The Glory-Beaming Banjo

This month has been a bit quiet. I haven't played a whole lot of music in May. I had hoped to go to a couple jams, but my plans fell through. However, the weather is finally starting to turn summerlike, and that means music festivals are on the way.  I know lots of folks travel far and wide to places like Mount Airy, Clifftop, and Galax to get their banjo and fiddle groove on, and there are several smaller, regional events like the Indiana Fiddlers' Gathering, Rockbridge, Brandywine and more. Here in Northeast Ohio, we have a small slate of banjo-friendly music festivals that I try to attend every year.  Coming up next month, in fact just nine days from now, is Banjos and Bigfoot 3  at Salt Fork State Park  in Cambridge, Ohio. I wrote about this festival a couple years ago, and I just love the concept. It definitely seems to lean more toward bluegrass, but I'm hoping there'll be some old-time picking represented. I'm not sure if there is any jamming involved, or wh...

Music Along the River, Aug. 12-13, in Harpersfield, Ohio, proved to be a fun time. However, it turned out to be my only opportunity to play old-time music with others this month. Parking challenges canceled out one event and a scheduling conflict eliminated another.  As I mentioned in my previous post , August was a busy month. There was the aforementioned Music Along the River, the Raccoon County Music Festival in Burton, Ohio, as well as a new jam in Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood that offered ample opportunities to play banjo and fiddle with other likeminded folks.  On Saturday, Aug. 13, I drove north to the site of the Harpersfield Covered Bridge , which has been removed and will be rehabilitated as part of a construction project approved earlier this year that is estimated to cost more than $6 million and be completed by Dec. 31, 2023.  In past years, Music Along the River (or MATR, as it's affectionately referred to by festivalgoers) spans both sides of the Gra...