Great Googly Moogly: utterance of great surprise; common in blues songs; made more popular by Frank Zappa.
My problem with the whole “Big Tent, Small Tent” debate over Bluegrass music is that I’m probably what could be called a musical polymath. And no, that doesn’t mean that I can play in 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 3/8, and 6/8 equally well, or poorly, depending on your point of view. What it means is that I like all kinds of music, including many varieties that to some listeners are just plain weird, or maybe just this side of weird. I’m drawn like a moth to a flame to stuff that just sounds different…..as long as it is well played. That is the key.
While this column is really about music camp, not my strange musical tastes, one thing we share as musicians, whether out on the edge like Frank Zappa or closer to our Bluegrass home like Frank Solivan, is that we speak the common language of music where we have to work in keys and tempos and the music has some structure that is kind of predictable, and we have to learn how play together to avoid stepping on each other. I grew up playing symphonic music, marching band, and jazz, and by all accounts was pretty good. I could sight read sheet music like a fiend, transpose between bass and treble clefs on the fly, (think playing a trumpet line on tuba or a trombone part on trumpet) but it wasn’t until I attended the CBA music camp that I feel like I really started to learn music. To me that was unexpected…completely out of left field, hit in the head with a fly ball, unexpected. One way you can tell a classically trained musician at the CBA music camp is by overhearing the simple question “where’s the sheet music?”, followed by the panic-tinged comment “what do you mean there’s no sheet music!!” This can be very intimidating, or very liberating. There’s no doubt about it, music camp is many things; a place to learn how to play bluegrass instruments, a place where you learn a lot more music theory than you expected, a place where you learn how to create a solo (break in bluegrass parlance), but it is not a place where you will learn how to read sheet music or march in formation (unless you are in one Bill Evans’ banjo classes).
Well, last time I teased you with the idea that you might be able to take a mandolin class with Frank Solivan, but what if you could also take beginning banjo with the 2013 IBMA Banjo Player of the Year, Mike Munford?
Well according to the http://dirtykitchenband.com website, Mike is one of the hidden treasures of the five string banjo world. Mike grew up in the sixties and seventies in the bluegrass hotbed of Baltimore and D.C. and assimilated just about everything that all the great players in that area could offer. Then he took off on his own. How best to describe him? Imagine this conversation among banjo players huddled around a fire at some pickin’ party or festival.
“How did J.D. do that lick? ”
“I dunno, but Munford’s over there, ask him.”
“I just got a “37 Granada but it ain’t sounding like it should…”
“Have you taken it to Munford? Best set-up guy around.”
“Damn! Why can’t I get that tone?”
“I dunno… go watch Munford, He’s right over there.”
Now well past forty years old — the age at which, they say, life begins, Mike retains a child like enthusiasm and curiosity for all things banjo. He has no qualms about driving hours through rush hour traffic to go see J.D. Crowe play at some obscure club… then rave about the performance even though he might have seen it or heard it dozens, maybe hundreds or times. He has imbibed everything that J.D., or Earl, or Bela, has thrown his way — and can mimic those players with uncanny accuracy, but has found his own style, too.
It can best be described as hard-driving melodic… but such a description diminishes what’s actually going on. When Mike plays you hear all things that great banjo players strive to achieve. Power, drive, impeccable timing, exquisite tone and jaw-dropping technique.
Mike is also, indeed, about the finest set-up or fret job guy around, and is a walking encyclopedia of banjo trivia.
Most of the country hasn’t really seen all that much of Mike’s playing. He, throughout most of his career, has preferred the comforts of home to the road. It is testament to Frank Solivan’s powers of persuasion (i.e. talent) that Mike is hitting the road as a part of the Dirty Kitchen.
Now imagine it……maybe, just maybe you could split yourself in halfsies and take a workshop from Mike and one from Frank. And next month maybe you’ll want to split your self into dodecasies (google “dodeca”…I’m not gonna explain it here) after I tease you with more possibilities.
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.
