Classes are held everywhere, even on the court.

When you are in a strange land, and all around you men are playing banjos, you must find others like you.  In other words, women.  More specifically, women with a sense of humor. We met some great people!!!

DMP decided that, since we had catapulted ourselves out of our Comfort Zones we may as well enjoy the new frontier, since those around us were doing the same thing.  Her frontier had rum in it.

We had fun.  We laughed a lot.  We played music and listened to brilliant musicians play music and we were inspired and awed.  The staff gave concerts on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.  There was a square dance.  And a student concert on Thursday night.  I didn’t know I could play “Ida Red” at such a high speed (and I didn’t do it well) but I wore my favorite pair of boots and sang the chorus, too.

It wasn’t exactly a Life Highlight, but it was an interesting experience.  I’d practiced Ida Red for hours and still couldn’t memorize the whole thing, easy as it was for the younger ones in the class (they actually wanted to do a medley!!!).

I went to a workshops on the pedal steel, twin fiddling, campfire classics and history of bluegrass.  I brought my fiddle and tequila to the evening banjo jam at the Lounge (if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em) and met a white-haired amateur banjo man in the parking lot who gave the me the web address for a banjo mute for my husband.  He said it saved his marriage.

Dessert brownies!!

Thursday during lunch was the “sale”, with cd’s and t-shirts and instruments being sold by various musicians.  We supported our instructors and bought a lot of cd’s!  The camp director acted as d.j. and played requests from old country and bluegrass LP’s.

That last night three of the banjo instructors gathered in the Lodge at midnight, along with Trisha Gagnon (upright bass player and singer) to jam.  This was a far cry from the usual group of four who made popcorn and tried out songs together.  We all made tea and coffee and popcorn, then DMP and I curled up in chairs to listen to the best jam ever.  We were joined by the 18 year old fiddle instructor who popped out of his room and happily joined in.  We reluctantly left the music and went to bed at 2:30 AM.

We did not wear ear plugs.

Never too young!

Practicing in front of the bath house.