OWPA Update
June 2017
Guitar Stuff
I counted eight carryon guitar
cases as I boarded the flight from Kansas City to Nashville, including
mine. I was the only one not
wearing hipster black. I was
heading to Maryville College in the eponymous east Tennessee town nestled in the
foothills of the Smoky Mountains to attend the weeklong Steve Kauffman Acoustic
Music camp. My Ome open back banjo
also accompanied me on trip.
It all started in the spring of
2016 when I started playing banjo backup for a solid musician in Sanibel,
FL. He plays keyboard and sings,
and he decided he needed banjo accents for the Mark Knopfler tunes he
performs. He graciously coached me
for several months until it was time for me to return north. After our finale he said, "Your
playing is not bad, but you need to work on your timing. You might consider taking up rhythm
guitar. That will help, and it
will make you more versatile for the tunes we play."
While flying to NYC for
Thanksgiving I met a guy on a plane who had been playing guitar for forty
years. I told him of my musical
journey, and he echoed my musical coach's suggestion. He subsequently invited me to his house to view his
collection of 40 exquisite instruments, and he gave me a brief intro to the acoustic
guitar. As an aside, the fellow is
a corncob magnate. One of our sessions was briefly interrupted when he took a
call from China ordering several hundred tons of corncobs. Who knew such an occupation existed.
Once back in Florida, I bought a Taylor
210e acoustic guitar from a guy on Craigslist and started strumming away,
relying heavily on YouTube videos for instruction. I now play at two
instruments wherein the modesty of my abilities cannot be exaggerated. But I am enjoying the process, and I'm
definitely better now than I was.
It's mindful of the 90-year-old
woman telling her friends that she's going to law school, and it will take 4
years to get her degree. A skeptic
exclaims, "My God, Marge, you'll be 94 when you finish." Marge
replies, "Yes, but if I do nothing I'll still be 94 in four years. This way I'll be a lawyer."
Acoustic camp is fairly similar to
the banjo camps I've attended, except it is longer and more focused. I loved everything about it. Most of
the male attendees I met were technical types and most of the female campers
appear to have artistic backgrounds with strong musical foundations in piano or
violin. Campers came from as far
as Canberra Australia; Paris France; and Leominster, England. There were a smattering of folks from
throughout the country, but most hailed from the Appalachian states. We wore name badges with our hometowns
prominently displayed serving as tickets for meals and concerts. As the only attendee from Kansas, I
predictably received numerous comments about Dorothy and tornados.
Most of participants were
retirees, but there were also quite a few young people and a handful of
teenagers. Classes were offered for every stringed instrument you can imagine
save piano. The bass fiddlers were
easy to spot given the ubiquity of their unwieldy, wheeled conveyances as they
strolled from venue to venue. Every evening campers and faculty would gather
for open mic time featuring the amateurs followed by a concert from the
professionals excepting Wednesday that featured a contra dance. The performances were foot-stompingly
outstanding.
We lived in dorms and ate
communal meals from a campus dining service, which wasn't half bad, save for
the lack of fine wine. I had a
spectacular view of the nearby Smokys from my Spartan room. My suitemate is a petroleum geologist
from Houston, an advanced flat pick guitar player, and he was both interesting
and exceedingly nice. In days gone
by when someone asked, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" the
response was, "Practice, practice, practice." Now I can honestly say, I've played
Carnegie Hall, leaving out the part about it being the freshman dorm in a small
Tennessee college. My suitemate
patiently played the guitar parts on several fiddle tunes while I played clawhammer
banjo. He patiently stayed with me
as I speeded up, slowed down, and missed beats.
I signed up for finger picking
guitar, lacking any real sense of direction, and our group of five 'advanced
beginners' rotated through three different instructors. The camp also offered ample
opportunities to branch out, so I also attended sessions on rhythm guitar, Old
Time banjo (aka clawhammer), and Old Time mountain singing. The latter is where old men and old
women holler, ideally in pitch.
I'm not very good, awful in fact, so fear not, no one reading this will
ever hear these sounds out of my thin, reedy, voice.
Over the course of a week,
complete strangers became less strange and downright friendly. By attending open mic sessions one
could get a pretty good calibration of one's musical ability making it clear
there is an abundance of upside in my musical wayfaring. My talented suite mate encouraged me noting,
"Everyone has to pay their dues by playing in front of other people. You'll suck for a long time, and then
one day, you'll no longer suck quite so much."
Over meals I had occasion to
listen in on some interesting conversations. One guy told of attending a banjo building camp in Pisgah,
NC. For $2,000 you can spend a
week shaping the neck from a log, building a fret board, adding inlay, setting
the tuning ring and drum head, fitting the tuners, and so on. At the end of the week you get to take
your new banjo home with you.
Alternatively, you can buy roughly the same banjo for $1,000. This vignette prompted another woman to
share her story:
"My neighbor decided he wanted
to go to a 14-day camp teaching you how to make cowboy boots. It was located somewhere in rural Texas,
and there were no places to stay, so he bought an RV. Once there he loved the whole cowboy boot building thing, so
he bought an $8,000 specialty sewing machine and hauled it back to Tennessee
along with the one pair of custom made boots he had crafted while in camp. Then he broke his leg unloading the
machine from his RV." This is
where country songs are born.
Royals Stuff
Every now and again you have a
really good day. Judy and I attended a Kansas City Royals v. Houston Astros
game a few weeks ago. Royals'
leftfielder Alex Gordon, who recently signed a 4-year $72 million contract yet was
batting a feeble .172, came to the plate.
He flailed at the first two pitches appearing certain to add to his lackluster
league leading strikeout count.
The guy sitting in the next seat and I were groaning in unison heaping
verbal abuse on the $18m/year ball player, whereupon Gordon hit the third pitch
over the center field wall for his first homer of the season. Hey things are looking up!
Then, in the sixth inning Judy
and I were featured on the kiss cam.
I texted son Ben, who replied, "Did you kiss her?" And I
responded in the affirmative. In
the seventh inning the Royal's mascot Slugger, an anthropomorphically-pumped-up-lion-with-muscles-made-of-sponge,
jumped down from the top of the visitor's dugout into our row and gave me a
high five. Wow! Now I'm now living large! Again I texted fellow Royals fans
informing them of our good fortune noting that all now lacking was a victory as
the home team boys were then losing 1-7.
Then a late inning rally was
capped by a Mike Moustakas 2-run homer in the ninth giving the Royals a 9-7
victory. I should have purchased a
lottery ticket that night.
OPWA
OPWA sales have now reached
800. NNAOPP sales are closing in
on 1600 leaving me a mere 600 short of my 'beat Melville' goal. I did hand out my business cards to
several of my fellow music campers.
One side features the cover of OPWA and the other NNAOPP. I'm certain these efforts will yield the
desired results.
That's the news from here.
All the best,
Chuck
Charles A. Wells, Jr.
3317 W. 68th Street
Shawnee Mission, KS 66208
816 289-1924
Author of: Ordinary People Who Aren't: An Anthology and
Nude Nuns and Other Peculiar People
Available at:
Rainy Day Books, 2706 W. 53rd Street, Fairway, KS
