This one features Katy Daley interviewing Tom Adams of Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Tom and Michael have a long musical association going back to Adams’ time as a crackerjack, award-winning banjo player. The two of them worked together with Rhonda Vincent & The Rage in 2000, and with Dale Ann Bradley in 2002. They also released a live duet album of banjo/fiddle duets (Live at the Ragged Edge) in 2004.

That project was recorded in 2002, just before Tom began to experience the frustrating symptoms of what would later be diagnosed as focal dystonia, a neurological disorder that left him unable to reliably perform on the banjo to his high standards of excellence. Tom had started his musical life as a guitarist, and starting in 2008, returned to working in bluegrass, but now on guitar where the dystonia had no effect on his right hand movement. He had been playing of late with Bill Emerson & Sweet Dixie.

Adams has a great respect for Cleveland and is delighted to be joining Flamekeeper…

“Mike is absolutely one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met — what an incredible musician! I thoroughly enjoyed playing with Mike in the past, and I’m very excited about working with him again. He’s got a terrific band and I am glad to become a part of it.”

This move also reunites Tom with Marshall Wilborn, with whom he worked in The Johnson Mountain Boys and the Lynn Morris Band. The current Flamekeeper lineup features Cleveland on fiddle, Adams on guitar, Wilborn on bass, Jesse Brock on mandolin and Jessie Baker on banjo.

Tom will join the band starting with their August 7 show at Bluegrass In The Park in Henderson, KY.  You can find their complete tour schedule online.

UPDATE 7/24: When we first published this story, we mentioned that Tom would be playing guitar with Flamekeeper, but didn’t note that he will also be the new lead singer as well.

The event was hosted by Rod Johnston of Village Productions. Instructors included Tom Adams, Graham Sharpe, Mike Scott and Terry Baucom. Banjo students from across the country participated in the two-day event. Instruction was given for players at all levels from novice to advanced as the instructors rotated hourly throughout the classrooms. The Steep Canyon Rangers wrapped up the event with a performance Saturday evening at the Burnsville Town Center.

Following the success of this clinic, Johnston already has plans for other banjo clinics in the future, with possible expansion to other instruments as well.

We reported just two months ago that Tom was launching a new endeavor, Diamond Joe, with banjoist Chris Warner but that group has now disbanded. Tom says that the recordings the band has already made will be incorcorated into an upcoming Chris Warner release on Patuxent Records, and they will continue to track with Chris for this project.

You can find the tour schedule for The Sweet Dixie Band on their MySpace page.

Tom’s coyness aside, Chris has verified that they have indeed begun rehearsals and expect to launch Diamond Joe in the very near future. He tells us that they will be recording later this month and plan to send out a two-song promo CD to festival and event producers soon. A full-length CD release is anticipated for 2009.

Banjo players may quickly notice that Chris and Tom in the same band suggests something of a bonus in the banjo department, but no…. this will not be a double banjo act.

As we noted last summer, Tom Adams has decided to give up on the banjo as a result of his battle with focal dystonia, a nervous system disorder that has troubled him this past six years. He had initially attempted to continue performing on banjo in a modified two finger style, but was not able to play up to his own standards, and made the difficult decision to lay the banjo down.

But he didn’t give up on bluegrass music, and has since been working seriously on the guitar. The disease had affected his right hand, making for unpredictable results when playing banjo in a roll style, but Chris says that Tom has no trouble using a flatpick in a closed hand.

“Tom has been working hard on guitar, and has become a fine player. He and I actually played in a band together many years ago, with me on banjo and him on guitar, so this isn’t really a first.”

Rounding out the band are fellow Pennsylvanians Mark Seitz on mandolin and Steve Streett on bass.

Diamond Joe is booking now, and can be reached through Tom Adams’ web site until the band’s new site is complete.

UK correspondent, Richard Thompson, spoke with Dinst between sets about Iron Mitten’s upcoming tour in support of their first album.

RT: Could you fill me in on some details about Tom’s new right hand, and then we’ll move on to the band’s new CD?

IM: Yes, it’s brand new and quite shiny, wouldn’t you say? And this ‚Äì this right here is the cover of our debut CD, entitled "Pick Noise."

RT: I can certainly see where that could be a problem.

IM: What do you, what sort of problem would there be with that title?

RT: No, I’m talking about the sound of your banjo player’s metal prosthesis scraping the metal strings while he’s playing a forward roll.

IM: Well, there’s not really a direction to the roll. It’s, you know, if you were reaching into a deep fryer to pull out a chicken leg, it’s more of that kind of motion, really.

RT: But there would still be pick noise, right?

IM: Oh, yeah. The whole album is "Pick Noise." That’s the name of the whole thing. Like, no matter which track you played and somebody came up to you and said, "What’s that?" I’d say "Pick Noise." Do you ‚Äì do you not get it?

RT: No. In fact, I don’t see the album’s title anywhere on the cover.

IM: Well of course you don’t see it. You can’t see it; you hear it.

RT: So, that could be a problem.

IM: I don’t follow.

Adams came to the attention of the bluegrass world as a member of Jimmy Martin’s Sunny Mountain Boys in the 1980s – which is also where he first met Audie Blaylock, who was on mandolin with Martin at the time. The two mens’ paths would continue to cross as Adams and Blaylock later worked together with both Lynn Morris and Rhonda Vincent.

Tom describes his picking on the Trains CD as emblematic of the style he used when he played with Jimmy Martin – aggressive and hard-driving – with much of the material coming from the Martin repertoire.

