Returning from my visit with Frank and Mary and the April Gather-All

Hello everyone,

  I'm back in Chicago.  Like the dang fool I am, last night I went right from O'Hare Airport to the Thursday Night Jam where Mary, Colby and Jimmy were laying it down with everyone.  I was able to practice the new banjo strums that I learned from Frank and I was very happy to be a beginner again.  I keep thinking about what Frank said.  "In a year you're going to be a real good banjo player."  You'll be seeing me with the banjo a lot between now and next April.

  Today was a very full day.  Adult Guitar 2 Rep, this afternoon.  We've been learning to play solos in G Major today and had a great time digging into Friend of the Devil by the Grateful Dead.  If you know me, you know how important that band is to me.

  Thanks to my cohort, John Mead, who took the ball and ran with in during today's Second Half.  He choose two tunes in E blues (Folosm Prison Blues and another one which I forget) and, knowing that G major is prefect for E blues (for reasons we'll get into another time), he called on Guitar 2 Rep to take the solos on both tunes.  Thank you John!

  Then this afternoon was filled with Early Strummers and Kids Guitar 1 and 2.  A couple students visited us.  Emma visited Kids Guitar 1 and Charlotte visited Kids Guitar 2.  Both young ladies are fiddle players and it was great to work on some tunes with them.  We played Old Joe Clark, This Land is Your Land and Angeline the Baker.

]  After that it was on to First Friday.  Check this out!  The Gather-All had both a musical saw and a tenor saxophone player.  Everyone was great!  Darrell lead an awesome song called "I'm Changin" which he learned from Ella Jenkins, the young fiddlers lead some great tunes and we got up and danced for a bit during Everybody Loves Saturday Night.

 After the Gather-All I found some dinner.

  Then, it was back to First Friday.  I hit the square dance for a bit then headed off to the concert hall to catch a set by Ann-Marie Akin and then Shelley Miller.  Loved Ann-Marie's sing-a-long and loved Shelley's "blue note" guitar pickin'.

  Then a late night snack with Darrel, Maria and Sandra.

  Now off to bed so I can be ready to go in the morning.

Let's do it again!
Jason

"We Must All Cultivate our Garden." - My Visit with Frank and Mary

What a great day!  I started with a sleeping late, a delicious breakfast and then Frank and I got down to some of the work of cultivating the garden.

I brought both instruments (banjo and guitar) with me, but this has definitely been a week of banjo.  One thing I've been working on is getting out of clawhammer style (which I still love), without going right into bluegrass (which I only like).  The answer?  Pete Seeger style!

Frank as been so generous in giving me the keys to the kingdom of this style of banjo playing.  We've both been so excited by it that we decided to make some videos, and maybe others can learn this stuff also.   It's all recorded.  I just have to edit it a bit.

What follows is the first of what I believe will be six videos featuring short lessons on banjo playing, taught by Frank.



Wait!  Don't go grab your banjo without finishing this post!  There's more!

Then we went into Atlanta to meet Bill Rutan.  This guy is awesome!  He is the banjo player that sings and plays in the video of the dixieland jam in my previous post.  Bill is incredibly knowledgable about banjos, but isn't a show off.  He's very humble.  I like that.

Frank, Mary and I hung out with him for about an hour or so.  We played banjos, conversed about banjos, thought about banjos, looked at banjos, took banjos apart and put those same banjos back together again.

Here is a video of Bill singing a song called "When that Midnight Choo Choo Leaves for Alabam."





We've got to find a way to get this guy up to Chicago.  I have a feeling that he's a great teacher.

From Bill's place we went to have lunch at a place called R. Thomas'.  That is some good food.  Best part?  Raw veggies and fruit shakes for Frank and Mary.  Burger with cheddar cheese and a pint of organic pilsner for me!   Oh, that tasted good.

From the restaurant, we went to the Martin Luther King historical site.

I was touched by the words enscribed on the plaque under the monument called The Eternal Flame.

"The Eternal Flame symbolizes the continuing effort to realize Dr. King's ideals for the "Beloved Community" which requires lasting personal commitment that cannot weaken when faced with obstacles."

Maybe it sounds silly, but my presonal commitment is to continue to give children a voice and have them actively take the lead in their own musical education.

I have a feeling I'm going to be thinking about this plaque a great deal when I get back to Chicago.  There's a lot of work to be done.

Lastly, Frank and I had another great chat tonight.  Gosh, I have learned so much over the last few days.  Questions have been answered and new questions have appeared.  I mentioned how I feel like, over the past couple of years, I've built a beautiful garden with my music, my teaching and my life, but, like many projects, I didn't always think about how much work it would be to take care of the garden.  Frank layed this quote from Voltaire.  "We must all cultivate our garden."

Thanks so much for your great perspective, Frank.

OK, everyone.  Thanks for reading the whole post.  Now you can go get your banjo.

Take Time in Life - My Visit with Frank and Mary

                           From jasonplaystunes.blogspot.com

Lots of "Front Porch Music" today.  If you know me, you know how important that is to me.
(Here's a link to a previous story about playing on the front porch.)

Frank and I had a great time playing today.  I'm work on some things up the neck and it was really fun to experiment with that.  It's opening a whole to world of banjo for me.  Here are a couple of tunes that we played.  I brought out Take Time in Life and Frank was reminded of Little Birdy.  Similar topics.  We play Take Time in Life a lot in Guitar Together, and I'm thrilled to have a complimentary song like Little Birdy to go with it.

The chorus of Take Time in Life is

Take time in life.

Take time in life.

Take time in life.

Far way to go.

