The thing that basically drives El Niño is heat, hot water, and more hot water from the south Pacific, pumping moisture into the atmosphere that just happens to make landfall on the California coast. As the clouds go higher over the Sierras, the temperature gets cooler and that lovely moisture condenses into droplets and snowflakes and we get all that South American caliente water. I wonder if some of that water we’ll be drinking at Music Camp will be infused with the essence of Samba and Rhumba, maybe we’ll want to have a Bluegrass Bossa Nova workshop or an introduction to Old Time Tango. It does make the imagination go all wonky to think that the spirits of South American music, present in our drinking water, might be influencing our Bluegrass and Old Time music. Well, I think we’re probably safe from much of that, though one could make the argument that all that caliente passion could manifest itself in other ways. We certainly won’t have any shortage of hot, hot pickers gracing music camp this year and man, that water might just cause us all to have a meltdown with instruments and pickers spontaneously combusting right, left, and in between. So let’s see who might be lighting some fireworks, melting some faces, and shredding strings into fluff.
To continue our ongoing theme of “just imagine”, imagine if you were taking banjo 2/3 from the internationally acclaimed two-time National Banjo Champion Jeff Scroggins! You can’t go wrong with anyone named Jeff, no matter how they spell it. Jeff’s unique and diverse range of influences includes Alan Munde, Don Reno, Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton. His fiery style and lightning-fast licks have earned him worldwide recognition and have left many a first-time listener in stunned disbelief!
Rounding out the experience, imagine taking Guitar with singing with West Virginia native Greg Blake. Greg provides powerful bluegrass vocals steeped in country heritage, bringing a truly authentic sound developed from a lifetime of singing bluegrass, gospel, and country. Greg has been twice nominated for SPBGMA’s “Traditional Male Vocalist of the Year” award and his phenomenal guitar playing has earned him nine nominations and five consecutive wins as SPBGMA’s Guitarist of the Year.
Since we are on a caliente guitar theme here, imagine taking Guitar solos 2/3 with Chris Luquette. I first heard Chris when he was playing with Northern Departure and they played the Father’s Day Festival a few years ago. The image seared in my mind is Chris in the middle of a crowd stacked 6 deep, playing musical chicken and melting the faces off everyone around. Chris can seamlessly switch from International Music to Jazz and from Rock to Bluegrass. He has even studied Brazilian Jazz with Seattle based Brazil music legend, Jovino Santos Neto. There’s at least one El Nino connection here. His acoustic guitar playing really stands out, but this virtuosic, multi-instrumentalist is equally at home playing mandolin, drums, bass, electric guitar, banjo, and Greek bouzouki! Chris was a founding member of Seattle based, Northern Departure, and has sat in with Jerry Douglas, Emmylou Harris, Rob Ickes and many others. Don’t miss an opportunity to hear him shred his Martin guitar in half and I can assure you he will leave it in smoking pieces.
So start the countdown, mark your calendars, set your alarms because registration for the 2016 CBA Music Camp will open on February 7. The music camp website http://cbamusiccamp.com will contain new information as the teachers are hired.
And we would like to remind you that you can give CBA Music Camp as a gift for Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Graduation, Birthdays Valentine’s Day, and even April Fool’s Day. Check it out at our web site.
Keep the batteries fresh in your tuners, keep your strings clean and polished, and keep your picks close at hand because we’re agonna be kicking up some sand come June 12.
