I’m playing a short online set on June 5 from 3-3:30pm EDT as part of an online festival to support the Stag & Hounds, a well-loved music venue I’ve played many times in Bristol, UK. To see my set and more just follow this link on June 5. The event link with more info is here and the direct link to their crowdfunding page is here.

June 14 I will meet with some wonderful musicians in northwest Ohio (including pals Paul Kovac, David Mayfield, and Andrew Bonnis) and perform a live streaming concert while maintaining appropriate social distancing. I do not have a link to share at this time so stay tuned and check my website for details.

While I’m out there I will teach a workshop or two at the GAR Hall in Peninsula, OH, and I may also be playing some sort of bluegrass gospel concert in a church the morning of the live stream but again, I don’t have any more info than that right now. I should wait to send this until I have that info but I felt like I should share the links at the bottom of this newsletter as soon as possible.

The last Bandcamp day was pretty good for me, I sold a couple of downloads, which was really nice. This time around I challenge you to share some of these links with three of your music loving friends. Post them to your social media profiles, send a text, or even send a download as a gift!

 

I got a message recently about a project I recorded on over ten years ago, which is now being released on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and I had to sign some paperwork. I wrote back asking if I could find out more about how to get an album on Folkways and included a digital copy of Mozart of the Banjo. It turned out the person handling this project is Béla Fleck’s manager, and she offered to share it with him. She told me he said “It’s cool stuff” and that I could share that, so there you go!

But seriously, I do hope to meet him and do banjo things together some day. Maybe enough people will get interested in classic banjo he’ll have to consider hiring me to teach at his banjo camp…!

I really waffled about starting a Patreon page for a long time but now I’m really glad I did. I’ve been sharing a lot of fun, exclusive content (audio and video, mostly, so far) and interacting with my patrons, and it’s been great. I just want you to know that for the price of a cup of coffee you can join this circle of supporters and enjoy the music lessons and tunes I’ve been sharing. Not sure? Try it out and see for yourself, you can always unsubscribe.

I did more reading than usual since my last newsletter but I’ll try not to go on too long about it. First of all, I have to recommend this book more strongly than I’ve ever recommended any book so far — Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, by Tyson Yunkaporta is an absolute must-read for anyone who has ever wondered what the hell is going on here.

Civilized people have always enjoyed the privilege of examining and explaining indigenous culture on their own terms. Yunkaporta turns the tables by looking at civilization from an indigenous perspective and he just nails it.

Some of the things in this book are things I’ve thought about for years and never heard anyone else talk about. It’s highly informative, very readable and very compelling. Of extra special interest to practicioners of old time or blues or any kind of folk or traditional music or dance or craft, or who is engaged in any kind of oral transmission of traditional culture. This book raised so many questions for me that I’m rereading it and taking notes this time.

After I burned through Sand Talk the first time, I read this book that had been sent to me in the mail by someone on this email list (Thanks, Jen!) called Hill of Beans: Coming of Age in the Last Days of the Old South, by John Snyder, and it’s a memoir about the author’s childhood in North Carolina.

This book was written well enough and the material interesting enough to me for it to be enjoyable but after reading Sand Talk it was a bit like walking through the art museum’s exhibits of folk art, outsider art and indigenous art, and then coming to a room full of Norman Rockwell paintings.

No disrespect to Rockwell or to John Snyder, Hill of Beans is much less cring-worthy than I had worried it might be, but it was hard to switch perspective so drastically from the oppressed indigenous viewpoint to that of a privileged white boy who has to look out for snakes when he goes blackberry picking. Still, the author is sympathetic and honest, I enjoyed the challenge of finding common threads between the two books, and his descriptions of a bygone era are worth exploring.

I also read Watchmen, a graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, which I found highly enjoyable. I’d recommend it for sure if you’re looking for an escape from constant consumption of nonfiction. It’s more or less a long comic book in the action-adventure style with a bit of mystery, and it’s done to the highest quality. It inspired me to order some more graphic novels!

Finally, I have been occasionally reading a chapter or two at a time from Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do, by Studs Terkel. This book is a vast compilation of verbatim interviews with people from all walks of life, collected in the 1960’s and early 70’s, and it’s surprising how honest people are with him. It only breaks my heart to read how aware people were then of the problems we are still facing today and how little has changed in over 50 years.

I hope you are staying well and look forward to seeing you again soon.

Aaron