Banjo players - and fans of Jimmy Martin - know Chris Warner for his driving style and hard hitting approach to the five string. Chris worked twice for Martin as a member of his Sunny Mountain Boys, from 1967-69, and again in the late 1980s.

During that second stint with Martin, Chris recorded two albums for Webco, All Original and Chris Warner & Friends, released as LPs and now out of print. He has recently compiled them both as a CD, Back Again, with 24 tracks featuring Warner as both banjoist and vocalist.

The tracks from All Original have Chris singing all lead vocals, with Del McCoury on tenor, and those from Chris Warner & Friends, have singing duties shared among Warner, Dudley Connell and Audie Blaylock.

But don’t think that banjo tunes get short shrift here. Chris knocks out 11 instrumentals mixed with 13 vocal tracks.

Newly minted bluegrass fans may not be aware of Warner’s top flight picking - and even long time listeners may not know him as a vocalist. Kudos to Chris for making this material available again, and to Pinecastle Records for their assistance in making it happen.

Audio samples for each track and online ordering are enabled on the Tom Adams web site, where Tom addresses the rumor that he and Chris are starting a band.

“With no official band name, no dates booked, and a disagreement over whether or not to wear matching shoes, I’d have to say yes, I believe there is a rumor that Chris and I are starting a band.”

I guess that settles that.

Popular old time banjoist Mary Z. Cox has released her latest CD, Florida Banjo, featuring her take on 15 fiddle tune classics.

Joining her are Kerry Blech on fiddle, Ellen Sheppard on mandolin and guitar, Bob Cox on guitar, Lo Gordon on banjo and Jim Crozier on bass. Mary Z. is also featured on dulcimer.

Cox is a repeat banjo champion in her native state of Florida, and has won similar honors throughout the southeast, on both banjo and dulcimer. Transcriptions of her banjo playing have appeared in Banjo NewsLetter, whose readers selected her in 2006 as their fourth favorite among all old time players.

Audio samples and a full track listing from Florida Banjo can be found on CD Baby.

Terry McGill, who plays banjo with New Jersey-based Straight Drive, has written a new banjo book, recently published by Mel Bay.

The book is Alternate Tunings for Five-string Banjo Played Bluegrass Style, and is described as the first three-finger style banjo instruction
book written specifically for the bluegrass banjoist wishing to explore alternate tunings. It is written using banjo tablature and covers G modal, Standard C, Open C, Bb, D modal, Open D and E tunings.

An audio CD is included with the book, which contains fast and slow versions of each song taught in the book. 21 songs are presented, including favorites like Cumberland Gap, Shady Grove, Kansas City Railroad Blues and Pretty Polly - each arranged in other than the familiar G tuning.

The book should be available wherever banjo instructional materials are sold.

As the International Bluegrass Music Association is at pains to remind us, bluegrass music is a truly worldwide phenomenon. Though the IBMA is based in the US, and the largest part of the membership resides here, no small part of their focus is on the furtherance of the music outside of this country.

The continued growth of the Eurpean Bluegrass Music Association is but one example of those efforts bearing fruit. As is, in a smaller way, this story we received from Sharon Lombardi in France about a recent workshop in Belgium.

This year, between 24th and 29th March 2008, the Acoustic Music International Workshop stood in Virton (Belgium) for the 23rd year.

As usual, this workshop was entirely devoted to acoustic instruments, such as guitar, fiddle, double-bass and harmonica. As far as the bluegrass part was concerned, we came close to a full bluegrass band. Not only could you attend Roberto Dalla Vecchia’s guitar workshop, Jean-Marie Redon’s banjo workshop or Jesper Rübner-Petersen’s mandolin workshop, but also the brand-new resophonic guitar workshop, taught by Henrich Novak.

Almost one hundred and thirty students came from all over Europe and even the United States and spent a week attending workshops, concerts and even jamming.

It was the seventh year that Jean-Marie Redon led the banjo workshop. It was so popular that it was full only a few days after registration had started.

The next workshop is scheduled for the first week of April 2009 and you can register from January 2009.

Canadian banjoist Jayme Stone was among the winners in this past weekend’s JUNO Awards ceremonies in Calgary. The awards are given by the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) each year to Canadian recording artists and professionals for excellence in pop, jazz, classical, rock, country and a variety of roots and traditional music forms.

