Barberville 2009

Hi friends...

Here we are again. The weather has been fantastically beautiful in Florida, and I am enjoying very much being here at home for a while. I'm getting a number of "home" things done. Got the van looked at---preventive maintenance. Needed brakes, but otherwise it was just fine. Good news. One of my tenants finally coughed up part of her overdue rent. Got the little apartment that is part of my own house cleaned up and fixed up and ready to rent. First tenants, for a few days, will be Austin and Rebecca Truax and kids Shane and Makayla, coming to the music camp from South Dakota.

Bought some tickets today for a catamaran boat trip from Fort Myers Beach to Key West Florida, and back, a trip I will be taking with my friends Larry and Karen Doran, coming to visit from Nebraska. Should be big fun. I have lived in Florida for many years but have never been to Key West. Time to fix that.

Late last night I arrived home after another GREAT festival at the Pioneer Settlement at Barberville, Florida. It is always one of the finest we have all year. Got to visit with zillions of my "homies", music friends here. I go back almost thirty years with some of them, like singer-songwriter-guitarist Jay Wood and bass fiddle wizard Chris Campbell. Had my good Florida musicians to support me in my shows. Had not one but two of the best flute players in Florida on my sets. Jenny James plays the big alto flute. She can nail Gershwin's Summertime like no-one else. The other flute player is Raven Stands Alone, the finest blues flute player I have ever known. Outrageously good! I also had the pleasure of having Gail Anne Amundsen, at age fifteen a current US national champion fiddler and her mandolin- and guitar-picking brother Roger, both in my legion of "adopted grandkids", on one set. Gail Keel, too, a wonderful musician on half a dozen instruments. She plays jazz concertina, among them, and routinely plays things on the instrument that are considered impossible by most good players!! Denise Adams guested on a couple of sets, playing Autoharp and singing in her rootsy-ringing Kentucky voice, and Barbara Shafer chimed in with some harmony vocals too. Denise's guy, Rick Kennedy, is my regular bass fiddle player in Florida. Rick and my old friend and longtime music pard, guitarist Carl Wade, supported me on all of my sets. I really, really appreciate their help.

All of these folks have their own musical groups as well.

A good bit of the music at this festival is "ballady" or else "bluegrassy", so I tried as usual to do some different things. Did a few old jazz tunes; swing tunes; both delta-style and Piedmont-style guitar picking; a few blues; and so on. Had not played the Reverend Gary Davis tune Hesitation Blues for a long time. Raven Stands Alone suggested it, so we did it. Good one. I also got out my jazz version of the twenties standard Whispering and we had a go at that during the last set I did on Sunday. I like to play that on the mandolin. I think I did the politically-incorrect Sugar Babe on one of the shows. Did Little Red Wagon on the Dobro on one show. Did Bye Bye Blues on the Dobro too, on another stage. I usually fingerpick that on guitar. Did immortal Summertime with Jenny James making magic on her alto flute. I'm sure I played a dozen other ones too, but I can't remember them now. Oh yeah---Golden Slippers. Maybe Panhandle Rag on guitar.

I was busy during most of the weekend and so was not able to see/hear a great many of the shows presented on the various stages, but some of the best shows I did see and hear were by Joe and Katie Waller and band; the Amundsen family (Jubal's Kin); a group made up of Gail Anne Amundsen, Scarlette Amundsen, and another lady whose name escapes me now; and a particularly fine set on Sunday afternoon by Starbird, my old music cohort Jay Wood and his lady Valinda. That Jay writes some fine songs!!

I thought the musical level of the performances this year was very, very high. A whole lot of really good music was made during the weekend.

Many young musicians and young acts performed, and I love that. Quite a few good ol' boys (like me) and gals still raised pretty fair commotion too. My workshop went well (music theory). Jammed until the wee hours both nights. I especially enjoyed a jazz jam with Jerry Carris and Gail Keel on Saturday night, and a jam with Denise Adams, Carl Wade, Barbara Shafer, Rick Kennedy, Jenny James and her guy Ron, and more, on Sunday. I enjoyed listening to other jams. It is nice to be "audience" once in a while. This was a SUPER fun weekend in Barberville.

The music part of the festival is produced by Joe and Katie Waller of central Florida. Both Joe and Katie are fine musicians. They sing and play (Joe, guitar; Katie, fiddle), and Joe writes great songs. They do a wonderful job of putting together the music part of the event. There is also a large crafts show and there are various Florida historical displays. I particularly enjoy the SWEAT demonstrations: Done by an organization called Southern Workers in Early Arts and Trades, they are all very interesting. I like to watch blacksmithing, and steam-power demonstrations, and wood carving. At some point I sat and watched a square dance for a while too. It lifts my heart to see all the pretty young girls and happy young fellers dancing. I never have square danced but I am a good spectator. The band playing for the dancing was really good.

There's no getting around it: There are a couple of problems with the Barberville event, neither of them having anything to do with the music part of it. The worst of these is AWFUL food. Almost all of the food available at the festival is that kind of greasy carbohydrate-heavy sludge that some folks like to eat in the deep south. Deep-fried breaded lard. Southern home cookin'. Mmmm-hmmm. Yeeeccchhh. I hate to be negative, folks, but there is just no excuse for food that bad. Of course I brought some food with me from home. Jay Wood saved me one day, too, with a plate of ham and beans he had made. On Sunday I survived on some bananas I still had left, and a pound of freshly-roasted peanuts I bought from a vendor. The peanuts were greasy, yes, but not too bad.

Barberville is north of Orlando, in central Florida. After the festival, on Sunday evening, a crowd of us who live south and west of the festival grounds, on the Gulf Coast, always roar out of there as fast as we can go, heading west on Route 40 to Ocala, where we stop at a Ruby Tuesday restaurant. The Ruby Tuesday chain features pretty good salad bars. What a relief to eat some decent food!!

Next weekend will the 20th annual production of my Sunshine State Acoustic Music Camp. Whew!! Busy time. If you want to come to the camp, it is by no means too late for you to register. Just e-mail me personally at charleygroth@yahoo.com . We have a stellar lineup of instructors offering about a hundred classes in a very wide range of acoustic music and music-related subjects. There's a big instructor concert (about four hours of music) on Saturday night, open to the public.

Camp web site: http://www.cgmusicman.com/camp/index.html

The beautiful young fiddler pictured on the introduction page of the camp web site is the abovementioned Gail Anne Amundsen. The picture was taken a few years ago, she'd like you to know. Gail Anne is much grown up since that shot was taken...but it is the perfect picture for the web site opening page, so I keep it there!

This year I got J. D. Beach, just about the very finest Chet Atkins-style guitarist in the world, from Alabama, to agree to come to the camp. Went directly to his house in Rocky Face, Alabama, to ask him to come. Most of J. D. is eighty years old, so he doesn't travel too much...but his fingers are 25 years old. He is just simply a FANTASTIC guitarist.

Life is good, and I consider it an ongoing blessing. I have a lot of fun.

See you next time!!