I am writing this column January 1 and even though you will read this in February I am focusing on a Happy New Year message. The CBA is almost completely on line with tickets to events and donations. I was just perusing what events are available to all of us in 2016 and am amazed at the breadth of activities we are offering. At this moment in time we are offering tickets to the Sideline Concert at the Great 48 (free event) in Bakersfield; we are offering tickets to concerts in Riverside and Shingle Springs for the Edgar Loudermilk Band; tickets to Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper in Alameda and Morgan Hill; tickets to the Sonoma County Bluegrass & Folk Festival in Sebastopol; The Folsom Opry House (John Hettinger) just announced their concert series for the first of the year; Early Bird tickets are on sale for Father’s Day. The CBA Music Camp registration begins February 7th and the CBA Academy (youth camp) opens registration February 15th. The Youth Program is asking for donations for the Scholarship Fund.
Probably many of you are not aware that we have been working on our Instrument Lending Library inventory for the last several months. Randy January of Roseville is the current Librarian and has awesome computer skills so his goal was to digitize our data base and complete it with photos etc. We did a thorough inventory in October and weeded out instruments we simply could not lend. Many of those instruments are being fixed by Pete Hicks (fiddles, mandolins, guitars) and Mark Hogan (banjos and guitars). We determined that we currently have enough fiddles, banjos, guitars and dobros in our inventory but had a real shortage of small basses and quality mandolins. Matt Bohn (www.thebassdoc.com) was charged with finding us some small basses and he found THREE ¼ size basses which we have subsequently purchased. (DONATIONS TO HELP PAY FOR THESE WELCOME) Randy January also found a temperature controlled storage space near his home where we could store the instruments not yet loaned and allow his family to use their garage. Randy has also been working on rounding up our loaned instruments so we can photograph and tag them for our new data base.
The biggest event the Lending Library is currently involved in is a search for quality mandolins. We have lots of mandolins for beginning players but only had a couple of mandolins that were appropriate for players advancing their skills. We are talking about instruments that stay in tune, have good action and great sound. I reached out to our good friend Scott Tichenor of Mandolin Café (www.mandolincafe.com) in Lawrence, Kansas. Scott has helped with two previous fundraising and donation events for the Lending Library and he jumped at the chance to help get instruments into the hands of children. Scott started promoting a donation event via his website around Thanksgiving and reached out to mandolin makers via email. We are happy to announce that soon (in January) we will have about a dozen new mandolins to loan and some of these mandolins are really amazing. Some of the mandolins are promised as 2016 gifts. We are now exploring insurance options to protect these amazing donations. Randy and I will arrange a photo op when all these instruments reach our doorstep but I can tell you that the lovely people at Gibson, Collings, Breedlove and The Loar all are supporting our Lending Library with wonderful donations. Individuals have also donated instruments. The CBA boasts many world class mandolin players raised at our festivals and campouts and the next generation of mandolin pickers will have some fine instruments to chop on soon.
Donations to the CBA Youth Program can be completed via our www.cbaweb.org, www.cbayouthprogram.com or through me at darbycba@gmail.com or cbayouthprogram@gmail.com (I can take credit card payments over the phone or direct you where to send checks). We welcome donations year round.
Pay attention to the next two registration periods: CBA Music Camp (Feb 7th) and The Academy (Feb 15th). Both of these events are time sensitive since they sell out. There is information on both these events in this issue of the Bluegrass Breakdown and on the website. The Academy will only accept/register 49 young people so get your registration in early.
Happy New Year!!