Stone received the Instrumental Album Of The Year award for his CD Utmost, which CARAS described thusly on its site:

A masterful banjoist, composer, educator, Stone’s music is steeped in the repertoire, technique, and lore of old-time and bluegrass music. He has studied with banjo elders Bela Fleck, Tony Trischka, and Bill Evans, as well as luminaries Bill Frisell and Dave Douglas. Though he is best known for his roots/jazz band Tricycle, his new album, The Utmost, features inventive roots music and a fresh new, sound.

Jayme’s next project is the culmination of his extensive travels in western Africa, researching the banjo’s roots, meeting and collaborating with African players, and writing/recording with them in the process. You can read the banjo travelogues that he prepared during his African visit last Spring here on The Bluegrass Blog.

He will also be featured in an upcoming CBC concert in Winnipeg that will showcase a wide variety of banjo music, including performances by Stone, Cathy Fink and Leonard Podolak among others. The concert will be recorded for a later Canada Live broadcast on CBC.

Look for details about the new CD (due 6/28) and Stone’s fall US tour to appear soon on his web site.

If you’ve done business with Huber Banjos in the last few years, chances are you had a conversation with Sam Calveard. Sam handled customer service at Huber from 2005 to 2007, and made a lot of friends during his time on staff. He has been a long-time friend to the banjo world in general, having worked for years at both Gruhn Guitars and Gibson.

Steve Huber is asking all his customers and friends to join him in reaching a hand out to Sam during a time of need. Sam’s wife, Beth, passed away on March 22 after a lengthy bout with cancer, leaving him with the sole responsibility of raising their two young sons, Will and Latham.

Huber has established a scholarship trust fund account for the boys’ eventual college education, so that Sam can attempt to recover from their crushing medical expenses without also worrying about college costs for his sons. Steve has made an initial donation of $2500 to set up the fund, and asks everyone who has done business with Huber - or who cares about banjos and the people who make them - to send along whatever donation they can to help Sam’s boys.

I think we all know that the folks who toil for years to bring us quality music and fine instruments rarely earn the sort of income that makes retirement and college planning easy. Steve Huber asks that you examine your finances and see if they allow you to make a contribution to this worthy fund.

Online (PayPal) donations are enabled on the Huber Banjos web site.

Long-time students of bluegrass instruments will recall with fondness the name Oak Publications, a division of Music Sales that released some fine instructional manuals for banjo, guitar, mandolin, fiddle and bass starting in the 1970s. While the brand has remained active since, some of those early titles have been unavailable for years - though AcuTab reissued their classic (and massive) - Masters of the 5 String Banjo book.

Oak has reprinted a number those early books, and two of particular interest to the bluegrass community are among them. Both Bill Keith and the late Vassar Clements had transcription books as a part of Oak’s Bluegrass Masters series - which also featured books on Kenny Baker, Jesse McReynolds and Clarence White - both reissued earlier this year.

Clements’ fiddle book was written by Matt Glaser, current chair of the string department at Berklee College of Music, and the Keith banjo book was written by Tony Trischka with Bill’s assistance. The Vassar transcriptions are in standard notation and the Keith in tablature. Both feature information on the recordings from which the transcriptions were taken.

Look for Oak titles wherever bluegrass instructional materials are sold.

HT: PlayBetterBluegrass.com

Here’s a brief update to our post from last week about Gibson’s new limited edition Earl Scruggs Flint Hill Special banjo model.

In our previous post, we mentioned that no pricing information was found on the Gibson site, and that our efforts to reach someone there for details were unsuccessful.

A commenter indicated that the suggested retail prices were $18,499 for the first five and $11,999 for the remaining production run. We also reached Janet Davis of Janet Davis Music, a large and prominent dealer for Gibson Banjos, who told us that they are offering them for $16,665 (1-5) and $10799 (6-20).

Only 20 will be built, and Janet Davis Music Center is taking orders at this time. They are being built now, and should be ready for delivery in 2-3 weeks.

Only one or two of the first five are still available. Each banjo is personally and professionally shop adjusted before it is shipped to you from our facility.

A true investment you can enjoy forever!

You can see more details about the new Scruggs banjo in our earlier post.

Earlier this month, Bela Fleck’s documentary film, Throw Down Your Heart, was premiered at the South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival in Austin, TX. SXSW is a 5 day festival that is a combination of trade show and festival for music, film and interactive media. The festival includes all the workshops, panels, mentor sessions, etc. that you would expect from a trade show. In addition, over 250 independent films were screened during the course of those five days.

Throw Down Your Heart was entered in the Documentary Feature category. While it didn’t win the jury award for its category, it did win the fan’s choice award called 24 Beats Per Second. This award is for the fan’s favorite music-themed filmed at the event. The award title is taken from the number of film frames displayed in one second of film footage, 24.