I thought that was just about he perfect song for this trip.  I do have a far way to go, as do we all, and I know I'll be a lot more prepared for the journey if I keep my head up, take deep breaths and move slowly but delibrately.  That's why I'm here.

The recording are very noisy right now.  Is you know how to remove that wind sound in Garageband, please let me know.  I'd really like to clean it up.

Little Birdy - Frank Hamilton and Jason McInnes

(The OTS site crashed just as I was uploading Take Time in Life.  I'll post it later.  Keep an eye out for it.)

Frank also hosted a couple of jazz guitar students at his house tonight.  Tom and David were their names.  Class was tough stuff!  We played on a Blues in Bb, All of Me, Autum Leaves, How about You, Sweet Georgia Brown and I Got Rhythm.  I held my own, but again, my enthusiam overshadowed my knowledge and ability.  If you're going to fail, fail spectacularly, right?  I certainly did that, which I was very proud of.

This afternoon took a trip downtown, went to a health food store and stopped by an honest to goodness record shop.  They guy at the counter, who I imagine is the owner, noticed my Old Town School jacket and recounted a story of seeing Win Stracke at the Old Town School in 1962.  He knows Frank from being around town, but didn't realize his role in the creation of the school as it had never come up in conversation.  Old Town School friends, we are part of something very big.  (Like I need to tell you that.)

Frank made me a couple compilation CDs of "Stuff I think you'll be able to learn from."  The CDs are full of tracks by Pete Seeger, Fleming Brown, Billy Faer,  Erik Darling and Peggy Seeger, among others.  I can't wait to get back to Chicago to dig in deep.

Atlanta Federation of Musicians Dixieland Jam - My Visit with Frank and Mary

This is a picture of the Monthly Dixieland Jam at the Atlanta Federation of Musicians.  I came right here from the airport when I got to Atlanta.  What a welcome!

Here is a short video of the gang playing "Someday You'll be Sorry".  That's Frank with the hat on and playing guitar.  The banjo player is named Bill.  We chatted real quick after the jam and Frank, Mary and I are going to visit with him on Wednesday.  Seems like a real nice guy.  I can't wait to play and sing some music with him.  He's REALLY good.




A few things that I loved about the jam.

• They were certainly there to impress each other, but not in a competative way. They were having a blast making little challenges for each other like, "This time all the horns play left-handed."
• I never quite figured out how they called the tunes out. It seemed like they all just started and that they all knew what to do. I'm sure there was much more going on, but I just didn't see it.
• There was lots of communication with head nods and gentle finger pointing. Great to see others do that so well. I'm not normally on the listening side of a jam like this. It gives me much more confidence that my jam leading instincts are correct. 

Walking, Playing and Eating Delicious Raw Foods - My Visit with Frank and Mary

It was a very relaxing day around the Hamilton household, today.  A real day of respite.  I got up late with not one thing on the schedule.  I didn't realize how badly I needed that. 

Frank and I took a long walk this morning.  We must have gone around the neighborhood four or five times.  Then we played a little banjo in the afternoon.   More work on the standard C tuning and I moved to three finger chords as I went up the neck.  Once I did it I was all like, "Duh, J!  You've seen people do that a million times and just now you're going to play that way?" But mostly I'm ecstatic to dig in.  I hope there's time tommorow.

We watched a documentary about their friend Derrol Adams in the evening.  I was not
familiar with Derrol's music, but I am very glad I am now. What a voice.

We talked for a bit about Woody and I was very glad that Frank did not laugh when I told him that, to me, it's hard to imagine Woody as a real person. He's just been so built up in my mind that it seems impossible that he was real, let alone a person who played a great deal of music with someone that I know. It's like saying, "I remember chopping wood with Paul Buyan" or, "I remember working on the railroad with John Henry." It's not a "star power" kind of feeling. It's more than that. Deeper. Much more awe-inspiring.

Today was the first days since, well probably since I was born, that I ate entirely raw food.  Frank and Mary only eat raw food and, to my suprise, it's been delicious!  Lots of fruits and vegatables.  Lots of flax seed crackers.  Lots of oats and nuts.  It's kind of perfect for my constitution, actually.  I'm not totaly surprised that it suits me, but I am surprised at how delicious everything is.  Probably not ready to totally convert yet, but you never know.

Well, That Didn't Take Long. - My Visit with Frank and Mary

As you may know, I'm in Decatur, GA visiting Frank and Mary Hamilton.  Frank is the co-founder (withe Dawn Greening and Win Stracke) and first teacher at the school.  I'm here just to visit and get a way for a bit, talk about the history of the school and folk music in general.

Here's some information about Frank's role in founding the school.  

I knew there would be a lot of music making on this trip, but, boy, that was fast!  I went right from the airport to a dixieland jam that Frank is part of at the Atlanta Federation of Musicians.  I got there at 3:00 and by 3:05 they had me joining in.  I didn't know name, the tune, the key or nothin'.  By the end of the song I had learned that i was in Bb. That's about it.  They were a very welcoming bunch.  Lots of smiles and lots of dixieland.

The jam was great.  More on the actual content once I figure out where my camera is.  I hope I left it in the car.

It's been a inspiring evening.  We watched an awesome documentary called Karoo Kitaar Blues all about marginalized musicians in South Africa.  If you have Link TV I think it's available on-demand. I want to watch it again.

We ate at a place called Your Dekalb Farmers Market. This place is inredible!  Whole Foods - eat your very expensive heart out.  You've got nothin' on this place.

We also got down into some "Pete Style" banjo picking and my ears and fingers have been opened.  Turns out, it's not double C tuning that I need.  It's single C.  That changes everything.  I can't wait to dig in and get all my new tricks under my fingers!  Here we come songs in minor keys!

Onward to tomorrow!
Jason