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banjo
October 2008 
Triple Trad
Posted on Jan 29th, 2007
by 
Debi
Debi
I need to talk more about the Triple Trad Fest at the school this weekend. Ohhhh, my. I am so full of music now, as my friend Deborah said in an email the next day. How delicious!
The weekend began Friday night with a potluck, series of jams and round-robins, and square dances. The members of the bands there for the next night's workshops and concerts all took part, either playing or dancing at the dances, and then joining in for the jams. So, I'd be hanging out, glance to the side, and there would be someone I idolized, maybe even someone whose CD I'd been playing back and forth for hours trying to learn from it. Or even better, I'd be playing in a jam and suddenly discover that the person nodding and smiling at my choice of tune or my ornamentation was in the band I'd paid a good chunk of money to see the next night. I played with other students, people who'd traveled for hours to get to this event, and with professionals, until 11pm. It was still going strong when I left.
To understand the special feeling of the whole experience, you have to know that the Old Town School of Folk Music is housed in what used to be a library. It has a vibe of community both because of the students and artists who come there and because of the history of the building. There's tons of old weathered wood, local artwork on the walls, pictures everywhere of musicians and dancers and students and teachers making music. Great beer and good solid snacks are for sale at a little cafe counter. For the potluck, they turned one of the dance studios into a big buffet. Everywhere you looked were instrument cases and even instruments -- people felt so safe that no one worried about leaving their stuff lying around. Stealing a banjo in a place like that -- well, the bad karma would be unbearable.
On Saturday, I attended a workshop led by Jesse Wells of Clack Mountain Stringband. He is an unreal fiddler, with an incredibly light touch on his gorgeous custom-built carved fiddle. He sounds like a sunset when he plays -- the colors I saw are umber, orange, earthy reds, browns. He's subtle even on flashy fiddle tunes. Learning from him was very hard -- he taught most of the tunes in an alternate tuning I'm not used to, and I couldn't seem to teach my fingers to go somewhere different for the note whose location they thought they knew. Still, I enjoyed the class, and afterward, got to chat with him a while about a favorite fiddler from his home state -- J.P. Fraley, the first fiddler I ever heard. What a sweet man, that Jesse Wells. Hopefully I'll see him again sometime.
And then there was the concert. Oh, how invigorating and lovely and exciting and delicious! I'll save my review of the concert for another entry, but for now, go to the website of Martha Scanlan and listen to the song "Seeds of the Pine." It's stunning. She sang it in concert with Dirk Powell backing her up on banjo (I would have loved to hear this with Riley Baugus playing instead!), and while it's different from the other old-time stuff we heard that night, I can't get it out of my head. Enjoy!
The weekend began Friday night with a potluck, series of jams and round-robins, and square dances. The members of the bands there for the next night's workshops and concerts all took part, either playing or dancing at the dances, and then joining in for the jams. So, I'd be hanging out, glance to the side, and there would be someone I idolized, maybe even someone whose CD I'd been playing back and forth for hours trying to learn from it. Or even better, I'd be playing in a jam and suddenly discover that the person nodding and smiling at my choice of tune or my ornamentation was in the band I'd paid a good chunk of money to see the next night. I played with other students, people who'd traveled for hours to get to this event, and with professionals, until 11pm. It was still going strong when I left.
To understand the special feeling of the whole experience, you have to know that the Old Town School of Folk Music is housed in what used to be a library. It has a vibe of community both because of the students and artists who come there and because of the history of the building. There's tons of old weathered wood, local artwork on the walls, pictures everywhere of musicians and dancers and students and teachers making music. Great beer and good solid snacks are for sale at a little cafe counter. For the potluck, they turned one of the dance studios into a big buffet. Everywhere you looked were instrument cases and even instruments -- people felt so safe that no one worried about leaving their stuff lying around. Stealing a banjo in a place like that -- well, the bad karma would be unbearable.
On Saturday, I attended a workshop led by Jesse Wells of Clack Mountain Stringband. He is an unreal fiddler, with an incredibly light touch on his gorgeous custom-built carved fiddle. He sounds like a sunset when he plays -- the colors I saw are umber, orange, earthy reds, browns. He's subtle even on flashy fiddle tunes. Learning from him was very hard -- he taught most of the tunes in an alternate tuning I'm not used to, and I couldn't seem to teach my fingers to go somewhere different for the note whose location they thought they knew. Still, I enjoyed the class, and afterward, got to chat with him a while about a favorite fiddler from his home state -- J.P. Fraley, the first fiddler I ever heard. What a sweet man, that Jesse Wells. Hopefully I'll see him again sometime.
And then there was the concert. Oh, how invigorating and lovely and exciting and delicious! I'll save my review of the concert for another entry, but for now, go to the website of Martha Scanlan and listen to the song "Seeds of the Pine." It's stunning. She sang it in concert with Dirk Powell backing her up on banjo (I would have loved to hear this with Riley Baugus playing instead!), and while it's different from the other old-time stuff we heard that night, I can't get it out of my head. Enjoy!
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