BROTW - Blue Ridge Old-Time Week

2008
I had the great pleasure of attending my first Blue Ridge Old Time Week in June 2007.  I participated in an advanced old-time banjo class with Mac Benford.  We worked on several of the Kentucky fiddle tunes that he has performed over the years.  The tunes are crooked, twisted, squirrelly or whatever term you want to use when the fiddle player is simply playing the tune and not worrying about simplifying it in any way for duet/band playing.  It was great fun.

Each afternoon there were a series of one-hour seminars/performances on a wide variety of musical topics.  I spent an hour each day learning the basics of playing bass - something I'd always wanted to try but was always intimidated to try it in a jam situation.

In 2008 I came back as the sound man. I took care of all of the faculty, student and special guest concerts. The New North Carolina Ramblers were the special guest band and they were great. I really enjoyed my singing class with Alice Gerrard - I tried my hand at Primitive Baptist hymn singing and several other country singing styles. I also provided an afternoon session of "How to be friends with your sound man". I've been invited back again for 2009 and hope to see you there.

Tommy Hunter Tunes

On the first night, many of the teacher/staff folks performed a couple of tunes to give everybody an idea of what style of music they like to play.  One of the performers was a local musician, David Robinson, who performed several tunes written by local fiddle player Tommy Hunter.  The tunes really caught my attention and when I found out that David was offering an afternoon sessin on the tunes I set of with my little Zoom hard disc recorder and got permission to record the session and set up the recorder in a great spot just in front of David.  His back-up band consisted of Mac Benford, Bob Carlin and Hilary Dirlam - pretty good stuff!!  I've included a copy of short excerpts from the tunes I recorded that day - if you like them check out more about Tommy Hunter through googling, etc.

Tommy Hunter Tunes played by David Robinson

Across The Shannon


Cat On A Whiskey Barrel


Gentleman From Virginia


Line Fork