And while we’re all about the YouTube clips this morning, here’s one more. This is from week 1 at Kaufman Kamp. Casey Henry with Adam Masters (fiddle), Cindy Studdard (banjo) and Mark Cosgrove (guitar) doing “Banjo Pickin’ Girl”.
Posts Tagged ‘kaufman kamp’
Banjo Pickin’ Girl
Friday, July 10th, 2009You Tube Clip from Kamp
Friday, July 10th, 2009From Kaufman Kamp 2009: Here is a hilarious clip of Kathy Chiavola and Don Stiernberg singing one of her big hits, accompanied by Beppe Gambetta (guitar), Dave Harvey (fiddle) and Casey Henry and Jens Kruger (banjos):
Kamp Pictures
Friday, June 26th, 2009
Here are a couple of shots from Kaufman Kamp.
Casey Henry and Bill Evans. Great minds think alike!
Casey Henry on stage at Kaufman Kamp Week 1. (L-R Adam Masters, Casey, Mark Cosgrove, Cindy Studdard)
There will be more to come, I’m sure!
Live From Kaufman Kamp
Wednesday, June 17th, 2009Hello from muggy Maryville, Tennessee! I’m teaching this week at Kaufman Kamp and have stolen a moment in between watching the evening concert and overseeing the post-concert open-mic to write a few words here. Bossman Steve Kaufman always keeps me hoppin’ during my time at Kamp. This week I’m teaching fiddle, a little clogging, assisting with the clawhammer banjo class, leading slow jams and keeping an eye on the aforementioned late-night open mic.
Every night various instructors perform a concert for the students and the locals who are brave enough to infiltrate camp for a few hours. Tonight, as always, was just great. The picture below is from Keith Yoder’s performance. He asked legendary bluegrass fiddler Bobby Hicks to play “Big Mon” with him. Now, Bobby was the fiddler on Bill Monroe’s original cut of the tune, back in the 1950s, and you just don’t get to see that every day. Mark Cosgrove, who played guitar on the tune, said he just about hyperventillated at getting to play “Big Mon” with Bobby.
Bobby Hicks, Adam Masters, Steve Kaufman, Keith Yoder, Mark Cosgrove (hidden: Bob Rostollan on bass)
Clawhammer banjo teacher Evie Ladin took the stage next, for a captivating twenty minutes performed completely solo. She dances, she sings, she plays the banjo. She even hambones (though I think a less regional term for it is body percussion). Evie plays with a California-based old-time group called the Stairwell Sisters.
Evie Ladin kicking up her heels.
...and playing the banjo. Though not at the same time!
My portion of the concert comes tomorrow night, and I’ll report back on how that goes. In the meantime I’ve got a slow jam to lead, fiddle, mandolin, and banjo to teach and a very few hours to sleep!
The Great International Banjo Caper
Thursday, August 14th, 2008
I like to think that The Murphy Method has a hand in spreading banjo around the world. Recently I got to play a part in literally sending a banjo around the world, and it was really fun.
Every year at Kaufman Kamp they give away instruments as door prizes. This year Deering Banjos donated one of their Boston banjos to be a prize. On the last night of camp, Steve Kaufman picks the winners by drawing numbers out of a jar. He rummages around for a while, pulls out the one that feels right, and slowly, suspensefully, reads the number. This year, who jumped up with the winning ticket but one of my very own students: Ginny Foard.
Now, Ginny already has a really good banjo and didn’t really have a use for the Deering. As I watched her carry it from the stage I had the germ of an idea for what she could do with the banjo, but I kept it to myself.
I met Ginny last year at Kamp and she started taking lessons shortly thereafter. This year we both met a camper who had come over from Ireland, Mark McCluney. He’s a beginning player but has lots of guts. He was determined to make the most of his camp experience, having scrimped and saved to cover his airfare plus camp tuition. He would gamely take a break on any song, rolling along in the chords, and never missed an opportunity to jam.
Back at home after camp, I saw Ginny for her weekly lesson and she said she’d had the idea of sending the Deering to Mark in Ireland. I told I thought that was exactly the right thing to do with it and that I’d had that very idea about thirty seconds after she won it. His banjo was a beginner’s model—just fine to start on, but his abilities were about to out-strip it.
The next week she brought me the banjo and I took it up to Robin Smith in Hendersonville, who builds my Casey Henry signature model banjos, and got him to pack it properly. A broken banjo would be a very bad gift. I took it to the post office and received a dour look from the clerk when I said I wanted to ship this huge package to Northern Ireland. Filling out the customs form gave me pause. If you want it to be a surprise, you can’t write what is actually in the package because that would spoil it. Yet you don’t want to get caught in a lie. I figured that when he saw the box the jig would be up anyway, so I wrote “banjo in case” in the “contents” field. And away the banjo went, across the wide blue Atlantic. (more…)
Kaufman Kamp, week 2
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
The excitement in the air was palpable as over three hundred guitar and mandolin students arrived for week 2 at Steve Kaufman’s Acoustic Kamp. Week 2 has an entirely different feel from Week 1, which is much smaller. Little jams spring up under every tree and on the front porch of every building. I taught six delightful students in the mandolin 101 class. This is the very beginning class for people who had never played before. We stuck to the lessons on Beginning Mandolin Volume 1, starting with two-finger chords (G, C, D) and strumming to lots of different songs. Then we did the G scale and by the end of the week we’d made it through “Boil Them Cabbage Down,” “Skip To My Lou,” and “Polly Wolly Doodle” with the chords and strumming to all three. And we changed our strings–all eight of them! Changing strings can be very intimidating to beginners, but when you’ve done it at least once, you can see that it’s not that big of a deal.
There are concerts every night of the week at Kamp. I had the fortune to have some great musicians play on my set with me: Kathy Barwick (Dobro), Chris Jones (guitar), David Harvey (mandolin), and Celia Wyckoff (bass).
By the end of the week, everybody’s brains are full to overflowing with new information, and their spirits are full of musical inspiration. We (even the instructors) go home inspired to practice and learn new things and we all hope that we can come back and do it again next year.
Kafuman Kamp, week 1
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008I write from the beautiful campus of Maryville College in Maryville, TN, where I’ve been f
or the past week and a half, teaching at Steve Kaufman’s Acoustic Kamp. Last week we had bluegrass banjos, fingerstyle guitars, Dobros, fiddles, basses, and old-time banjos. This week is flatpicking guitars and mandolins. My Banjo 101 class last week was small but fun. My two students, Paul and Phil, learned their rolls, three chords, “Banjo in the Hollow,” “Boil Them Cabbage Down,” and “Cripple Creek.” I told them they now have enough to practice on for about four months or so! This week I have six Mandolin 101 students. So far they have learned three chords, “Boil Them Cabbage Down” and “Skip To My Lou.” We will keep learning, picking and grinning here and I’ll report more later!