Bela’s brother Sascha Paladino, who served as the film’s director, commented on the warm reception the film received at the festival.

[An] amazing thing that happened during our premiere was that after some of the musical performances within the film, the audience burst into applause. It was really exciting, like everyone was at a live concert. I don’t think that would have happened at another festival… We’re thrilled that we premiered at SXSW.

Bela stated in an interview with Variety magazine that he hoped the win would lead to more people seeing the film.

We’re hoping that by the end of the festival season, we’ll have somebody who wants to put it, acquire it and put it out, get into the public eye, because we think it’s worth seeing.

For more information about the film (and to watch the trailer), you can read our original post, or visit the film’s website at ThrowDownYourHeart.com.

Gibson is debuting a new, limited edition banjo model this year, marking the 5oth anniversary of the original release of Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs’ classic recording, Foggy Mountain Jamboree. Though they had been releasing singles on a regular basis since 1951, Foggy Mountain Jamboree was their first long playing album, which some music historians say was the first bluegrass LP by any artist.

Included on that 1957 LP was Flint Hill Special, a Scruggs instrumental originally recorded in 1952 that, along with Earl’s Breakdown, Foggy Mountain Chimes and Randy Lynn Rag (all three also featured on that album), introduced the bluegrass world to what came to be known as the Scruggs tuner, a device that allowed Earl to quickly detune and retune a string.

Gibson has long marketed a banjo known as the Earl Scruggs Flint Hill Special (the name of both the song and the banjo taken from Scruggs’ birthplace in North Carolina), and their new 2008 commemorative banjo is a special edition of that model.

Only 20 Commemorative Limited Edition Earl Scruggs Flint Hill Special banjos will be made, and purchasers will receive a number of pieces of Earl Scruggs memorabilia as well.

The banjo will be made of figured maple (neck, and resonator overlay) with an ebony fingerboard inlaid with Gibson’s Hearts & Flowers pattern. The neck and resonator are bound with white/black/white trim and the peghead with mother of pearl. The heel cap is also mother of pearl, and the banjo is engraved and gold plated. Each will ship in an Earl Scruggs signature model red line case, with the head signed by the man himself, an autographed copy of Earl’s banjo book and a CD copy of Foggy Mountain Jamboree.

The first five purchasers will also get Earl’s signature on the back of the peghead, plus a signed and framed Flint Hill Special tablature from the Scruggs book.

Gibson has not responded to our requests for more details about the selling price, but similar limited edition models have carried retail prices close to $50,000. When we hear from them with a price (and availability/ordering info), we’ll update this post. (See update below)

The Gibson folks also included this classic YouTube clip in their press release about the new Scruggs banjo. Nice!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfB_Saky-6E

UPDATE 4/2: A commenter indicated that the suggested retail prices were $18,499 for the first five and $11,999 for the remaining production run. We also reached Janet Davis of Janet Davis Music, a large and prominent dealer for Gibson Banjos, who told us that they are offering them for $16,665 (1-5) and $10799 (6-20).

Here’s an interesting little episode for you. This comes from The Bowling Green News police blotter.

These events took place last night at 3:53 AM on the campus of Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, OH.

Campus police respond to a complaint of someone playing a banjo too loudly outside East Offenhauer. Subjects were advised to “call it a night.”

Now that’s just harsh! Who would complain about a banjo in the dorm at 4 AM?! I guess the soothing sound of a forward roll wasn’t helping him sleep.

My recent involvement with Bill Evans’ Banjo In America program has me looking at banjo history a bit. So when I saw this news I thought it was worth sharing.

The Univeristy of Flordia is hosting a five hour event tomorrow afternoon entitled AIM for African Akonting/Banjo Symposium.

The symposium…explores the common ancestry and unique musical and cultural expressions of the New World banjo and its West African ancestors. These instruments include the akonting, a three-stringed instrument played by the Jola people of Senegal and Gambia, and the ngoni, a plucked lute from Mali.

The symposium will begin and 1 PM and continue until 6 PM. After a one hour break for dinner, attendees will be treated to a special concert beginning at 7 PM and featuring performers from both America and Africa.

The evening will begin with a historical presentation by noted scholars and musicians Shlomo Pestcoe and Greg C. Adams, followed by performances featuring the Grammy-nominated duo of Bob Carlin and Cheick Hamala Diabate of Mali. Also performing are Sana Ndiaye of Senegal and American banjo luminaries Bill Keith, Laura Boosinger, Dan Gellert, Ken Perlman and Gainesville’s own Chuck Levy.

