Noted acoustic jazz performers Don Julin and Ron Getz to perform at the Fifth Annual Midwest Mandolin Festival, and will teach a workshop the following day! Click here for more info!
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Mandolindy is now on MySpace - be a friend - click here !
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Noted Jazz mandolinist Don Julin to perform at the Fifth Annual Midwest Mandolin Festival !
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Photos from Mike Marshall workshop in Indianapolis November 15, 2008.
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Mandolindy member Dave Bagdade interviewed by the Terre Haute, Indiana, newspaper, the TribStar. Here is a link, text of the article appears below - see the Mandolindy mention near the end:
EXOTIC SOUNDS: Wabash Valley musicians master the tiny mandolin
By Mark BennettThe Tribune-Star
GRAYSVILLE — A mystic power dwells inside
eight strings, 13 inches of wood, steel, brass and mother of pearl.
That
force drove Dave Bagdade, then a teenager, to sell his baseball card collection
so he could buy his first mandolin. Solly Burton sold eggs and 4-H pigs from his
family’s farm to purchase his first good mandolin. Louie Popejoy, a musical
legend in the Wabash Valley, spent 30 years mastering the tiny
instrument.
“If a player’s good, they can make some sweet sounds with
it,” Popejoy said.
Bagdade fell for its brightly pitched tone after
reading a magazine review of an album by 1960s mandolin pioneer David Grisman.
“I went out and bought the record, and it literally changed my life,” he
recalled.
Now Bagdade, 44, plays mandolin for numerous bands of several
different genres, including Terre Haute-based bluegrassers Diamond Hill
Station.
It transformed Burton, too.
He’s an easy-going
17-year-old, perfectly content tending to the hogs, chickens, ducks and grain
crops on the rural Sullivan County farm where he lives with his parents, Barney
and Susan Burton. Home-schooled since seventh grade, Solly takes courses across
the Wabash River in Robinson, Ill., but insists with an infectious smile, “I
like to stay home.”
That’s getting harder to do, because so many people
like to hear him play his mandolin. Fortunately for them, that feeling is
mutual. Burton’s fascination with the instrument led him to Winfield, Kan.,
where he won the National Mandolin Contest last year among musicians of all
ages, and to Nashville, Tenn., where he recorded an album, fittingly titled
“Back Home Again.” Last weekend, the Burtons drove to Princeton so Solly could
perform on a radio show. He’s played at the Boot City Opry, churches, weddings
and holiday events. On the bluegrass festival circuit, he’s immediately
recognized.
“We’ll go places, and people will say, ‘There’s Solly,’”
Susan said, “and we don’t know who they are. Somebody said it’s like Cher — they
don’t need a last name. It’s just Solly.”
As he listened to his mother
recount that story, Burton quietly plucked his Weber mandolin. That Montana-made
instrument was his prize for winning the national title at Winfield last year.
Some of his fellow entrants were as old as 68. “I didn’t think I’d make the
finals because the other guys in the contest were so good,” Burton
said.
Obviously, the judges thought otherwise.
His skill reveals
itself immediately. A mandolin seems at home in his young hands. On the back
cover of Burton’s album, Danny Roberts — mandolinist for the Grammy-nominated
bluegrass band The Grascals — writes, “Great tone, nice clean picking, cool
arrangements. Solly has all the tools.”
And versatility. While Burton
insists he’s uninterested in commercial rock, pop and country music, he buzzes
like a bee from bluegrass to jazz, gospel, blues and Texas swing styles. He even
handles the nuances of Django, a gypsy sound made popular in the 1930s and ’40s
by Belgian guitarist Django Reinhardt. “I just liked it because it was a whole
different sound. It had that choppy sound,” he said, demonstrating as he spoke.
“It’s a really dynamic sound.”
Sitting on the couch in the Burton’s front
room, Solly played “Sleigh Ride” first in its straight, cheery Christmas version
and then as a jazzy holiday tune. “It’s more improvisational,” he
explained.
Susan would like her son to
try writing songs. Solly contends that he’s writing every time he improvises a
solo, even if it comes in the middle of a song written by someone else.
“Anything I play is an original version of that song. Nobody plays a song like I
do,” he said, without a hint of bravado.
Until recently, Burton didn’t
bother with reading sheet music. Mandolin players who can only perform to
scripted notes could get lost in a bluegrass or jazz setting, where
improvisation rules, he explained.
“I think reading music is a waste of
time, because for some of the songs, you can’t find the sheet music,” Burton
said.
Still, he’s now learned to sight-read mandolin sheets, and studies
music theory two days a week at Lincoln Trail. He also takes non-music courses
from that college online. By the time he completes his home-schooling next year,
Burton’s mom would like to see him enroll at a university music program, or
pursue session work in Nashville.
He’s unsure of his next step. “I really
don’t know what I want to do,” he said.
The only limit on Burton’s future
will come from other people, said Popejoy, Solly’s first instructor. Popejoy
started teaching 45 years ago, and opened his Terre Haute music center in 1972.
