Casey Henry

So I’m here in Maryville, Tenn., for one more day. This morning we have all to ourselves because the campers are doing the band scramble. The previous years I’ve taught her at Kaufman Kamp I’ve been in charge of the Scramble, so had to get up extra early on this day. But I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying being able to get some work done in my room this a.m.

My concert spot was last night and I asked some absolutely wonderful people to accompany me: Jim Hurst on guitar, Andrew Collins on mandolin, Adam Masters on fiddle, and Kathy Chiavola singing harmony (she would have been playing guitar as well except that she broke her left hand and it’s in a cast!). Jim, Kathy, and I had a great little trio going and we gave the campers some plain-old traditional bluegrass which, as it turns out, is not heard much on the concerts here. Here was the set list:

Wandering Boy

Turkey in the Straw (banjo-fiddle duet)

Weary Heart You Stole Away

Dixie Breakdown

East Virginia Blues

The audience here is great and pretty much loves everything everybody does. It always makes you feel good! No doubt pictures and/or videos of the songs will pop up on the internet. I’ll post them when I find them.

Then a little later on in the night I played a banjo-fiddle tune medley with Stacy Phillips, who is teaching bluegrass fiddle this week. It was “Elzick’s Farewell,” “Farewell Trion,” and “Tennessee Waggoner.” (I’m not really sure about the spelling of any of those!) The first tune was in A minor, the second two in C. There was a funny little moment when I joined Stacy on stage. It was just the two of us, sitting kind of facing each other. As he was introducing me he said “I’d like to ask two people to accompany me on this next tune.” In my head I was thinking, “But we only practiced it with just fiddle and banjo…who else is going to play…and there are only two chairs…” and then Stacy continued: “One of them doesn’t do much, just gets carried around all day.” And then I got it! He was talking about my Little Boy bump and it was really funny!

But the whole point of this post was supposed to be to post the instructor photos from the week, which are below (click on pictures for larger versions):

That's me in the front row between Janet and Gary. Front Row Left to Right: Janet Davis, Casey Henry, Gary Davis, Barry Mitterhoff 2nd Row: Mike Kaufman, Mike Witcher 3rd Row: Conny Ottway, Keith Yoder, Stacy Phillips, Kathy Chiavola, Jeff Scroggins 4th Row: Joel Landsberg, Jens Kruger, 5th Row: Jim Hurst, Emory Lester, Adam Masters, Andrew Collins 6th Row: Steve Kaufman, David Harvey Back 2 Rows: Ivan Rosenberg, Don Stiernberg, Jeff Jenkins, Uwe Kruger, Mark Cosgrove, Dan Crary, Clint Mullican, Alan Bibey and Beppe Gambetta

And here we are being silly. It was a couple years ago that we started doing a silly instructor picture. Don't know whose idea that was...

Casey Henry

I come to you yet again from the campus of Maryville College in Maryville, Tennessee, where I’m teaching at Kaufman Kamp. It’s my eighth year here (I think…it’s a little hard to keep track…) and this year I got a promotion from banjo/mandolin/fiddle/guitar 101 instructor and slow jam leader to regular banjo instructor. For the first time this year I get to see all levels of banjo students and it is great!

Yesterday I saw the beginners and the advanced class. (I so want to call them the “advanceds.” I don’t think that’s really a word but it should be.) I taught the beginners the high break to “Boil Them Cabbage Down” and then we vamped to it. I taught the advanced class a slightly obscure Earl Scruggs tune called “Silver Eagle” (he recorded it with the Scruggs Revue) and we vamped to that, and then talked about some little backup licks they can throw into their vamping to spice it up a little. Unfortunately “Silver Eagle” is not on any of the Murphy Method DVDs, so no potential sales there, darn it, but they all seemed to like the tune.

Here's some impromptu bulletin board art that I noticed yesterday in my dorm while I was waiting for the elevator. I didn't make this thumbtack banjo, but I thought it was pretty cute!

Today I see two intermediate classes and, as usual, although I see them in a mere 75 minutes I have not yet decided what we’re going to do. I typically make that decision once I see who is in the class and what they already know. I have some possibilities in mind, though, that include a high break to “Blue Ridge Cabin Home”,  “Salty Dog,” maybe some simple backup licks. You’ll notice that all those choices ARE on the DVDs. I think people like to be able to take home with them the things that they’ve learned at camp. And I like them to buy DVDs, so that’s a win-win right there.

It was three years ago, from this very dorm building, that I wrote our very first blog posts. In the three years since we’ve written about everything from banjo lessons and jamming to gigs and touring to mandolin bridge making and flying airplanes. You’ll do doubt have noticed that we’ve lost a little steam in the last few months. We’ve gone from posting to every single day (how did we DO that??) to three days a week, to once a week if we’re lucky. One reason for this is that we’ve already written a LOT about the topics relevant to teaching and learning bluegrass by ear, so we don’t want to repeat ourselves. Another reason is that summertime is just SO busy it’s hard to make the time to sit down and write. And as I pointed out to one of our students, no one pays us to blog, so everything we do that someone is giving us money to do (like record lessons and send out orders and play gigs and write magazine columns) gets done before blogging. But we certainly have no plans to discontinue blogging, so we’ll keep on posting sporadically with news and tales from our playing and teaching experiences and we hope that you’ll keep on reading!

