Here’s another big milestone in the bluegrass world. Pete Wernick, aka Dr. Banjo, is celebrating his 25th anniversary offering his Winter Banjo Camps in Boulder, CO.

Wernick has long been known as a pioneer in bluegrass banjo instruction. His beginner book, Bluegrass Banjo, has sold better than 200,000 copies and his many instructional DVDs are also popular items. He was also a member of Hot Rize, a festival phenomenon in the 1990s who still performs reunion shows. Pete performs these days with Flexigrass, and as a duo with his wife, Joan.

His 25th Anniversary Winter Banjo Camps will be held in January 2010 at The Boulder Inn (Best Western).

• January 4-9: Basic Skills Banjo Camp
• January 11-16: Intermediate Banjo Camp
• January 18-23: Advanced Banjo Camp

Full details about these camps, including how skill levels are determined, can be found at www.drbanjo.com.

Pete Wernick, Dr. Banjo to you and me, was the subject of a recent video segment for TimesCall.com, the online home of the Longmont Daily Times-Call, Pete’s hometown paper.

The video visits Pete at his banjo practice cabin, which he built as a creative hideaway. You can view it online at TimesCall.com.

Pete also tells us that he has a new DVD from Homespun, Make Up Your Own Banjo Solos. Can you guess what it is about?

Full details can be found at DrBanjo.com, where you can also find the newly-announced dates for his 2010 Winter Banjo Camps.

Pete Wernick will be working next week on a live recording with Long Road Home, a bluegrass band based in Boulder, CO. They will be tracking May 25-27 at the Etown Hall in downtown Boulder, with admission proceeds going towards the capital fund for the building.

Wernick says that both the new band and their upcoming live CD has a “back to the future” vibe for him…

“I’ve been playing with these guys for over a year now, and it gets more and more fun as it goes along. It’s an unusual band in that two of us are “older” (me and Gene Libbea), and the other three are in their 20s. We’re all very much on the same page about unmistakably tradition-based bluegrass. As with Hot Rize, we all play other kinds of music, but we know what straight bluegrass is, and that’s what the band is about. Here and there a bit of weirdness will sneak in, but that helps keep it interesting without disrupting the bluegrass feel. What we might lack in complexity we make up in intensity. Martin Gilmore, our lead singer, writes some fine songs and is a strong and soulful singer. Justin Hoffenberg is a righteous fiddle player with blazing tone, and Jordan Ramsey is a creative and hot picker, winner of the Rocky Grass mando contest last year. We have a lot of fun when we play. Gene’s attitude and his bass playing kick our butt!

The idea of a live recording is to capture the band’s energy. We use two mics and work them as needed. The site of the recording is the new headquarters of the famous Etown radio show, hosted by my Hot Rize buddy Nick Forster and his wife Helen. It’s a sweet venue in Boulder where Hot Rize recently played. It happens that Justin, fiddler in Long Road Home, is also the overseer of the Hot Rize live archive, with over 200 shows back to 1978, ten years before he was born. That’s kind of cool to me.”

More details about the live shows can be found on Pete’s web site. He also mentioned that he has copies of the newly re-released version of Steve Martin’s The Crow CD on his site. It has been remastered for release on Rounder Records.

Pete performed on two of the tracks, one of which he wrote with Martin.

Pete Wernick will celebrate 25 years leading instructional camps for banjo pickers when he convenes his Winter Banjo Camps in January 2009. The camps are held in Boulder, CO and separate events are held for beginner, intermediate and advanced players.

Pete has been credited with kicking off the concept of these multi-day workshops in bluegrass, which are now held regularly all over the world for the various bluegrass instruments. He has hosted more than 100 himself over these past 25 years.

You can find details about all of his camps on Pete’s web site.