Last month a new “member” showed up at a singalong I’ve participated in for several years. She sang and played very loudly, but always a half a beat behind. When the people who were closer to her than to the songleader would slow down to match her, she would drop…
A longtime friend and former pastor recently invited me to provide worship music and campfire music at a retreat for people of “a certain age.” The folks were delightful. Here’s an irony. I mostly play banjo when I play “out,” and you form different callouses when you play banjo. The…
On August 21, 2021, the Dayton, Ohio neighborhood of St. Anne’s Hill celebrated its annual “Porchfest,” an event in which dozens of regional musical acts perform on front porches throughout a charming neighborhood of restored home. I performed with multi-instrumentalist Geoff Walker. We did originals and a few Folk covers,…
I was highly active in local and regional music for years, as a songwriter, Folk singer, Rock sax player, Worship Leader, CCM songwriter/singer, and more. Included in that was maintaining a reel-to-reel-based home studio I could use to record my own music and the music of my friends. Then parenting…
I’m stubborn. That may be the main reason I keep going when all seems to be against me. Maybe it’s also because I have a 40-year record of being underestimated in the workplace because I didn’t play golf, drive expensive cars, hang out at the country club, or treat “uncool”…
Here’s a reminder for my sax-loving friends, brought on by a search for a specific style of vintage Buescher alto to compare to a Lyon & Healy stencil a reader owned. You don’t have to buy an expensive relic to learn what it was like to blow a Buescher True…
Fifty years ago, debating the question “What is Folk Music” could lead to a “knock-down-drag-out” fight. Today not so much. That said, I waited for years before writing an article on the subject. Please let me know what you think. https://creekdontrise.com/fol…/what_is_folk/what_is_folk.htm
In the late 1800s, an ethnomusicologist (Folk song collector) published the lyrics to several versions of a traditional song in which a maid is begging the hangman to delay until her friends or family can come up with enough cash to buy her freedom. It’s called “Child #95: The Maid…
Though I play most of the instruments featured on my recordings, I like to use a MIDI sequencer or DAW to “scratchpad” arrangements before I commit to recording audio tracks (which always winds up being more complicated than it “should be”). Plus, when the cello comes in on the second…
Here’s another musing about what I don’t miss about teaching guitar one-on-one. (I may pick it up again now that I’m retired, but this still bears mentioning.) For some wannabees, “learning guitar” really means: “learning to play the guitar part for some currently popular song,” not “learning enough about the…
