Old-Time is a Good Time

Sat. 5/15 12-5pm:

Farmlab.org, 1745 N. Spring St, Unit 4, 90012

12:30-2:30pm – Intermediate Old-Time Fiddle with Tom Sauber: Please email mike@triplechickenfoot.com for registration & questions.

1:00-2:15pm - Beginning Claw Hammer Banjo with Steve Lewis: Have a banjo and are wondering what to do with it? Seen Triple Chicken Foot and want to play banjo like Mike Heinle? This is the workshop to get you started. We’ll be working on the essentials to get you up and running on clawhammer banjo starting from square one—tuning the instrument; basic clawhammer technique; keeping your banjo happy and healthy. You’ll leave knowing those things and playing a tune or two as well! If you already play and just want a refresher, you’re welcome to come, but the focus will really be on the foundation elements of clawhammer style. Limit of 12.  Please email mike@triplechickenfoot.com for registration & questions.

2:30-3:45pm - Advanced Claw Hammer Banjo with Steve Lewis:  If you already play clawhammer style and are looking for more, this is your workshop. We’ll review the essential elements of clawhammer style and then focus on fluently combining them in different ways to create the many rhythmic and melodic variations you hear in good clawhammer playing. I’ll teach two or three tunes, but emphasis will be on learning how to adapt what you already know to playing with others, especially with fiddlers in jam settings. If you want to review/practice your hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, and drop-thumbs, come to the beginning workshop and then stay for the advanced session. I’ll have some tunes written out in tablature, but the goal is to develop your ear and technique to play with others without it. We’ll have a fiddler in attendance to practice with. Limit of 12. Please email mike@triplechickenfoot.com for registration & questions.

2:30-3:45pm - West Virginia Fiddle Tunes with Joe Wack: Please email mike@triplechickenfoot.com for registration & questions.

2:30-3:45pm - Clogging with Ruth Alpert: Please email mike@triplechickenfoot.com for registration & questions.

4:00-5:00pm – Old Time Fiddle Tunes of Kentucky with David Bragger: The objective:  To leave the workshop with the bowing and notes of some wonderful eccentric fiddle tunes.  Please bring an audio recording device.  David Bragger plays fiddle and mandolin in Sausage Grinder, an old-time/country and blues jugband based in the Los Angeles area. David  teaches old-time fiddle, banjo and mandolin to students of all ages and levels. His students have won awards at festivals from Topanga Fiddle Banjo Festival to Galax, Virginia. Most importantly, he shows you how to have a foot-stomping ruckus of a good time!  Please email mike@triplechickenfoot.com for registration & questions.

5:00-6:00pm - Guitar with Chris Berry:  Chris Berry, guitarist for LA-area jug bandsters Sausage Grinder, with some help from bandmate David Bragger on fiddle and mandolin, will give you the basics on Old-Time Ragtime Backup. Step out past the usual I-IV-V of fiddle tunes and learn to play guitar for raggy instrumentals and songs in several different keys and we might even touch on a little bit (a very little bit) of theory, too. Bring a guitar, a capo, a thumbpick or flatpick, and maybe a notebook and/or something to record with (no tab or chord charts — look and listen).  Please email mike@triplechickenfoot.com for registration & questions.

The Velaslavasay Panorama, 1122 West 24th St., 90007

**pre-sale tix available here.

Frank Fairfield:

Frank Fairfield is a young chronicler of American music. Switching from song to song between  banjo, guitar and his grandfather’s fiddle, Frank channels the stories told by figures long since passed. Traveling by bicycle with his instruments tied to his back, he can often be found busking on street corners and farmer’s markets throughout the greater Los Angeles area, and at times even playing his rare 78rpm records on an acoustic gramophone for passers by.  Since the Spring of 2008, Fairfield has been signed to the New York folk label Tompkins Square, released a 7″ and been on a national tour in support of the Fleet Foxes. Frank is currently recording his debut LP for Tompkins Square which will be out in the Fall of 2009.

*****

Joe Wack & Friends:

Joe Wack was first enthralled by old time music as an art student in West Virginia University in the early ’70′s.  From that time he has maintained the dual vocations of musician and artist.  As a banjo player, he was an original founder of the still-active WV stringband Stewed Mulligan.  Since moving to the L.A. area in ’93, he has worked in animation as a character designer in the long-running TV series The Simpsons, all the while playing fiddle, guitar, and banjo with friends and his fiddler wife Katherine.  He especially enjoys the repertoire of his native West Virginia.  Joe will be joined by his frequent musical companions Steve Lewis and Laura Osborn.  Steve started playing old-time banjo the same year he began his teaching career, and since then has been a regular performer at dances and festivals throughout southern California.  For ten years he has hosted the monthly old-time jam at Encino, and he produces the 4th Saturday Contradance in Brentwood.  Steve is also a member of the dance band The Screaming Earwigs.  Laura Osborn has been a lifelong musician, performing and teaching flute in the Los Angeles area for almost twenty years. While enjoying a robust family life with her husband and two children, she finds time whenever possible to play old-time music on guitar, banjo, and banjo-uke.

*****

Triple Chicken Foot:

Triple Chicken Foot is a Los Angeles based Old Time band.  Having played together for more than five years, The Foot has homed their skills and focused on playing Old Time music rooted in tradition.  Spending time with veteran players around Los Angeles and the country, they have soaked up knowledge and technique handed down through the years.  The Foot finds their voice through their repertoire of tunes and songs, be it gospel songs, archaic banjo tunes, or crooked fiddle tunes.  In recent years they have been a powerful new dance band on the Square Dance & Contra scene.  They have also recently finished recording their second full length CD titled Tar River.

Thurs. 5/13, 9pm, Free:

The Hyperion Tavern, 1941 Hyperion Ave, 90027

Olentangy John:

Olentangy John is John Atzberger and himself, whom he discovered at a secluded campsite somewhere in the Appalachian foothills in late 2002. The two have since evolved a style that sounds partly new and partly old. O! Be Joyful is Olentangy’s first full-length, the result of several years of months and days and minutes and seconds.