Solly first studied fiddle under Popejoy, because Burton’s dad, Barney, was
doing the same. The 9-year-old Solly didn’t enjoy violin. But when his mother
bought a weathered, old mandolin for $50 at a garage sale, Solly was hooked.
Popejoy began teaching him mandolin, and Burton hasn’t stopped
since.
Amidst a roster of hundreds of Popejoy’s pupils, Burton has
reached a special plateau, thanks to his tireless practice.
“There’s only
one obstacle standing in his way, and that’s finding a group that will not only
challenge him, but also not stand in his way,” Popejoy said. “It just depends on
what he wants to do. He has the same capability as five mandolin players I know
who’ve been very successful.”
Burton prefers
performing with other musicians, rather than solo. Bluegrass and jazz are better
genres for ensembles than pop or country, he said. In country music, “They want
the singer to be the star. They don’t want the mandolin player to take all the
attention. But in bluegrass or jazz, you want your break to stand out.”
A
mandolinist in a bluegrass band must also carry the rhythm, along with a bassist
and guitarist.
It’s “rhythm, rhythm, rhythm,” said Bagdade of Diamond
Hill Station. “Don’t get me wrong — I love guys and gals who can fly all over
the fingerboard and play a million notes. But rhythm is so
important.”
Traditional bluegrass isn’t Bagdade’s only stylistic forum,
though. He plays “rocked-up bluegrass” on electric mandolin with Indianapolis’
Cousin Brothers, Irish and Scottish music with an accompanying fiddler, and
Grateful Dead covers with jam bands, and country. He’s in the duo Mando
Commandos, crossing over the boundaries of bluegrass, Celtic, reggae, blues,
gypsy and rock, among other styles, and even plays with the Indianapolis
mandolin orchestra known as Mandolindy.
“It really is an amazingly
adaptable instrument,” Bagdade said, “in the right hands.”
Mandolindy performed at the Ohio Valley Gathering, and Mandolindy members James Todd, Jerry Chapman, Steve Kessinger, amd Mario Joven conducted workshops. Here is a story published in the Owensboro Messinger-Inquirer newspaper:
String Ties
Instrument fans gather in Owensboro
By Joy Campbell
Messenger-Inquirer
About 500 people were teaching and learning, jamming and giving concerts -- all to promote and preserve traditional music -- on the second day of the Louisville Dulcimer Society's 21st annual Ohio Valley Gathering Saturday at the Executive Inn Rivermont.
 |
| Katy Kessinger, right,
and her father, Steve Kessinger, of Indianapolis watch and listen to mandolin
teacher James Todd, an Indianapolis police officer who volunteered to teach a
beginning class in Bill Monroe’s signature instrument, on Saturday at the 21st
Ohio Valley Gathering, sponsored by the Louisville Dulcimer Society in the
Executive Inn Rivermont. Photos by Gary Emord-Netzley, M-I |
 |
| Phyllis Brown of Knoxville, Tenn., right, notices onlookers watching a jam session from some upper floors Saturday in the lobby of the Executive Inn Rivermont. Playing with Brown and a dozen or more musicians is Owensboro’s Chuck Flaim on his mountain dulcimer. |
 |
| Gerald Young of Effingham, Ill., strums his autoharp while playing with other musicians during a jam session Saturday. |
Participants from 15 states took advantage of 43 workshops Saturday on instruments including guitar, dulcimer, mandolin, ukulele, fiddle banjo and juice harp.
"This is our first time to have the Gathering in Owensboro," said Maureen Sellers, who has organized the event for the last 17 years. "We love Owensboro, and the Executive Inn has been great."
On even-numbered years, the sessions are held in western Kentucky, and on odd-numbered years the event takes place in the eastern part of the state.
Admission was $5, and all teachers volunteered their time, Sellers said.
"We have past national champions here and just some great talent," she said.
Sellers, of New Albany, Ind., taught Appalachian dulcimer workshops at The Gathering. She said she has taught thousands of students in more than 20 states.
Lap dulcimer students got the chance to learn from national champion Gary Gallier, who taught a session from noon to 1 p.m.
James Todd of Indianapolis shared several lessons with about 13 students in his beginning mandolin class. He took his students through right and left hand techniques, using a metronome and designing a good practice routine.
Steve Kessinger and daughter Katy Kessinger of Indianapolis participated in Todd's class.
It was the first "gathering" for Katy Kessinger, who is a jazz musician. She is a music education major at DePauw University.
"I've always been around music; he plays anything he gets his hands on," Katy Kessinger said of her dad.
Steve Kessinger, attending his second Ohio Valley Gathering, said he usually plays guitar; mandolin is a second instrument for him.
The father-daughter duo said they enjoyed the mandolin lesson.
In one jam session in the hotel lobby, performers made music on the hammered dulcimer, mandolin, washtub bass, guitar, lap dulcimer, auto harp, recorder (flute), mouth harp and concertina.
"You just have to have an ear to listen to the music," said Steve Hale of Evansville, playing both the washtub bass and mouth harp.
The event schedule lists a hymn sing from 9 to 11 a.m. today in International Room A.
Next year's Ohio Valley Gathering will be March 27-29 at the Radisson Plaza Hotel, Lexington.
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