An acquaintance came away from a gig feeling like she had totally bombed. This is what I wrote: First of all you didn’t bomb. Okay, so you didn’t connect with the audience for some reason, and you may have made what seemed like mistakes for you, and you may have…
Last year I put up an autoharp buyers’ guide page on RiverboatMusic.com. And I started getting reader questions about autoharps. Since I only dabble in the things, some of the questions took a lot of research to answer, and the answers I found were scattered in various places like discussion…
Why would anyone take forty hours or more to write an article to help newbies find suitable banjos? Wouldn’t it be easier and more profitable just to sell banjos outright or accept advertising from banjo vendors for representing ONLY their products? But I believe in giving as many people access…
Yesterday, I came across an online community of people who enjoy singing traditional songs and accompanying themselves on banjo with a simple pattern they had learned from an online source and a few self-published books. An hour later, trying to track down the materials they had used to get started,…
Every banjo is worth more in many ways than what it will probably sell for if you put it on the market. It may help you remember a cherished family member long gone. It may give a youngster a chance to learn skills and musical principles that will last a…
“Momma Don’t ‘Low” is our way of notifying folks when we’ve added or upgraded something significant on any of our music sites or come across noteworthy news related to our favorite musical topics. It’s a free, opt-in-only, e-mail newsletter that tends to discuss singer/songwriter, acoustic, and traditional music as well…
I just posted some of this content on another forum and realized that it might be useful to readers here. On the other forum there was a discussion on the subject of people wanting a fuller-sounding live performance. So I thought I would add my experience with harmonizers, most of…
In August, 2014, we started the Momma Don’t Low(tm) newsletter to provided updates, news, and links to tip articles to readers of our music sites, which have expanded to include: CreekDontRise.com, a site dedicated to promoting acoustic and traditional music, plus the history and traditions of the American heartland, especially…
An acoustic duo I know has been asked to bring backing tracks to a certain bar gig so they’d sound more like a “band.” Though they do mostly covers, they have a unique sound that would be destroyed if they just brought in a bunch of Karaoke tracks or some…
With yesterday’s astonishing events in Hoboken, NJ, I can’t help thinking of other train wrecks. It’s probably not fair, but the crash at the ending of the movie Silver Streak, which starred the late Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, Jill Clayburgh, and Patrick McGoohan gives some idea of what the Hoboken…
