A check-in on the Banjo versus TV project — J.R.'s ongoing plan to spend more time on his banjo than on TV. This post covers 8/9/2009 through 8/15/2009.
You'll recall how my friend Warren and I had the best weekend ever seeing the Scruggs band perform in Warren's home state of Colorado a few weeks back. Well, we realized at the time that Earl and friends would be performing in Michigan which, although it's not Chicago, is nonetheless my part of the country. So we made arrangements to meet up and see the band again at Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park.
The evening kicked off with opening act Green Sky Bluegrass, a jamming kind of bluegrass group from Michigan.
But the real draw, of course, was Earl Scruggs.
The redhead had told me that my pictures of Earl from Colorado didn't capture his happiness, so I tried to pay a little more attention to the timing of the shots. I hope you can see that Earl is happy to be on the stage, 'cause that's how it came across.
Speaking of happy, it was fiddler Hoot Hester's birthday so the band gave him a cake and we all wished him a happy birthday.
After the performance I got a chance to go backstage with Warren and say hello to the band. They remembered me, which was nice. 'Tis sweet to be remembered, you know.
Also in the last week:
- David and I met up with Warren and some of Warren's old friends in Grand Rapids. And we jammed. What a lot of fun.
I'm so glad I was travelling with my washtub bass. - I am quite embarrassed to discover that my banjo instructor, whom I've been calling Dave for more than a year now, prefers to be called David. Now I'm going to have to go back and edit...let's see now...30 posts that call him "Dave". Fortunately I keep all of these posts under source control so that's not so hard. But still.
- My new-to-me Nechville banjo arrived in the mail! I just love it. It looks great and sounds even better.
Here's its former owner, Kyle James Hauser, playing it at RockyGrass.
Kyle, by the way, plays in the 4-fingered style of Crooked Still's Greg Liszt, which you can see on the video I took of Greg at Four Corner's Folk Festival last year.
While we're watching videos of more-talented-that-I musicians playing my banjo, here's Jim Marsh. - I followed through on a year-old promise and lead a jam for some friends that I see once a year. More on this in future posts when I catch up on my way-overdue summaries of my banjo lessons.
- A simple family recipe from Heidi, the wife of Warren's friend George: sliced peaches with maple syrup on top. Yum!
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