Sorry for the delay folks, but I bit off more than I can chew. I am working on a couple of projects that have really eaten up all of my free time. One of them is really cool and I can’t wait until it is finished. It’s not all been work, I got to spend Saturday with Sandy and Amber in Lisle, IL at the Eyes In The Sky Festival. Every time we go there, I end up with a new hat and this time was no different. We watched the hot air balloons, a couple of bands, good food, fireworks and time with friends.

Since it’s the 4th of July holiday week here in the States, I decided to work for a little while on one of my projects and watch Amber amuse herself with Play-Doh! She made a mask, a horn and assorted food. Luckily she is old enough now that she doesn’t try to eat it! 🙂

I’ll be back for sure next Monday as long as Joel doesn’t overwork me after our gig on Friday!

See you all then!

Kelly

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally!! The laptop is back and better than ever and I’ll be back on Monday! It’s been very, very frustrating trying to use my phone to do all of my work, but I finally got the parts, got the soldering gun and got ‘er done!

There are a lot of really exciting things going on and because of it, I’ve had to sit down and do something that I haven’t done in a very, very long time. I wrote two songs for a new project and I had a blast doing it. The next step is getting them recorded. For that, I am going to have to sit down with Joel and map out the arrangements.  The one thing that I have been blessed with the last 15 years is being around people who can take my ideas and arrange them musically to pull out my thoughts and make them real. This time though, it’s not just for the band that the music has to sound good, but for a third-party that has contracted us for use in a very exciting new project….

One of the best descriptions of having good people around me was when I went to Joel with an idea that was a one time joke in Philly when Another Pint was touring . We melded When Doves Cry with Freebird when a bachelorette party came in and asked for Prince and a group of drunk college guys yelled out “Freebird”. It was a joke song that got a huge reaction live but I wasn’t sure how to pull it off and make it sound good in a recording. I handed it to Joel with a couple of notes and he came up with

. I have to say that I still laugh out loud when I hear Angel singing all of the harmonies like Prince did with When Doves Cry. Listen to them one after that other and realize that Joel used all acoustic instruments to pull of a funky song!  It was just one of Joel’s masterpieces on that album. The other was . The Colonel liked to play it live and it was always fun, but I asked Joel if he could make it sound like it would fit into Braveheart after the battle. I think he did it.

This time I have three songs that I want Joel to help me make magic with, two songs and one that is so off the wall that it has to sound good. After that, the rest of the songs that I want to do, should be easy!

Stay tuned and there will be updates on this project soon and I’ll be back to making videos on Monday.

I am still waiting on a single solitary part so I can fix my laptop. I’ve had a lot of time off and I should have known that as soon as I wanted to get back to making some videos that something would stop me. Now I’m a bit frustrated, but I think I should have everything figured out and fixed by this weekend. I am hoping that I get the laptop back together and working by Friday night because I have an opening of about 2 hours on Saturday to get something recorded, edited and ready for upload. I’ll be away from home all day Sunday with Amber and Sandy as they once again compete in the Warrior Dash!

Last year, I was not prepared for the awful mess they were going to make of my car when they were finished. They were completely caked in mud and it got everywhere! This year, I have my tarps ready and they will be covering everything!

This last weekend I was attended a great Jam at Joel’s place. We had most of the gang there and we had a blast! We were a little bummed because we couldn’t make it to the Henry Reed Memorial Fiddler’s Convention in Glen Lyn, VA. We’ve gone there the last couple of years and always had a blast. We are planning on being there next year, but we are taking it a day at a time.

On the subject of jams; if you get a chance to join one or start one, by all means do it. There is no single better way to learn to play music then with a bunch of others. It doesn’t matter if you only know a couple of chords, just find or start a group and you’ll learn together. I learned by performing in front of people. I was in a band as soon as I knew four chords and learned as I went. It was fun and it was the best way to learn, learn fast and learn correctly. In the beginning when I was learning how to find the melody of the song, I had to skip a few notes here and there to get the part of the melody I knew to fit into the timing of the song. As time went on, I got better and better at being able to sing a requested song that I had never done before and playing the melody on the break. It’s not magic, it’s just playing and not letting yourself say “let me do that over”. You just try it, move on and come back the next time. Now when I skip a few notes of the melody line, it’s because I want to. Sometimes it’s because I want to song to have a driving rhythm and sometimes it’s because the rests between the melody notes gives the song flavor and something for the listener to try to find and keeps it interesting.