Tickets for the event are $60 at the door ($50 for students), and include both the symposium, dinner, and admission to the concert. Tickets for the concert may be purchased separately for $15 ($10 for students).

This past week’s American Idol had the various contestants interpreting the music of The Beatles, and one competitor, Chikezie, started his version of She’s A Woman with a banjo and a fiddle.

The grassyness only lasted through the first verse, but I guess it’s still a milestone worth marking.

There is video of the full performance on the Idol web site.

Tony Trischka will be appearing tomorrow on the popular, syndicated morning talk show, Live with Regis and Kelly. Tony is only two weeks away from the release of his latest CD, Territory, and it is safe to presume that he will perform something from this new project on Live.

The show airs in most markets at 9:00 a.m. local time, and a searchable listing of show times can be found on the Regis and Kelly web site.

We had a chance to discuss Territory with Tony recently, and he shared a few details about the new CD, due 3/25 from Smithsonian Folkways.

“Territory is a departure for me in that most of it is not full band. I do a little clawhammer, turn of the century and bluegrass - it’s a pretty wide range. There are 12 solo tunes on the album…mostly original tunes.”

The CD features 21 tracks, including a few with the twin banjo theme of Tony’s prior release, Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular, which was released last year on Rounder.

“The move to Smithsonian is just this ‘one-off.’ I’m still with Rounder and have a new project planned with them after Territory comes out. When Territory was first set in motion I was doing a lot of solo gigs and wanted to have something updated (Solo Banjo Works with Bela being over 10 years old at the time). That was the immediate impetus for this project.

There are five songs we recorded for the Double Banjo project that we decided weren’t bluegrass enough. (more…)

Monday’s (3/3) edition of the Charlottesville, VA Daily Progress featured a lengthy article on Stelling Banjo Works, whose small shop production facility is located in nearby Afton, VA.

The article discusses founder Geoff Stelling’s banjo design innovations, which brought him recognition from the US Patent Office.

Frustrated by a pair of patent rejections, Stelling had traveled to Washington to show the people in the patent office that the banjo he’d built himself was different from the ones that roll off the factory line.

“I played ‘Pike County Breakdown,’” Stelling said.

The performance worked. Afterward, Stelling was approved for a patent for the banjo design that is at the heart of his Albemarle County business.

They also discuss Geoff’s plans to retire in the next few years, with the operation of the company passing to his son, Jimmy, currently a luthier in the Stelling shop.

As a founding member of the Charlottesville-based band the Hackensaw Boys, Jimmy Stelling recorded several albums and played thousands of gigs across the country and beyond.

“I don’t see how you can really make a great banjo unless you know how to play,” he said.

He left the group and went to work in his father’s shop. It wasn’t a foreign environment for Jimmy; he’d been hanging around the banjo shop off and on since he was a kid.

“I was making skateboards, you know,” he recalled.

You can read the full article on The Daily Progress site, which also includes an online video demonstration of the Stelling wedge-fit pot assembly.

Known far and wide as a scholar specializing in banjo music, Bill Evans is bring the banjo to America.

Bill performs in variety of ensemble settings, including his band Rustler’s Moon, and shows with fiddler Megan Lynch. Bill also works as an instructor at many banjo camps and workshops, and he is an accomplished author. His most recently published work being the Banjo For Dummies book, available from Wiley Publishing.

In between all these other items on his busy schedule, Bill somehow finds time to perform as a soloist, in a format that could best be described as a concert/educational workshop called The Banjo in America. During the course of the presentation, Bill traces the banjo from its roots in West Africa to America, performing selections from the 1700’s forward on a variety of instruments in the banjo’s linage.

Bill recently visited me here at the studio and we filmed a few short video clips of select period performance pieces taken from The Banjo in America. I found the various instruments and tunes to quite fascinating, so I took the opportunity to speak with Bill about the tour and glean some information from him.

I inquired of Bill how long he had been pursuing this concept and what his inspiration had been.

I’ve been touring with “The Banjo in America” since the mid-1990’s but it’s something that I’ve often squeezed in between band performances, workshops and other shows. The initial inspiration for this concert format came from my participation in the Tennessee Banjo Institute and a couple of the Maryland Banjo Academy events in these years. These remarkable weekends brought banjo players together from all over the world who played in a variety of styles, including many of the historical styles I later incorporated into “The Banjo in America.” Also, as in so many things in my career, my buddy Tony Trischka was an inspiration to me. We were following similar paths in exploring these earlier historical styles. Joe Ayers, Clark Buehling, Eli Kaufman and Bob Carlin have also provided help and input along the way.

