The Murphy Method Blog

Folks, in my narrative of our trip to the Florida Folk Festival, I last left you on Sunday afternoon as we set out to Dale Crider’s house in the swamp. We’d just played a festival set at the River Gazebo stage, and here’s a photo of us playing “Osceola’s Last Words” (in F) with harmony guitars (Chris Henry, Red Henry, Barbara Johnson, Jenny Leigh Obert, John Hedgecoth):

We’d had a good time at the festival, but now it was time to go to Dale’s and record on Monday. John had to go back to Nashville, but Chris, Jenny, and I got in my ten-year-old minivan and headed for Dale Crider’s house near Windsor. Some big thunderstorms were coming up but we managed to dodge them all, and rolled into Dale’s house before dark. Time to relax, and then get some sleep.

Dale’s recording session had been tentatively scheduled for 10:00 Monday morning. Typically, Barbara arrived before 10 with her bass, tuned up and ready to play. Various small details, however, caused minor delays in starting to record. By that time we were all rested, fed, and chomping at the bit, Dale had excavated for the songs he wanted to record, his computer was set up for the session with space cleared off its hard drive, Buddy Ray was on hand to set up the mikes and engineer the recording, and everything was ready to go.

By now, it was 5:00 p.m. Barbara was tolerant– she’s been around Dale before.

Now, some people are what you can call copiously creative. Dale had a big stack (actually several stacks) of old and new songs. A few of them he’d recorded 30 or more years ago and wanted to try again, but they were mostly unrecorded material, ranging from some songs which were pretty well formed in his mind to some drafts which he hadn’t revisited for 20 or 25 years and would rewrite on the instant as we played. He had a few “covers” of his favorite old songs which he wanted to record too. So Buddy Ray started up the machine, and we went at it. But this was not your conventional recording session.

Now, in a conventional recording session, the “tightness” of the arrangement and the cohesion and smoothness of the music are everything. That means that everybody is playing as closely together as possible, and other things– energy and spontaneity, for example– are pushed out to make the music sound as pleasant and homogeneous as possible. Not so with Dale! To him the creative process is paramount, and otherwise there’d be no point in the music. So when recording with him, you have to be alert. You won’t ever play two “takes” in a row with the same arrangement. Consecutive “takes” of the same song may be in different keys or different rhythms (4/4 and 3/4, for example). And Dale will rewrite the words spontaneously, or sing the verses in different order or repeat some of them, or leave out a chorus, or change the chords on the fly, or play the chords to either a verse or a chorus, as it occurs to him, behind the instrumental breaks. And he’ll end the song when it’s time to end it– he may know when this is even if the rest of us do not. It’s all wonderful, and if you’re recording with him you just hang on. Barbara on the bass, and Chris on the guitar, have some kind of radar and can almost always tell what chord Dale is going to, and the rest of us just hung on. It was good.

By midnight Dale had gotten a dozen or so cuts which, with a little mixing and editing, will sound really good. And they all had that Crider energy in them. Look for these songs (and others) on a CD sometime soon. And see more about Dale and his music on his website (including a live clip of us all playing “Seine Gang of Cedar Key” at the Old Marble Stage), here.

We drove back to Virginia the next day, full of music. Dale’s like that.

Red

This week the American Made Banjo Company featured Casey Henry in their email newsletter.

Click here to see the newsletter.

We’ve posted a new sample clip from our Clawhammer Banjo Volume 2 DVD, taught by Lynn Morris. In this lesson, Lynn gives a very detailed explanation of the double-thumbing clawhammer technique.

There was quite a bit of excitement at the jam tonight as Logan, 16, challenged me concerning the chords to a couple of songs. He proclaimed that “Worried Man” and “I Saw The Light” had the same chords. I said they didn’t. He said they did. I said I didn’t know exactly what the chords were without counting them out, but I knew they weren’t the same. He said he knew they were the same because……………he was the Bluegrass Master! The rest of us just looked at him with astonishment. The Bluegrass Master? (He had just come back from a week-long summer camp and I think he was feeling his oats!)

