Category Archives: banjo

Grey Fox Festival 2012

Walsh Farm, NY. July 19-22, 2012. We attended the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival this year. I’m just getting around to writing it up, but it would certainly take a long time to capture all its awesomeness. Summary version: 4 days of listening, picking, and sweating. Yes, it was hot and dry for the most part, which was good, but it also forced you into the shade quite a bit. Luckily the Creekside Stage (aka Masters) was under a tent.

We arrived Wed about 6. J and Jennifer had already staked out a campsite cuz they got their earlier. We were next to 20+ year GF veterans, who had an bunch of campers and giant tents. They drank, swore, and were generally loud, but seemed to settle down over the week perhaps as they became more hungover and subdued. In the Picker’s Paradise, there is always a low hum of banjo and fiddle it seems.

Here’s the list of folks I was able to see:

Creekside Stage

  • Michael Daves Workshop (with Chris Thile)
  • Della Mae
  • Jessie McReynolds
  • Last part of Tim O’Brien cuz I was at the main stage watching Tony Trischka
  • Frank Sollivan
  • Dixie Bee-liners
  • David Bromberg (he was late and the sound on his guitar was horrible, so left)

Main Stage

  • Thurs: Dixie Beeliners; Thile-Daves; Bromberg Band
  • Fri: Deadly Gentlemen; Noam Pilkeny; Tribute to Scruggs, Watson; Del McCoury; David Grisman Sextet; Punch Brothers
  • Sat: Tony Trischka; Hot Rize

I posted some pics on my tumblr page.

When not attending concerts or workshops, J and I jammed, mostly in our campsite area, once with some friends we knew there. The whole idea was to play as much as possible, so we did that.

The food at the midway was excellent. I didn’t feel that compelled to cook at the campsite – who wants to do dishes and whatnot?

That’s it for now. Sorry I can’t review every concert we went to…no time, gotta practice!

Chris

New Courses at Vermont Instruments!

I just checked in on the Vermont Instruments website this morning and see that they are now offering additional courses this year. The first is a 2-week banjo making course with Will Fielding. The second is a one week guitar repair course, led by Adam Buchwald. I remember Adam talking about both of these ideas when I was there in Oct 2008. The guitar repair course is designed to be added on to the end of the guitar building class or to be used by itself.

Both are very tempting for me! VT in May? mmmm…..
Course descriptions.
Chris