The first full draft of my “Banjo Evolution” article is finished. I’m a singer/songwriter who “cut my teeth” on banjo and guitar during the Folk Revival. When the banjo went out of style, I stopped bringing it to gigs so much because people would make assumptions about me just because…
Yes, I know this page is supposed to be about music. But as a fundamental Christian who actually reads his Bible, and who stood for racial equality in the 1960s, I believe that keeping silent about the revival of ideologies that murdered and enslaved millions of people would be a…
I don’t have an article about this yet, but I have two handouts I made for a clinic at the Madden Road Music Fest in Cable, Ohio, 8/12/2017. Update 8/15/2017: I updated both the table and the graphic as a result of reader response and further research in certain areas.…
“Audio human” (sound guy) Danny Maland has posted several articles about microphones for live music. In one, he compared a bunch of underrated microphones to see how their “specs” lined up. http://smallvenuesurvivalist.com/mic-shootout/micshootout.html In another, he has a checklist for things to look for in a stage mic: http://smallvenuesurvivalist.com/buying-a-vocal-mic/ In another…
My first music web site, CreekDontRise.com started about 2000, and has grown substantially since. As people asked me questions that inspired articles, other web sites like SchoolOfTheRock.com, ClassicTrainSongs.com, and RiverboatMusic.com followed. For a time, I tried to let one newsletter, MommaDontLow.com serve all of those sites’ various constituencies. But there…
From another forum: here’s an open letter to a fellow who has invested a lot of time and energy into trying to make it as an indie musician and now thinks he needs to give it up: If you love music as much as I think you do, you’re really…
I’m constantly contacted by people who can’t find playable banjos to try out, and they can’t even find anyone to answer their questions intelligently. Surprisingly many of them live in or near large metropolitan areas with dozens of music stores in a thirty-mile radius. In nearly every part of the…
BTW, my apologies for not having much personal music posted. When I set my music pages up (including related Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter pages) I thought it would be a few weeks before I would be able to start posting the sort of thing that people come to these sites…
Recently a college prof asked if he could use one of my online articles (“A Brief History of Contemporary Christian Music“) as a supplementary text in a course he was teaching. He wanted to print off the web page, which is always problematic, since you get so much wasted paper,…
This may seem like an odd topic to add to this blog, but I’ve discovered that other Christians who play Folk music often struggle with the same issues that have perplexed me over the years. Yes, there are Christians who play folk music. In fact, during the heart of the…