Banjo Player of the year: Kristin Scott Benson. Kristin plays with the Larry Stephenson Band and is the second woman to take home the title, the first being Alison Brown in 1991. The other nominees in the category—Earl Scruggs, J. D. Crowe, Jimmy Mills, Ron Stewart— were unbelievably stiff competition.

Kristin was modest enough to think that it was a fluke that she was nominated at all, so when she won, she was very surprised. She gave a great speech, giving lots of credit and thanks to her parents, who were in attendance that night because her husband, Wayne Benson, was taking care of their son Hogan.

Dale Ann Bradley took home Female Vocalist of the Year for the second time in a row.

Kristin and Dale Ann were the only women to take home awards this year, although Gillian Welch and David Rawlings’s song “By The Mark” won Gospel Recorded Performance of the Year.

The before and after parties were great fun. This is FiddleStar/Murphy Method Camp co-host Megan Lynch and myself:

And here is Lynn Morris and Bass Player of the Year nominee Marshall Wilborn, who presented the awards for Vocal Group and Album of the Year:

The dress I’m wearing was made by my grandmother for my mom’s Junior-Senior prom. It was a pretty big hit, I have to say. Last but not least, here is me with my brother and fellow TMM instructor Chris Henry:

Here is a video someone put on YouTube. It has some scenes of performances and jamming from last week’s IBMA convention. About 2:35 you’ll see Chris Henry in a mandolin jam, picking “The Gold Rush.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQnPYBRLLiw

As the week goes on here at IBMA, things get busier and busier, and I have less and less time to post blogs! But Here are some pictures from Day three…

Neil Rosenberg, author of the first comprehensive history of bluegrass music, Bluegrass Music: A History, playing the Casey Henry signature model.

Red Henry, Casey Henry, Neil Rosenberg

The October issue of Banjo Newsletter arrived in my mailbox on Wednesday, so I brought it to the tradeshow so people could look through it. Cover boy Chris Pandolfi of the Infamous Stringdusters stopped by the table, wearing the same hat as he’s wearing on the cover so I got him to pose:

In the showcases at night I caught two of my favorite bass players. First Missy Raines with her band The New Hip.

And then Marshall Wilborn with the 2008 Fiddle Player of the Year, and Instrumental Group of the Year, Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper:

I had the best experience a banjo teacher could have yesterday.

My sixteen-year-old student Logan Claytor (he said I could use his name) was in for his lesson. Logan has been taking from me since he was twelve and lately he’s really ratcheted his playing up a notch. But like many teens (and adults too) he doesn’t practice as much as I would like. Of course he always has some good excuse. So lately, as soon as he sits down, I’ve been asking him to give me his excuses before we start, so we can get them out of the way. This week it was homecoming.

Then I asked him if he’d learned the low break to “Amazing Grace” that I had recorded last week. No, he had not. But just as I was getting ready to chew him out (not!), he said, “But I did sorta learn a high break to ‘John Hardy’.”

“Let’s hear it,” I said.

So he procedes to play this most EXCELLENT up-the-neck break to “John Hardy” which he had made up out of his own head! Now, Logan can do simple, first position improvs to almost any three chord song but he’s never done any improv up the neck. So for him to make up this break was simply mind boggling. I was SO proud!

Naturally I asked him how he did. I was thinking maybe he’d worked it out lick by lick while he was practicing. But no. He said the whole break just came to him—in his head—while he was sitting in class thinking about playing “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” Amazing.

I told him I was going to steal one of his licks for my own break. And I meant it! It is something I’d never thought of doing before. (Too bad we don’t do tab here or I’d show it to you!!) [TOO BAD WE DON'T DO TAB? Who are you and what have you done with my mother??]

So, way to go Logan! I hope your story inspires some other pickers to go and do likewise!

Thursday I’m heading over to Nashville for the IBMA World of Bluegrass, joining Red, and Casey and Chris who are already there. I’ll be at the FanFest Saturday and Sunday. If you’re in the neighborhood, drop by and shake and howdy!

After an extremely slow afternoon tending our booth at the IBMA tradeshow, I popped down the street to the Hilton hotel to interview the band G2, on whom I’m writing a magazine article. I’m old fashioned and still use a cassette recorder to tape interviews. To my embarassment I had brought the recorder, a mic, and extra batteries…but no tapes! Luckily Erik, the mandolin player, had an iPod with a little recorder to capture our conversation. Wshew!

After that I headed down to lower Broad to Roberts Western Wear to catch the Bloggrass boys show. The single, if you can call it that, from the new CD is a hilarious song called “Democrat Ain’t a Dirty Word No More.” They had some great guests, including the amazing singer Jonell Mosser. And I had the unique experience of purchasing their CD from Suzy Bogguss, who sings on it.

L-R: Josh McMurry, (hidden Mike Witcher), Travis Stinson, Paul Kramer, Chris Jones, Jon Weisberger, Aaron Till.

My next stops were at after-hours showcases where I caught a wide variety of bands including:

Red Wine, from Italy.

