Category Archives: banjo

Heeeeello!
I am alive; thanks to Candice for the booty kick and the realization that I am long overdue for an update.

So, since you last heard from me, I have assumed my host position at the John C. Campbell Folk School. At this point, I am more than halfway through my term and it has been an INCREDIBLE life changing experience. The host position is a scholarship job where I live and work at the folk school as an RA of sorts with the exchange of getting to take a class every single week.

The work study position I had in the winter was only a nine week program where I worked on a team of five people and we did mainly gardening and maintenance projects. The work studies work 6 weeks and get to take 3 week long classes. The work study scholarship is either working 9-5 OR going to class like a regular student the other weeks. The host position is like working full time and going to school full time, hence being WAY more busy all the time (hence my absence from the digital world); you are on call all the time. It’s exhausting, but the experience is really invaluable because I get to take so many classes.

The host job is a four month position and there are always 2 hosts. As of 2 weeks ago, I am senior host and Rebecca Gallo of Hyde Park, New York is my junior co-host. When I was junior host, the lovely Ms. Leah Dolgoy of Montreal (see photos below) was my co-host for two months. The terms overlap so one host can always train the incoming junior host.

Enough technical talk…. so classes! (besides getting your own room) the classes are the BEST part of being a host. I have taken thus far:

Beginning Blacksmithing with Paul Garret
Ladderback Chairmaking with Lyle Wheeler
Lighting in Blacksmithing with Greg Price
Chasing Tools and Toolmaking in Blacksmithing with Bill Robertson
Dance Calling with Bob Dalsemer
Beginning Fiddle with Cathy Grant
Quilt Making with Audrey Hiers
Chair Caning with Gwen and Jared Chafin
Mountain Dulcimer Building with John Huron
Medicinal Herbs with Cathy Merckens
Spoon Carving with Frank Boyd
Forge Building with Bob Alexander
Pictorial Woodburning with Debbie Pompano

As if I wasn’t already randomly skilled in many random things, I am totally upping the ante here at the folk school. Next week I am taking basket weaving. I love it.

I miss playing music with Leah! She and I would always jam together during random spots throughout the day when we had a moment.  We also had many clandestine meetings in areas of the campus where late night music could not be heard by sleeping ears. As you can she in the photo, she plays autoharp and I of course play clawhammer banjo.

She tunes we would play most often included:

“Bury Me Beneath the Willow”
“Little Sadie”
“The Marching Jaybird”
“Say Darlin” Say”
“My Long Journey Home”
“Virginia Bootlegger Song”

Leah and I playing in the chard

Leah and I by the wheat fields

By the infamous garden gate of the last catalogue