One Hour in Hungary by Vasen

A great tune by a great band. I like to think of the title as "One Hour in Hungry." I'm posting this here partly so I can learn it

Politics

OK, I promised myself I wouldn't get too political in this blog, but this is kind of interesting--and peripherally related to music.

One of the topics of the TGIFriday's crew at Kaufman Kamp was how few people in the US actually vote. Beppe and Tony were both amazed at the low percentage of voter turnout. This week I'm working on a story on the band Nathan, and songwriter Keri Latimer had this to say about her politics (or lack thereof):

"I’m not very political at all. Or I can’t seem to follow politics, because they frustrate me and then my frustration leads me to just turn everything off and then I become stupid about it all. So I can’t talk politics with anybody. "Scarecrow" [which features the refrain 'I feel a podium under my feet] is my song about politicians, how I see them in general. Most politicians just like to be up on the platform, waving their arms around. It’s so strange, it’s accepted now that the parties will pander to what they think the majority of the people want instead of taking a stand on something and sticking to it. It’s all a matter of polls, and 'If everyone wants this, we’ll say we’re going to do that.' And everyone knows that they’re not really going to. So how can you even vote nowadays when you know that nobody really means what they say? It’s really strange that we all just go along with it. [In 'Scarecrow'] I was thinking of them like scarecrows and how they want you to believe that they’re guarding the fields, but they secretly want to be crows."

DAROS on YouTube

Here's a rockin' tune from the StringNation festival with Brittany Haas tearing up "Duck River." How does she do that?

Kaufman Kamp

Well, I’ve been off the blog for awhile. Too many other things to do, I guess. But I thought I should post something about my week at Kaufman Kamp. Steve Kaufman had been asking me for a few years, and I’d declined, mostly because when I was working it would have meant taking a week of vacation time to do it. Had I known how much fun it was, I would have made more of an effort to get there. Steve is not only a great guitarist and businessman, but puts on an incredible event.

The teaching format was a little different than other camps I’ve been to, where I either had the same guitarists for a week, or had two to five classes that meet daily. At Kaufman Kamp, the guitarists are split into groups by level and rotate through all the guitar instructors (of which there were nine the week I was there). This means you see every group once, for two hours. It took me awhile to figure out how to teach that way, but it worked well. You end up teaching real concepts and spending very little time saying “put your second finger on the third fret . . . no the third fret . . . no your second finger.

It was also a good hang and I met and re-met lots of great folks. I shared a cab to Kamp with the legendary banjoist Pat Cloud, who currently has the great misfortune to be living in my hometown of Long Beach, CA. He’s an amazing banjo player—none like him really: bebop and jazz lines on melodic banjo—crazy. And he’s a fun guy to hang with—favorite line: “Where does the time come from?” I spent a couple post-concert evenings at the local TGIFridays imbibing Sam Adams with Beppe Gambetta, his wife Frederica, Casey Henry, and Tony McManus, who kept us in stitches until they kicked us out: One of his gems: “I come from Paisley, Scotland, which is known for being the stingiest place in Scotland. At Christmas every year, a man there takes his children to visit Santa’s grave.” I also enjoyed hanging with Rolly Brown, Adam Granger, Mike Kaufman, Steve Kilby, Jim Baggett, and Marcy Marxer.

There was also an incredible group of mandolin instructors: Alan Bibey, John Moore, Don Stiernberg, Roland White, Radim Zenkl, and the unsung Emory Lester, who, if he was in the right band would be winning IBMA Mandolin Player of the Year for the next decade. I was thrilled that he asked me to play a tune with him on his concert set.

As for the Kampers, this was one of the largest and most cohesive groups of students I’d ever seen. Great players—ages 12 to well, I don’t know, but there were a few downright old guys. They all seemed to look after each other, have a great time together, and as Rolly Brown commented at the end of the week, there wasn’t a dud class the whole week.

On the last night I played my 20-minute concert set. I was a little nervous, but it went OK—I got Tony McManus to play “Josefin’s Waltz” with me and ended with “Richmond Blues,” with Steve K joining in. Then after I went backstage, Steve told me they wanted me onstage again. There were no encores, so I thought they just wanted me to take a little bow or something. But no, they were presenting me with the Kaufy Award—for “contributions to flatpicking.” What a shock and an honor. I was very moved and couldn’t really think of much to say. But it was a nice cap to the week, and made me feel very welcome in East Tennessee. Thanks, Steve.