Have fun, keep playing and I’ll see you all next week!

Kelly

I had a great show last night with Joel Simpson.  I love the combination of guitar and banjo!  I especially love it when I am playing the banjo all night and don’t have to play guitar.

We were at a great neighborhood pub called An Seanachi in Blue Island, IL.  It’s a great place and if you are ever in the area stop by for a pint. The pub is located at 2825 W. 127th Street, Blue Island, IL.

The weekend started out fantastic as Joel and I had so much fun. The only downside is that my laptop died on me.  The upshot of that unfortunate development is that I can’t process any videos until I am able to get the parts to fix it.

I had planned to try to get the parts this morning,  but instead of getting a couple of hours of sleep, I ended up in downtown Chicago with Sandy at the Color Run.  Oh well,  no rest for the wicked or the hungover!

I’ll be in touch!

Kelly

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I just want to wish everyone including those that served with me, before me, after me and their families,friends and neighbors a very happy Memorial Day.

I had a great time in the United States Air Force and I still have friends from those days. It’s hard to believe that 2012 marked 20 years since left the service. I still remember those times like it was yesterday. The only thing that I wouldn’t want to relive is the medication we all had to take before Desert Storm.

I’ll be back in June with new videos and new projects. Until then, enjoy your Memorial Day and God Bless you all.

Kelly

Dr. Scott has decided to record a few songs at a local recording studio and asked some of us to join him. We had a really fun rehearsal. I think this will be a fun time and his recordings will turn out great!

As the old saying goes, when it rains it pours.

After the last couple of blog entries, I was happily contemplating a short retirement to enjoy Amber’s last years before college. I figured that by then, I would be ready to jump back into something and be refreshed. What I didn’t count on was the great people who have been helped in some small way by my videos and books. I want to thank each and every one of you that have gone out of your way to say some very nice things about what I do. After some serious contemplation, I will be back very, very soon.

I would be lying if I said that I don’t thoroughly enjoy making my videos, teaching and helping out anyone who asks. It has really been a great thing and I enjoy every single minute. It is a great feeling when someone you don’t know sends you a message from out of the blue thanking you for showing them how to play their favorite song or understanding a technique they had read about.

I had decided to go back to creating videos and teaching full time again when the other shoe dropped. There has been only one gig in the last 5 years that I have actually pursued. Usually someone calls me and then I’ll either do it, or give it to someone else. I’ve really enjoyed the intimacy of playing in a living room or backyard of someone’s home. I was getting the itch to go back on the road, but I didn’t really feel like scratching it yet. I had decided to perform at one place that is always great and treats me like family. I was ready to go there and do my thing when my email inbox starting filling up with potential gigs around the Midwest from out of the blue.

Needless to say, I said yes to all of them. I didn’t even hesitate. The itch was there and now it was being handed to me, so I just took it.

Now for those of you counting at home, that’s three full time jobs. My regular job, teaching and videos and now back to the pubs. What that means is that there will probably be less time for the teaching and videos so I have to prioritize what I want to do. Teaching means money, but the videos help many for free. What I decided after about 30 seconds of thinking about it is, my teaching is going to have to be scaled back. My plan is to still offer two videos a week, when I can and I’ll fit in lessons around everything else. Luckily, I’ve had a lot of “graduations” in the last few months so I am just not going to fill those slots.

If that was enough of a plateful to make a glutton think twice, I’ve decided to finish a project that I’ve been working on for a while. I had recorded some video of basic frailing/clawhammer techniques and gave them  to get feedback and pointers. It seems that I am on to something that can help people play banjo, so I am going to re-record the videos and produce them for purchase.

The project is called “The Folksinger’s Guide to Clawhammer and Frailing Banjo”. It covers all of the basics to get someone started on their journey to accompanying themselves and others with the 5-string banjo. It includes subjects such from tuning the banjo to the basic strum to drop thumbing to using the capo. It was a lot of fun making the prototype, but I am really looking forward to making the final copy.

So the plate is full, but I am still taking the weekend off!!! I’ll be back soon and until then, thank you very, very much for sticking with me!

Kelly

I first have to apologize for being gone for so long. My intention was get back to making videos and teaching as soon as I got back from vacation.

Once we got back, we had to get everything ready for Amber’s knee surgery. Once it was over I decided to take a few days off to get back into the swing of things. What I discovered is that I haven’t lead a normal life since I first joined the USAF in 1989. After being in the service for less than 6 months, I started taking college classes at night. I never really just went home and did nothing. I was always working during the day and then going to class at night.

