Greetings from Kaufman Kamp! I am sitting here in the kitchen of the suite Casey and I are sharing at Maryville College watching Casey pour her morning orange juice. And as you can see, I’m still in my pajamas!
Today will be the fourth teaching day at camp and I am happy to report that all my classes have gone swimmingly. (Does anybody say “swimmingly” anymore? For all you Y genners that means “great.”) At Kauf Kamp each teacher sees all the levels of students, not just one section. So I will see the Beginners, Intermediates (two sections), and Advanced students twice each for two, two-hour-long teaching periods.
You can get a lot done in two hours so the Beginners (whom I have seen twice already) have learned the low and high breaks to “Boil Them Cabbage Down” (from the Misfits DVD) and have learned to vamp to it and come in and out of their breaks and add an ending lick. We performed for Casey’s Banjo and Mandolin 101 class yesterday (folks who have never played banjo or mandolin before but want to learn) and my folks did, well, swimmingly! I was so proud of them! And Casey’s students played for us, too, picking out a fine version of “Skip to My Lou” (from the Beginning Mandolin DVD).
I’ve been taking both Intermediate classes through “Blue Ridge Cabin Home”, first a high break (from Easy Songs) and then a, more or less, improvised break (from, duh, Improvising!). Of course, my view of improvising—which is to play licks against chords with no melody at first—goes counter to everything the other teachers at the camp are telling them, but so it goes and what else is new. I think and hope they all left the class realizing that they, too, can improvise. As I said to them as they were leaving class, “This isn’t brain surgery.” To which one guy promptly replied, “It’s harder!” Good one!
The Advanced Class is being treated to a massive dose of “how Earl done it” beginning with “Bluegrass Breakdown” (from the Rawhide DVD). I had told them in the material in my section of the Kamp Book to “leave your melodic licks at home” but apparently some of them hadn’t read the fine print. They were gently told to “play that break again and leave out the melodic crap and put in something Earl would play.” Today we will look at Rudy Lyle’s fantastic break to Rawhide (from the DVD of the same name). The tune is done is the key of C and we will examine it both capoed (at the 5th fret) and uncapoed a la Craig Smith and Casey Henry. (I recorded it capoed myself being somewhat unadventurous at the time and more concerned with “how Rudy done it.”)
And in just an hour or so I will be explaining the mysteries of Learning To Hear Chord Changes (from the DVD of the same name) to a room full of students who possibly think I have a magic formula to dispense. Alas, no! I will be showing them that it’s just guess work at the beginning, trial and error, hunt and peck. But I will be assuring them that it will get easier.
So I will close now and go fix my oatmeal and read some in my current book, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas by Elaine Pagels. As the Cowardly Lion said, “Fascinatin’” And to all you students who couldn’t be here—especially Zac, Susan, and Luke—we miss you! Maybe next year!
