How the urban got to be mixed with OT, country and BG: Part I

Campfire songs were very important where I worked for four summers during college: the Lair of the Bear in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. After arriving there my first year, I quickly realized that playing the piano (which I did from music not by ear) was not going to cut it. I decided that I wanted to learn the guitar. My mom encouraged me to seek out the banjo. I did. I worked hardto learn about teachers of various banjo (four string vs five vs six) and playing techniques (plectrum, bluegrass, old time and others). The old time banjo teacher who I stuck with assured me that many of the songs I wanted to sing would be easy to create accompaniment with frailing and learning a few chords.When I first started playing old-time banjo, I mostly focused on what I called campfire songs like Comin' round the Mountain, Mountain Dew, and stuff by performers John Denver, the Kingston Trio and of course Pete Seeger. As I followed the folk boom back to the New Lost City Ramblers, the Weavers and Almanac Singers I got more interested in Woody Guthre, the original Carter Family, Bascom Lamar Lunsford and a whole host of musicians who recorded in the twenties and thirties and with the Lomaxes. The used record stores on Telegraph Avenue were great sources for inexpensive records. The Music Library on campus contained many Folkways records that I could listen to for free.

During this period I became more interested in old-time music and disregarded bluegrass. Most of my bluegrass exposure was limited to discount compilation tapes. Loud, twangy, fast banjo playing and a general feeling of intimidation of the form and its pickers. Fortunately, one of the salespersons at The Fifth String in Berkeley encouraged me to attend the California Bluegrass Association's Father's Day Bluegrass Festival. He assured me that there would be old-time musicians and at least one OT band there.

I laugh at myself when I think about the bluegrass icons that were at the two Father's Day BG festivals in Grass Valley, CA that I attended in the early nineties: Ronnie and Rob McCoury teaching a workshop surrounded by fifty or sixty people, Chubby Wise sitting behind a folding table smiling and laughing, Tony Rice and his brothers deciding where to go for dinner, Alison Kraus inviting a young fiddler to join her on stage, and Rose Maddox belting Philadelphia Lawyer. Where was I? Usually sitting at the back of the seating area with Rick Abrams. Rick was so many different things: a musician, a journalist, a promoter, teacher. I attended his old time banjo workshop with Edwin Lacy by accident. I was looking for some food and hearing the smooth sounds of frailing banjos followed my ear. A new band, Skeeter and Skidmarks, was playing the festival the two times I attended. Based around Galax, VA, Scott, Willard, Edwin and Sandy played music that was a unique blend of traditional instruments played and sung in melodic, driving and highly inventive ways. After meals, Rick encouraged jamming in the area enclosed by his vintage vehicles. I will never forget him shouting "Let's play tunes people know" or the uproar I caused when I suggested the Hop High Ladies was a D tune. (It was as recorded by Tom Paley and Mike Seeger) The musicians around me were so above my head! It was a pleasure to listen and intimidating to even sit in the circle. The big names of the festival were playing their hearts out on stage but our attention was clearly somewhere else.

I stayed in touch with Rick over the next few years of his life. When I recorded albums on cassette tape towards the end of college, I sent them to him. We began exchanging letters. He wrote me encouraging words about my recording efforts and informed me of his battle with cancer. I was very saddened when I found out that Rick had advanced malignant melanoma. He was such a life force and that cancer came after him head on. He pushed and pushed and fought and fought. I still channel his banjo playing and passion for the music when I really want to drive a tune.

Rick is the reason that I came to know the band members of Skeeter and Skidmarks. Little did I know that my friendship with Willard Gayheart and Scott Freeman would continue over the years. When I applied to medical school, I dreamt that may be if I were in New Orleans rather than the northeast, I would play and learn more southern music. My dreams started to become true during my first week in New Orleans. Searching for a public radio station at the left end of the FM dial one Sunday morning, I heard Uncle Dave Macon singing and playing banjo. The DJ's name was Hazel the Delta Rambler. How does this lady play Uncle Dave Macon on the radio? I thought. I called, introduced myself: Tulane Medical School! she said; Yes I replied; A clawhammer banjo player! Yes; Well we have to have you over for a jam. Sure enough a couple of Sundays later, I got the call and drove over to Hazel and and her husband Larry's house.

Consider this Part 1 friends. More to come...