Once I got out of the Air Force I started working full time while going to college full time. My nights were usually filled with work or homework depending on the day. Just as that was ending I started to perform at night and then got married. For my entire married life, I have either been going to a show, preparing for a show or now teaching or preparing to teach.

I have to say that I am really just enjoying life for the first time in my adult life. Now I go home and visit with Sandy and Amber, do a few things around the house and watch some TV with them. I am getting to be very, very spoiled. I never realized how much fun relaxing with the family on a daily basis can be. Usually I am jumping from lesson to lesson or processing a video or helping someone on a project.

I don’t know how long that I will be out, but it just feels good to actually go to bed and get up seven hours later instead of four hours later.

Now I get to spend time with Omega, my 18 year old tabby instead of letting him sleep for me. 🙂

Don’t worry, I won’t be gone forever, but it may be a week or so before I decide to give up the good life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have to apologize because this has to be the single longest piece of writing that I’ve done since my novel was shelved in ’96!

I just wanted to check in and say that I am still on vacation until May.
I went back to my day job, but I am still on vacation from teaching and making videos. Poor Amber is having knee surgery tomorrow so I am going to take off the next week or so to stay with her and help her get around.

I am not giving up because I have a lot of fun creating the videos. I usually make them at break-neck speed so that I have enough time to process and upload them. I am often asked, why I do these videos and the answer is really, really simple: PASSION!

You have to have passion if you want to be successful at anything. If you want to be a good banjo player, you have to have passion to achieve that goal. If you have a thimble full of talent and a bucket full of passion, you will be become what you want to be. Passion is the key to success with anything that you do in life. If you have passion you will push yourself to higher levels of achievement because it has become part of you. With passion, you won’t sit around and wait for the skill or ability to come to you, you will go out, grab it with both hands and beat it into submission.

There were two times in my life when passion led me to something better.
The first was playing Irish Pub Music in as many places as possible and the second was learning to play the banjo the way that I wanted to play the banjo. I was never really inspired to play like any other banjo player because I was inspired by the Irish bouzouki playing of Terry Murphy from Detroit, MI. I couldn’t stand playing the guitar and I really didn’t want to play the Irish bouzouki, but I thought that the banjo would be cool.

I have so much passion for these things that I’ve kept every email I have ever written or received since 1998 on performing and playing the banjo. Sandy tells me that I should just publish them as a book, but I don’t think there would be too much of market for that sort of thing. I am just glad that they are there and every once in a while, they inspire me to do something.

For over 10 years, I traveled the highways and byways of this country dragging a group of fun musicians with me to every Irish Pub we could find. I did everything that I wanted to do with Another Pint, because I had passion. I loved performing and I would do just about anything to make it happen. If a venue wanted me to be a guest on a local radio show, I made sure that I was either in the radio studio or on the phone with the host to plug the show. If I was asked to stay after the show and schmooze with the patrons to make them feel like they got their money’s worth, I did it. I would stay even if I had an eight hour drive home after the show. I traveled everywhere and anywhere, because I had a passion for it. I always wanted to go further, see different people, play somewhere new, mix it up with different musicians. I had a passion for the performance that made me a better performer and made me go not just the extra mile, but the extra time zone and region. I loved it because it was who and what I was; a traveling musician. There were many times that I turned down a regular local gig to travel somewhere new. I wanted to go somewhere else and experience that first night in front of a strange crowd as much as I could.

There were some places that I loved going back to again and again. Why? Because they had passion! They loved the music and knew what they wanted to hear and what they wanted the band to play. They knew the songs, the stories behind the songs and every version of the song that had been recorded. You could see it in their eyes, they weren’t just in the pub for a smoke and few pints. They were there because they wanted to hear the songs and sing along.

I’ve held off telling this story for years, because I didn’t want anyone that was involved in the venue to feel bad. The guys in the band call this episode the “Mick Foley Promo Night.” We had been playing in a particular pub for a long, long time and over the course of six months, the crowd started to dwindle. There was a new bar in town, just down the street that had loud music, cheap beer and waitresses wearing short skirts. They were killing this pub and you could see the writing on the wall.

