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...
Last Saturday was Record Store Day. There were a few albums I wanted, so I set my alarm for 6 a.m., which doesn't even seem that early compared to how early some people line up outside local record stores for this annual event. I saw a couple people camped out at one local store at 8 p.m. on Friday, choosing to spend all night in a shopping plaza in hopes of finding that sweet, sweet vinyl treasure. My alarm went off, and I hit snooze. It went off again, and I turned it off. Getting up early to wait in line for hours is a younger person's game. I didn't leave the house until 7:30. The shop I visited first opened at 8 a.m. There was a line, but it didn't seem too crazy. However, it took almost an hour for me to get my turn to enter the fray to search for the records on my wish list. There were three albums that I considered "must have," and I knew Big D's Records at Summit Mall, in Fairlawn, Ohio, had at least gotten copies of each of them. There were tw...