I said, “You wanna put some money on it?” He did want to. We confirmed the exact nature of the bet—that he said the chords were exactly the same—and I said, “Can I get a witness?” Ellen was kind enough to witness and she reiterated “exactly the same.” We bet one dollar. (All the time that this exchange is going on, Bob Van Metre, who has fallen into this trap many times himself, was trying to shut Logan up and even offered him a handkerchief to stuff in his mouth! I’m surprised he didn’t get out a roll of duck tape!)

So at the end of the jam, I said, “Alright, let’s see about these chords.” And I got out a pencil and paper to keep track of them as I played them on the guitar. But, no, Logan would not allow that. “You say never to write anything down. You won’t let us write anything down.”

I conceded the point and counted the chords aloud to each song while Mark kept track. As I pretty well knew, the chords were NOT exactly the same. (Even though they were darn close!) Now came the interesting part.

Logan: But you can play the same banjo break to both of them.

Murphy: I know you can but that wasn’t the bet.

Logan: Yes, it was!

Murphy: No, it wasn’t. You said the chords were—and I quote—“exactly the same.”

Logan: But the same licks work for each song, so the chords have to be the same.

Murphy: Yes, they do, but the chords aren’t the same.

Logan: You didn’t count them right!

Murphy: Yes, I did.

Logan: No, you didn’t.

Murphy: I can understand why your mom gets [ticked] at you sometimes!

Logan: Well, how did you know the chords weren’t the same?

Murphy: Because I am the Bluegrass Master!

Kaboom! End of story!

Students present: Ellen, Mark, Bob Mc, Bob Van, and, of course, Logan.

Songs played:

Banjo in the Hollow/Cripple Creek/Boil Them Cabbage: all done in unison for our warmup

Blue Ridge Cabin Home
Old Joe Clark
Worried Man (to which Logan played the break for “I Saw The Light” which set up the whole controversy!)
John Hardy
Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms

And for the finale, Shucking the Corn, played really fast by Logan, from whom I am still waiting on my dollar. “When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?”

One of the CDs I came home with after my weeks at Kaufman Kamp was the new tribute to Butch Baldassari: The Road Home. Butch, who passed away in January after a valiant battle with cancer, worked with, inspired, helped out, befriended, taught, and set an example for many, many musicians over the years. His friend Brian “Doc” Hull helped assemble the tracks on this wonderful CD from artists such as Ricky Skaggs, Tim O’Brien, Sam Bush, David Grisman, Roland White, Butch’s own Nashville Mandolin Ensemble, and many more.

Not only is it inspiring to see how many wonderful musicians donated their music, but the music itself is great! At least two tracks were written specifically for Butch: Don Stiernberg’s “Western Red” and the Nashville Mandolin Ensemble’s “Butch’s Bounce Back.” The rest, be they original or traditional, make a lovely musical program that you’ll find yourself returning to again and again.

I am still firmly ensconced at Kaufman Kamp for the rest of this week. At this camp I always learn at least as much as the students who attend. So far I’ve picked up a couple good pieces of advice that I’ll pass along.

I can’t remember who said this first one: “Don’t measure your progress (on banjo, mandolin, guitar, or whatever) in increments shorter than a year.” Learning an instrument is a life-long project. You’ll have good days and bad days, good weeks and bad weeks, and sometimes you’ll feel like you’re actually regressing. But compare where you are now to where you were a year ago and you will see how far you’ve come. Of course, it’s hard to remember how you sounded a year ago, so taping yourself (and then putting that recording away and not listening to it for twelve months) is a great way to compare.

This second item comes from Stacy Phillips, who taught fiddle this year. He said, when you practice your hardest material, your best is getting better; when you practice your easy material, your worst is getting better. Often students fall into just practicing their newest, or hardest, songs, or just the difficult passages, which can be a bit of a drudgery. Remember to play your fun/easy tunes as well. It keeps it enjoyable for you and improves your lousy level (the level at which you play when you are totally and completely out of practice).

I’m playing on the concert this evening (Wednesday), so if any of you blog readers are in the Maryville, TN area, come on out! I’ll have the marvelous Kathy Chiavola on guitar, Andy Owens on mando, and Bob Rostollan on bass.