We received a note from Joe Carr, Associate Professor of Music at South Plains College in Levelland, TX, with notification that they are again looking for an instructor to serve as five string banjo instructor, the position held for many years by Alan Munde.

Here is the official notice from the college:

South Plains College is accepting applications for the position of 5 String Banjo instructor/bluegrass specialist. The position involves directing bluegrass music ensembles, producing the televised monthly music program "Picking on the Plains," teaching a bluegrass history overview course and private lessons on 5 string banjo and guitar. The successful candidate should have a national profile in bluegrass music, familiarity with all the bluegrass instruments and professional skills on one instrument in addition to banjo.  College degree preferred. Contact: Office of Human Relations, South Plains College 1401 College Ave. Levelland, TX 79336, (806) 894-9611 extension 2177.

South Plains offers a two year Associate of Art degree, and a one year certificate course focusing on bluegrass music within their Commercial Music program. Concentrations available within this program are Commercial Music, Sound Technology, Music Business and Live Sound.

Alan Munde has released yet another in his lifelong legacy of banjo instructional materials.

This latest, Banjo for the young Beginner (Mel Bay), is designed to take younger banjo students from basic strums to roll-style arrangements of familiar songs like Wildwood Flower, Grandfather’s Clock, Tom Dooley and Rolling In My Sweet Baby’s Arms.

The songs and lessons are written in tablature, with photos and audio files included to help make the concepts and techniques clear. Sample pages and audio files can be found on the Mel Bay web site.

The 40 page book (with audio CD) sells for $14.99, and should be available wherever bluegrass instructional materials are sold.

While walking around the trade show floor at IBMA last week, I ran across Alan Munde and stopped to chat for a moment. Here’s the video. This one is short, runtime is 48 seconds.

Banjo picker Alan Munde has had quite a career in bluegrass music.

As a young man, he was a member of Jimmy Martin’s Sunny Mountain Boys and went on to help found and maintain Country Gazette, one of the most enduring bands to emerge from the 1970s bluegrass mini-boom. Alan has also been a successful solo artist with a number of stellar and hugely influential recordings to his credit.

He spent the last 20 years on the faculty of South Plains College in Levelland, TX, a position from which he recently retired – though he still performs with his group, Alan Munde Gazette.

So… when Alan Munde releases a new recording, banjo players take notice, and with Old Bones, they have a good reason to sit up and pay attention. The CD is made up of 13 tracks that Alan has recorded over the past twenty-odd years which for one reason or the other, never made it onto a CD.

Some were cut for solo or Country Gazette projects that never materialized, while others were cut at South Plains – where they offer a program in audio recording – as visiting artists were on campus to offer workshops to the students. These involve cuts with guests like David Grier, Mike Bub, Ron Block and Mike Compton.

The songs offer a mix of vocal and instrumental pieces, and as long-time Munde fans might expect, draw on a varied palette of stylistic influences ranging from hard driving bluegrass to breezy swing jazz. The banjo, of course, shines throughout.

We asked Alan to share a few thoughts about Old Bones…

Darling, Pal of Mine was recorded in Nashville in the mid-1990s by one of the industry’s most brilliant recordists, Rich Adler. On the cut are a bunch of picking heroes beginning with the legend himself Roland White, sweet voiced and booming bassist Marshall Wilborn, the best bluegrass singer of all time, Mr. Slide Guitar Gene Wooten, fellow Oklahoman former Gazette member fiddler Billy Joe Foster, and none better on the guitar David Grier. Roland, Gene, and Marshall all trade off on singing a verse and then Billy Joe joins them on the chorus.

This tune was recorded in the key of A but I played it without a capo (there are other non-capoed examples on the CD) and it made for an interesting sound. I liked it. (more…)