The book is available from Tom’s Adams County Banjo web site, along with his three other banjo tab books.

Tom Adams,

Tom says that he will leave the band Seneca Rocks after this weekend, and cease his monthly column in Banjo NewsLetter and his private banjo lessons as well.

“I’ve enjoyed doing all of these things, but I need to stop putting myself in the position of having to play (the banjo) in public and then coming home feeling like I’ve let the other musicians and the audience down.”

It seems that a major factor in his decision came when he spent a good bit of time playing the guitar, and finding that the disorder which caused the misfiring of neurons in his right hand when picking the banjo, was not affecting his ability to use a flatpick.

“At the Nova Scotia banjo camp last weekend, I played more guitar than I did banjo, backing up fiddle and banjo players, and I had a blast, playing guitar for hours each day. I truly enjoyed playing music in a way I have not enjoyed it in the six years since the dystonia began.”

While we will all miss Tom’s superb banjo work, I congratulate him for finding a way to continue to enjoy creating music, and for his willingness to hold his standards high, even when facing such an unkind choice.

They started working on a debut recording last summer, and Tom Adams recently reported that they have were back in the studio last week trying to get things completed. No word yet on when it might be finished or released.

Our June ‘06 post has a good bit of background on this group, and some comment from the band members on the inescapable “Johnson Mountain Boys reunion” vibe that comes to mind when you see Adams, Connell, McLaughlin and Wilborn together on stage.

White House was a Nashville-area outfit that produced a CD and performed a few shows with David Parmley, Missy Raines, Charlie Cushman, Larry Stephenson and Jason Carter, and The Dreadful Snakes and The Sidemen were Nashville favorites at The Station Inn.

A new group in the VA/MD area sure to generate a similar sort of buzz is Seneca Rocks! Band members include Dudley Connell, Marshall Wilborn, Sally Love, David McLaughlin and Tom Adams. Students of 1970s era bluegrass will recognize that the four gentlemen in the group were all part of The Johnson Mountain Boys, a dynamic and engaging band that developed a large and loyal following for their brand of traditional “old school” bluegrass.

Each has remained active in bluegrass since JMB disbanded. Dudley now plays guitar and sings with Seldom Scene, Marshall is in frequent demand as a free-lance and session bass man, and has worked for quite some time with his wife, Lynn Morris. David has been most active as a recording engineer and producer, and has released an instructional DVD for mandolin.

The lone member of Seneca Rocks with no Johnson Mountain connection is Sally Love, who has been a fixture on the DC bluegrass circuit for some time, winning an award from the Washington Area Music Association in 2003 for best bluegrass vocalist.

Banjo picker Tom Adams, who also performed with The Lynn Morris Band, Blue Highway and Dale Ann Bradley after being a Johnson Mountain Boy, is returning to more regular playing after a frustrating bout with hand problems. He was diagnosed with focal dystonia a few years ago, a nervous system syndrome that caused him to have problems with his picking accuracy, and prompted him to leave Dale Ann’s group.

Tom reports that he is making great progress on that front, and welcomes the chance to strap on the banjo once again with Seneca Rocks!

“Getting together with these guys helped put the banjo back in my hands. It’s therapy and really good music all at the same time. I’m so very thankful to get to do this.”

Recording for the band’s CD has just begun, and Dudley told us that they haven’t even chosen all of the material yet, and there is no solid target date for completion or release. The choice of songs reflects a wide variety of stylistic influences, something that has been a trademark of Dudley Connell projects since the JMB days. They plan to record a Hoagy Carmichael song (Rocking Chair), one from bluesman Blind Willie Johnson (In My Time Of Dying), a Johnny Cash number (Give My Love to Rose) and Flatt & Scrugg’s Steamboat Whistle Blues. He also indicated that they will recut a Seldom Scene song, Easy Ride From Good Times To The Blues (by Herb Pedersen), which was recorded before Dudley joined the Scene, and House Where Were Wed from The Blue Sky Boys.

You can find a schedule on their web site and see whether one of their rare live shows might be in your part of the world. They also expect to have audio samples up online as the recording progresses.

UPDATE 6/15, 1:45 p.m.: Dudley shared some further thoughts about how the Johnson Mountain Boys influence affects the sound of the new band.

“With four members of the JMB reuniting into the new band, Seneca Rocks, it is almost inevitable that there will be elements of the old band’s sound. The new sound perhaps also reflects the fact that 20 years after the JMB started, time and experience has changed and colored the way we approach music. We are not trying to recreate music that we have already done, but rather use what we have learned from working together to create something unique. In addition, I would describe the material as being a little broader and drawn from a wider variety of sources than the JMB group.

Sally’s singing and playing do introduce a softer element to the overall sound but you might be surprised how sassy her singing can be. Sally is a very expressive singer and sings whatever is required of a given song. That being said, she approaches some material with barely a whisper and busts you in the mouth when that is what is required.”

UPDATE 6/16, 7:00 a.m.: Tom Adams also took the opportunity to express his thoughts about the Johnson Mountain Boys and Seneca Rocks!.

“My thoughts on the band are related directly to the fact that I’m playing with 2 fingers. I’m not thinking anything about sounding or not sounding like the JMB. This is a band that is very sensitive to the fact that I can play on slow songs and on some that venture into the medium tempo range (as songs go in the bluegrass genre). I’m sure there will be comparison with the JMB, as weighing new experiences against old ones is how people naturally catalog information in their brains. I see the band’s sound as an intersection of opportunity and circumstance, and the five of us simply enjoy making music together.”