New NorCal Juniors Cycling Blog

Another parent has started a juniors cycling blog that features a nice picture of Joey gritting his teeth at the start of the Dunlap Time Trial. I'm not sure how many other blogs feature juniors race reports and photos. I know the AMD blog does, occasionally. There should be more.

Junior Regional Championships

Joey just finished doing all three Northern California Junior Regional Championships--one a week for the last three weekends.

The first one was the Panoche Pass road race, a 24-mile out and back course. It was supposed to be fairly hilly, so we thought it might be a good one for him, but we rode the course the day before and discovered that the 12-miles after the turnaround was pretty much all downhill into a headwind. Since Joey is anywhere from 40-70 pounds lighter than some of the big 13-14s he decided his goal was just to stay with the group until the turnaround (at the top of the only real climb). This he managed to do, and was fourth over the top, but then he got dropped on the descent and rode mostly alone to the finish. Nonetheless, his 6th place was none too shabby, especially considering he beat James LaBerge, who would win the criterium championship a week later.

Speaking of the crit championship, a flat course against big thighs--not Joey's forte. But the race split immediately with a group of the big 4 going off the front. Joey stayed with the second group, got boxed out in the final sprint, and finished 9th.

Yesterday was the Dunlap Time Trial in Winters, one of Joey's favorites. His goal was to beat Marcus Smith's time, since he knew that with a flat time trial he wouldn't be able to match the bigger older kids. He rode well and finished just 5 seconds behind Marcus in 6th place. I figured that Marcus's rear disc wheel gave him at least a 5-second advantage, so in my book it was a dead heat. Joey however wasn't buying it. While looking at the results he said, "Not sixth again. It's always sixth. It started at Nationals." Some kid he'd beaten overheard him and said "You got sixth at Nationals? Wow!" Good to be reminded that there ain't nothin' wrong with sixth place.

Here's a nice photo of Joey in his full TT gear. And here's a cool video of the Crit championships. Notice Joey going hard on the inside right from the gun.

Revised Tune

Way back in December I posted a tune I'd written. Well, it's gone through a number of revisions, and here it is now. Hopefully this is the final version (although I'm still not sure about the chords), and it has yet another stupid title (but not as bad as the first).

Thought for Food

Two great quotes from David Foster Wallace's Everything and More, A Compact History of Infinity.

"The dreads and dangers of abstract thinking are a big reason why we now all like to stay so busy and bombarded with stimuli all the time."

"Never before have there been so many gaping chasms between what the world seems to be and what science tells us it is."

New Swedes

Well, I haven't been blogging for awhile. A local community tragedy has been consuming mind and body for the last two weeks, and, well, blogging just seemed a bit silly.

At any rate, I had a great time hanging out with the tall men in the Swedish band Vasen at the StringNation festival and have been listening nonstop to their new CD, Linnaeus Vasen, as well as the new CD by Olov Johannson (Vasen's nyckelharpist), I Lust Och Glod, and three Swedish CDs that arrived in the mail while I was gone: Lena Willemark's Alvdalens Elektriska, the Ale Moller Band's brilliant new CD Djef Djel and Sofia Karlsson's Visor Fran Vinden, all of which are highly recommended (available at CDRoots). More on the wonders of each of them soon.

Meanwhile, here's the first tune on Linnaeus Vasen.

String Nation

The String Nation festival starts tomorrow, in Camden, New Jersey. This is Darol's brainchild, the first festival of contemporary world string band music. And while some festivals start small, Darol and festival director Joseph Milano decided to go all out in their first venture and get some of the best Irish, Swedish, Brazilian, and American string musicians in the world. Vasen, Tim O'Brien, Seamus Egan, Mike Marshall, Hamilton de Holanda, and of course Darol and me and the Republic of Strings, which will expand to twice or thrice its size for this gig. And from what I hear, every hot young string player on the East Coast (and beyond) who doesn't have a gig this weekend is going to be there. It should be too much fun.