Goldheart, a wonderful trio of sisters from Virginia. I first heard them two years ago and since then they have developed their musicianship by leaps and bounds. The 16-year-old sister, Jocelyn, writes some wonderful songs and picks the fire out of the guitar. 18-year-old Analise holds her own on the mandolin, while 13-year-old Shelby tears it up on the fiddle. Their trio is stunning.

I caught my brother Chris playing with former Two-Sringer and Winfield Guitar Champion Tyler Grant.

The above band tours Japan every year. Shin Akimoto, Andy Ball, Sammy Shelor, Maro Katawba (I apologize if I’ve misspelled names there…). When I stuck my head in the door they were picking a triple-mandolin version of “Golden Slippers.”

And once again to end up the night, G2. There were very few people in that 1:30 am showcase, so we clapped twice as loud to make up for it. L-R: Tobias Strömberg, Christoffer Olsson, Jimmy Sunnebrandt, Erik Igelström, Jens Koch.

Monday night I caught a couple of after-hours showcases when the official showcases were over. I dropped in on Gloria Bell and Tennessee Sunshine and enjoyed hearing Gloria pick the fire out of the mandolin:

Gloria started playing when she was young and even quit high school so that she could play music for a living. That’s gutsy.

My next stop was watching G2, the wonderful Swedish bluegrass band. Here are some randomly arranged shots of them:

Since I’m not regularly a late night person I pooped out relatively early (1:30) and headed to the house. I like to say that I’m just saving up my energy for later in the week!

Here are some shots from the IBMA convention, day 1.

My day started by setting up the Murphy Mehtod booth at the trade show. Here is my brother Chris and grandmother Renee, holding the fort:

And here is the blog, at the booth:

My night started by watching the wonderful keynote address, given by Roger Brown, president of Berklee College of Music in Boston. (More on that in a later post.) Directly thereafter one of my favorite bands, the Dixie Bee-Liners showcased:

L-R: Sam Morrow, Buddy Woodward, Rachel Johnson, Brandi Hart, Jeremy Darrow, Jonathan Manness.

More later…

Jim Fee died the evening of Thursday, September 18th, 2008. He was simply one of the best banjo players in the world.

I recall the first time I ever saw Jim: One afternoon in 1979, we arrived to play at a one-day bluegrass festival put on by the Women’s Club in Cocoa, Florida. I walked into the big pavilion and couldn’t believe what I was hearing. There was Chubby Anthony on stage playing the fiddle with three musicians I didn’t know—and they were PLAYING BLUEGRASS. Now, starting in the 1960s, I had seen Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs, Ralph Stanley, J.D. Crowe, Jimmy Martin, and other bluegrass greats, but suddenly here was a band that (along with being able to play as well as anybody) had an incredible excitement in their music that I’d never heard before. At that moment they were playing and singing Chubby’s song “Dear One,” and I was speechless. The vocals were soaring and the instruments were fiery. This was simply the best band I had ever (and have ever) seen on stage.

I found out that the banjo player was named Jim Fee. Jim’s banjo playing and solid baritone singing were a critical part of the band. His amazingly strong style and originality were like nothing I’d ever heard on the banjo, and he could play the slower material beautifully and then launch into a banjo tune like no one I’d ever heard.

Later, when I got to know Jimmy, I found out that his personality matched his music. He was straight-shooting, perceptive, and intelligent. After Chubby died, Jim kept the band together and always played great music. He asked me to fill in on mandolin with him a few times, and those are some of my best musical memories. It was a special pleasure to have the group come into my studio and record an album, in 1985—for years, I’d wanted a chance to mix them the way I thought they ought to be heard.

Rest in peace, Jim. We’ll remember you for a long time.

Today, for the first time, we offer a post from one of our Murphy Method instructors, Mark Panfil. He teaches our Dobro DVD. Mark is a great teacher of all things music and we’ll be hearing more from him in the future. He’ll be at the upcoming IBMA convention starting on Thursday and you can probably catch him at the Murphy Method booth.

Hello to the happy, hungry readers that may be looking for some ways to cope with practice. I’d love to offer some tips that I’ve collected over the last forty years of banjo, dobro, piano and harmonica playing.

Find the learning style that makes you most comfortable. You can’t put in hours if you’re not comfortable.

When I was young, I played harmonica every time I walked somewhere. To school, back home, around the neighborhood. I never tired of it. As I got older, I began to practice piano. I had to sit and stare at paper. Soon my neck hurt, my back too. 45 minutes really hurt. As time went on, I played gigs. Two or three even four hours never hurt and I figured out it was because I played without paper and moved often.

For years, I walked around my house practicing dobro. I still find it to be one of the most relaxing ways to spend and evening. One thing even makes it better. I wear ear phones with a CD on to play along with. Get used to one CD at a time. I wore out each of the Bluegrass Album Band CD’s. I changed from one to the next every couple years.

If you’re watching a DVD, Memorize the parts of the songs so you can walk away from the TV. Use one of these neat MP3 players that has a voice recorder. Place it near the TV when the song is being demonstrated then listen on headphones as you stand or walk.