The parking lot at the pub had more open parking spaces every time we went back and the other place had two overflow lots full of cars. It was just a matter of time before this pub went belly up. It was a long, long drive for me to get there. I would work a full day at work and then drive four hours to get to this place, but it was worth it because the patrons who were there, got it. They knew what kind of entertainment they wanted and they came every month to see us no matter what. I had performed the night before and went straight to work without more than a couple hours sleep and then drove all the way to this pub. When we walked in, the place was only half full. I knew the names of each and every one of the patrons. I remember it like it was yesterday. I had just finished reading some of “Have A Nice Day” by Mick Foley. I had read the book before and once a year or so, I would re-read it because his passion for his business was something that I could relate to. He would travel as far has humanly possible to get beaten up and make $25 or $30 because he had passion for what he did. I felt the same way. There were so many times that once I figured out hour many hours I spent performing and driving, I was under minimum wage.

I’m no Mick Foley, but, by God, I had passion too. As we were performing our first set, I kept looking out at the audience and saw that they were all singing along. But seeing all of those empty seats really started to bug me. The manager seemed happy as he told us that we brought in more people than the other bands, but I knew that there was no way they could keep paying us for what we were doing. I figured that it was our last night in this place and all of the passion that was inside of me for performing, came to the surface. Just before our last song of the set, I couldn’t contain my feelings any longer and gave the “Mick Foley Promo.”

I don’t like to brag and don’t have time for those that do, but I am very proud of my one and only “promo”. I have to say that as life-long wrestling fan, I can see how doing something like this and getting it right, could be very addictive. The only thing I can say in my defense is that I was possessed by the spirit of Mick Foley.

I remember it almost word for word, because I wrote it down at the behest of our fiddle player at the time. I have redacted the name of the venue, but everything else is here:

“You know folks, I am standing up here and I can’t help but be moved by what I see. When we started playing here a couple of years ago, this place was filled to capacity. There was a line out the door just to get in here. It was one of the loudest pubs I have ever been in during my entire life. Even with these monitors pointed directly at us, we could barely hear ourselves play.

I noticed then, that out of that sea of humanity that there were some that were here to listen to the songs. While the pub filled up with endless chatter there were those that moved closer to the stage so they could hear. There were some that begged us not to stop playing because they were enjoying what we did. They laughed at my jokes and learned the names of everyone in the band, bought us drinks and sat with us between sets to get to know us better.

I saw people with passion! People with a real passion to find the one place in this town that played the music you loved. And you came every time we were here. It didn’t matter to you what was going on down the street, you were here because you wanted to be. I see that passion today and I am damn glad to be here!

Some of you have asked me before, “Why do come so far to play here?” My answer has always been the same, I have a passion for it. It was that passion that got me to find these great musicians that are here with me today. It was that passion that had me put over a hundred thousand miles on my car in less than a year driving to shows all over the Midwest! It was that passion that brings me up here on this stage to sing this music for you! It was that passion that had me go bankrupt to continue doing what I do! It is that passion that will have me still singing these old songs when everyone else has moved on to rock and roll! It is that passion that will be marked on my tombstone, “He played what he loved!” when I am dead and buried! It is that passion that brings me here tonight to be here with you and, by God, it is that passion that will make me come back to see you all again! And I swear that it is that passion that will make me never quit!”

I signaled the band to go into the last song of the set and as they played they stared at me but I was too wound up to really notice it. I looked out into the crowd and they were giving a standing ovation and a couple of them had tears in their eyes. I really didn’t know what to think, as I was still riding on the adrenaline from my little speech. As soon as the last song was done, I bolted through the side door and sat down outside. The guys in the band weren’t too far behind me and I remember The Colonel laughing at me and saying “What was that?” I told him that something just pushed the right buttons and I knew I had to say something, but I didn’t know what I was saying as I said it. I just remember the guys in the band saying “That was awesome!” and patting me on the back. I told them that I thought I had channeled an old Mick Foley promo before his retirement and we all laughed together.

At that point the manager of the pub came outside and told me that he had never heard anything like that before. He promised me that we would continue to perform there every month until they closed their doors. We did!

Shortly after the pub closed, I started teaching the banjo and the passion that I had for performance started to transfer over to teaching.
First I did it face to face and then after being dragged into uploading videos on YouTube, I made the next step. Now I use that same passion for performing and put it into teaching and playing in people homes for private parties. I am very happy and spend more time at home. The only problem is that every once in a while, I look at my car and think, I know a new place only 6 hours away that would be a fun place to play……

Amber and I made it through 41 hours of vacation without sleep. We had a blast, but Sandy thought that we were crazy. We should have paid more attention to brushing our hair. 🙂

The three of us are having fun and I’ll post more pictures later

Kelly