Paul Race Music: Home Page
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Paul Race loves and plays most kinds of music, but he is especially fond of acoustic-based and traditional styles. If that makes you think of artists like Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, Jim Croce, and Rich Mullins, you're on the right track. Since the 1960s, Paul has been performing original songs in just about any kind of performance situation you can imagine - coffeehouses, festivals, churches, schools, nightclubs, camps, street fairs - you name it.
If you check out Paul's online resources, you'll notice that Paul spends a lot of time these days helping other musicians make good choices and find the resources they need, especially musicians who are interested in acoustic or traditional music. For example the CreekDontRise.com acoustic instrument pages provide a lot of background on various kinds and uses of acoustic instruments. Paul's RiverboatMusic.com buyers' guides attempt to sort out the hype from the facts about acoustic instrument purchases. But Paul also keeps his hand in by continuing to write new songs, learning (and writing about) new instruments, and performing when opportunities arise.
BTW, we've gotten some questions about the little album cover thumbnail to the right of Paul's photo above. There's more information about the recordings it represents in our blog "About the song collection 'At the Heart of My Heart Was the Music'"
Thanks, and God bless,
Paul Race
CreekDontRise.com - Heartland history and music
SchoolOfTheRock.com - Jesus Music and saxophones
ClassicTrainSongs.com - Traditional songs about trains
RiverboatMusic.com - Buyers' guides for acoustic instruments.
PaulRaceMusic.com - This page, actually
Evolution of the Banjo
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.…
Are You Shure You Need a Better Microphone?
“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…
Changing Newsletter Formats
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…
Should I Quit While I’m Ahead?
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…
End the Banjo Deserts!
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…
Still Working on Music, in Case You Wondered
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…
When Music is Not Enough – What Did The Jesus Movement Really Accomplish?
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,…
Christian Cliches That May Not Mean What You Think They Do
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…
If Everyone Survives, Did You Really “Bomb” Onstage?
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…
New Autoharp Articles
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…