Casey Henry

This second video is from the American Revival Tour in November 2009. I’m sitting in with Uncle Earl on what was typically the final number in their set. We do the breaks to the song in an old-timey way, that is, fiddle and banjo playing at the same time. Therefore it’s not so much that I like my break on this song, but I do like my outfit!

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!

Casey Henry

We’re in the middle of Week 2 here at Kaufman Kamp and I’m really feeling why they call it “hump day.” Three more days of instruction to go and all of us here are just about at the point where our brains fill up and you can’t stuff any more new information in! So, once again, instead of words, I’m posting pictures. These are the Week 2 group shots.

Front Row – Andrew Collins, Gary Davis, Kathy Chiavola, Ned Luberecki, Joanna Jones, Casey Henry

Second Row – Sharon Gilchrist, Keith Yoder, Alan Munde, Murphy Henry, Roland White

Third Row – Radim Zenkl, Tyler Grant, Sally Jones, Chris Jones, Pat Flynn, Tim May

Fourth Row – Mitch Corbin, Carlo Aonzo, Emory Lester, Mark Cosgrove

Back Row – Steve Kaufman, Kathy Barwick, Dick Daniels, Tommy Jordan, Beppe Gambetta

And these are all the campers. I think there are nearly 500 of them.

Front Row Left to Right: Jeff Jenkins, Keith Yoder, Casey Henry, Joe Collins, Mary Flower

Second Row: Adam Masters, Jim Panky, Barbara Lamb, Russ Barenberg, Robert Shafer

Back Row: Steve Kaufman, Ivan Rosenberg, Pat Kirtley, Stephen Bennett, Richard Smith

Not Shown: Marcy Marxer, Rusty Holloway, Clint Mullican, Johnny Bellar and Adam Granger

Casey Henry

I write you from the campus of Maryville College in Maryville, Tenn., where I am teaching fiddle and guitar at Kaufman Kamp. I have the very beginning class for both instruments (simultaneously!) and, despite my reservations about teaching two instruments at once, it is working out rather well. This is our class:

Fiddle/Guitar 101: Roxanne, Casey, Jack, Deb, Louvenia. I didn't realize until seeing this picture that I'm taller than all my students. Thanks to the multi-talented Donna Dixon for being our photographer.

We picked up one more student this afternoon, after the picture was taken (sorry Jim!). We started out the first morning of class learning a G scale. Now, traditionally on fiddle most people start out with the A scale. But my reasoning was that, since this is primarily a bluegrass camp, and the default key for bluegrass is G, that my fiddles should at least be able to chop along in the most common key right away. In trying to figure out how to manage two instruments in the same class I hit upon the idea of doing “Frère Jacques” as the first tune. Everyone knows the melody already and it only has ONE chord. So my sole guitar student could just grab a G chord and hang on.

It went so well that in the afternoon we learned some two-finger chop chords and alternated between playing lead and playing rhythm. Two of my students showed up at the next morning’s slow jam, at which we played everything in the key of G, so I felt good about teaching them G first.

The next day I started with a challenge. While my single guitar player and I had a guitar-specific workshop, the three fiddles tried to pick out “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” by themselves, by ear. They did SO GREAT!!! I had told them the starting note and that all the notes they needed were in the G scale we had learned. They not only got “Twinkle,” they then added the shuffle bow stroke to it! They had started in on “Amazing Grace” when we guitars came back. I was incredibly impressed. All three of the women play other instruments (bass, hammer dulcimer) so they are already familiar with this music, and they’re used to using their ears to figure out what to play. Those very important facts contributed to them picking out “Twinkle” so quickly.

In the rest of Tuesday morning’s class we learned the A scale (for fiddles it’s a whole different scale, for the guitar we just put on a capo and played the G scale) and then “Boil Them Cabbage Down” with the shuffle bow stroke and pick stroke. They did so well I showed them how to do an easy double stop by playing the open E string along with the A string (the string all the melody notes are on).

After lunch we picked up a second guitar student, who jumped ship from the beginner group. I was worried he’d have a hard time since he’d missed what we did in the first three classes, but he gamely jumped right in (luckily he could already play his scale, and that helped immensely).

We took on our biggest challenge so far: “Cripple Creek”. It was the longest tune we’d done, and the most complicated. But by taking it three or four (or sometimes two) notes at a time, by the end of class we sure enough had it down. I was careful to explain to them that since we’re learning by ear, when they went to sleep tonight the tune would seep out of their head and wouldn’t be there in the morning. That’s part of the process. But we’d do extensive review, so by the end of today’s classes, “Cripple Creek” would be back. Oh, sure, it will go away again tonight when they sleep, but you know what, Thursday we’ll review it, too, so by the end of camp it will be stuck in there good and tight.

So, I’m off to lead this morning’s slow jam. Today’s key is A, so we’ll play everything in A, which opens the field to play “Cripple Creek” and “Old Joe Clark.” Also, since it’s two frets higher, my singing will sound less like a sick bullfrog and more like a healthy bullfrog (just kidding!). But I am looking forward to the C day, since that’s actually my key!

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!