You know, your TV can be your best practice friend even when it’s not on a Murphy lesson. If you are watching a show, you can practice a dobro or banjo pattern. Play it on your leg with your finger picks on or better yet, on the dobro or the banjo with a cloth under the strings. As the show becomes slow in parts, you will practice the picking pattern. As commercials come up, again you can practice. You will need to play these patterns without thinking about them eventually anyways. Research shows, short practice times that occur often are more effective than long periods where fatigue sets in.

Add a comment about a learning style that works for you.

Thanks, Mark

Here are another couple of excerpts from Murphy’s Banjo Newsletter articles about Jimmy Fee.

BNL August 1999

[In June of 1999 my son Christopher enrolled in a recording school in Orlando, Florida, called Full Sail. Much of this column somehow manages to focus on that! Fortunately for BNL subscribers, Jimmy Fee lived nearby and I had a chance to visit him and write something about banjos! I’m including only the part of the article about Jimmy.]

…Then for one frantic week Casey and I were actually in Winter Park, installing Chris in his apartment, meeting his roommate, setting up a bank account, shopping for furniture, buying him groceries, attending orientation at Full Sail, and, best of all, visiting the great banjo player Jim Fee who lives down the road just mile or two from Full Sail. Unbelievable, but true. And at Jim Fee’s picking shack, finally, I got to play the banjo!

I’ve probably told you this before, but we worked a lot of shows with Jimmy when we lived in Florida. He played the banjo with Chubby Anthony and Big Timber and they were hotter than a two-dollar pistol. He’s one of the best banjo players I’ve ever heard, and he’s also one of the most driving bluegrass rhythm guitar players I’ve ever played with. When Jimmy is playing the guitar, you don’t have to work to make the music sound right, you just sit on top of his rhythm and play the banjo.

Back when I was pregnant with Chris (1980), I had somebody take a picture of Jimmy and me, belly to belly. I titled it “Guess which banjo player is pregnant?” I thought it would make a good cover for BNL, but Hub wisely thought not! I did, however, include the picture in my book of BNL columns. I think Jimmy gets a kick out of that picture. I know I do. So round, so firm, so fully packed…

Casey, Chris, and I got in some good picking with Jimmy. There were plenty of banjos there to choose from including our own 1937 Gibson style 11 with a Red Henry neck and a Huber tone ring; another style 11 that a friend of Jimmy’s had purchased through E-Bay; a beautiful new gold-plated Gibson; and a copy of a style 11 which Jimmy had put together with neck he made, a pot and tone ring from Bill Sullivan at First Quality, and a Kalamazoo resonator. Of all those great-sounding banjos, my favorite was the one Jimmy had concocted. It’s a dandy (as Jim would say). He just has a way with banjos. He also has a way with guitars. He was picking an old 12-string Hondo guitar that he had converted to a 6-string by adding a Martin top and neck. I thought it sounded wonderful, especially with Jimmy playing it, but he said “You ort to hear it when it’s got good strings on it.”

What did we pick? Well, we started off with “What A Friend We Have in Jesus” (in D), then we picked everything from “Foggy Mountain Special” to “Baby I’m Georgia Bound” (in F) and “Hold Back the Waters of Lake Okeechobee”. Jimmy also sang a song he wrote about his grandson, Brandon “Tater” Cranston, who’ll be 7 in October. Jim says the song makes Tater’s dad about half mad when he hears it, and when you read the words you’ll understand why. In three-quarter time, now, starting in a G chord with the
downbeat on “my”:

My baby Brandon don’t favor no Cranston
All he got from his Paw was his chin
He looks like a Fee
And that shore tickles me
That Cranston blood line was too thin.

And Jimmy can’t hold back a big grin when he sings that last line. As the evening wound down, Jimmy took back the banjo and picked Floyd Cramer’s “Last Date” at my request and “Never On A Sunday” which I’d never “hyeered” on the banjer before. It was vintage Fee. He’s a dandy.

BNL December 1997

[Most of this column is about the IBMA World of Bluegrass in Louisville. Since Jim Fee showed up for it (a first), I included something about him.]

My old friend Jim Fee, from Orlando, Fla., one of the best “banjer” pickers in the world showed up, to my surprise. We picked a while in my booth, with me on banjo and Jimmy on guitar. Jimmy’s always been pretty tight with a compliment, so when he mentioned that I did a good job on “Foggy Mountain Special” I swelled up like a toad. I guess that gave me just enough moxie to show off my arrangement of “What A Friend We Have In Jesus.” When I finished, all he said was, “I like to play that in D chord.” So I said “have at ‘er,” we swapped instruments, and I watched HIM play it. After that, I felt like I could have stood on the head of a banjo and walked under the strings. Whatever made me think I could play the banjo? This guy can play rings around me.

[If you made it to the end, many thanks! Maybe one day we’ll be able to include some snippets of Jimmy’s music or some downloads.] {Or maybe today, my dear techno-phobic mother!} Here’s Jimmy picking “Give Me Roses While I Live”.