My work in American music history as a graduate student in ethnomusicology at the University of California, Berkeley in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s also helped me as I developed the format for this show. The Kentucky Humanities Council provided tour support early on as well - I played just about every public library in that state between 1992 and 1994! I’ve also toured with “The Banjo In America” throughout Japan, I’ve showcased this concert at IBMA on several occasions and have performed “The Banjo in America” at Wintergrass, the Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival and various festivals here in California and Colorado, among others. I completed a two week tour in Virginia last November, when these videos were taped. So the show has been out there for a long time - It’s just been under the radar!

A lot of people probably don’t realize the important role the banjo has served historically in the popular music of this country. (more…)

The Tacoma, Washington, based The News Tribune has published a story about what it considers to be a stand out band at the 15th Annual Wintergrass festival during this past weekend’s shindig. The Ebony Hillbillies weren’t even expected to be playing at the festival, but when the Carolina Chocolate Drops cancelled just days before the festival started the New York quartet got the call to fill the void.

The quartet, comprising fiddler Rique Prince, singer and multi-instrumentalist Norris Bennett, upright bass player Bill Salter and a cowboy washboard player who simply goes by the initials A.R., not only played a set on Thursday evening, they set the place alive with foot-stomping dancers in abundance.

The full story of their memorable performance can be found at the newspaper’s website.

Here is an unrelated clip of them performing in the NYC subway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpnQsOJpzb4

Banjo pioneer Bill Keith is interviewed in a lengthy piece published online by the Hudson Valley Bluegrass Association.

Bill talks about his current musical activities and his involvement with a number of noteworthy ensembles in his younger days. He was introduced to most bluegrass fans when he joined Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys in 1963, where he brought his then-embryonic melodic (or scalar, fiddle-tune style) banjo techniques to much wider attention.

Keith also performed with folk artists Geoff and Maria Muldaur, and found himself a part of what came to be considered a landmark ensemble called Muleskinner. This band featured such notable artists as Clarence White on guitar, David Grisman on mandolin, Richard Green on fiddle and Peter Rowan on guitar and vocals.

“Then, the plan was that we were to back up Bill Monroe in an appearance on the television show. So we got together and rehearsed and got a few numbers to do on our own…and so rehearsed the numbers we were pretty sure Bill would play – Foot Prints in the Snow, and Kentucky Waltz, and whatever. We had our rehearsal, and the next day we scheduled another rehearsal that Bill was supposed to come to. But we got a telephone call that he couldn’t make that rehearsal, so we added a few more tunes to what we could play on our own. The next day was a dress rehearsal in the morning and then taping in the afternoon. But Bill wasn’t there for the dress rehearsal and so we added a couple more things and of course the point in time came and he still wasn’t there, so we did the TV show on our own.”

The video of that show has been a collector’s item for fans of early 1970’s vintage modern bluegrass, and they went on to record a successful album as Muleskinner, which led to a release of the audio from the initial TV appearance.

Hear Muleskinner on Rhapsody or in iTunes.

Read the full interview online.

Cross-genre and cross-cultural banjo icon Béla Fleck journeyed through several African nations last year in an effort to learn more about the music and people from whence the banjo originated. He visited Uganda, Tanzania, Gambia and Mali and met and performed with many African musicians along the way.

An album is planned for the future based on the music recorded on this trip, and a documentary film will debut next month about this musical adventure as well. It is entitled, Throw Down Your Heart, and was shot by filmmaker Sascha Paladino (Béla’s brother), who also produced and directed the film short that was included with The Flecktones’ CD/DVD, The Hidden Land.

The new film will premier at the 2008 South By Southwest Film Festival on March 9 in Austin, TX, and a short clip has been posted on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDCxaQhhL0A

News is expected soon about the African journey CD’s release, and about whether Throw Down Your Heart will be picked up for theatrical release, or perhaps on DVD.

A recent edition of the How It’s Made program, broadcast on The Science Channel, focused on the banjo - and how it’s made.

To film this segment, the producers and crew visited First Quality Musical Supply in Louisville, KY where The Sullivan Banjos are made. This led to a roughly five minute piece on the show which follows the construction of a banjo from rough wood cutting to final assembly and set up.

The First Quality folks have made the video available on YouTube for anyone who missed the show last week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Vs_EoGazks