The Glory-Beaming Banjo

This past weekend brought sad news for the old-time music community. We lost Mac Benford on Saturday and Clyde Davenport on Sunday. I first saw a post on Facebook that Davenport, 98, seemed to be on his deathbed, so it was a bit of shock to learn later that day that Benford, 79, had died. Benford, of course, was the banjo player in the Highwoods Stringband. According to his website , Benford began playing banjo in 1960, when he was a student at Williams College. He sought out living masters of the time to learn from, including Wade Ward, Kyle Creed, Tom Ashley and Roscoe Holcomb. Benford moved from the East Coast to California’s Bay Area in 1967 and began his professional performing career with Dr. Humbead’s New Tranquility Stringband and Medicine Show, which contributed a version of "Dubuque" on the 1985 compilation Young Fogies . The band specialized in recreating the old-time music found on 78-rpm records from the 1920s. The band played all up and down the West Coast...

This year marks the fifth annual Lake Erie Folk Festival, presented Feb. 21-22 at the Shore Cultural Centre, a former high school that has been transformed into an innovative arts center in Euclid, Ohio. With the festival a little more than a week away, this seemed like the perfect time to provide a sneak peak at the event. Located within the heart of the Lake Erie snowbelt, winter may seem like an odd time to host a music festival. But not to Laura Lewis, the Artistic Director for the Lake Erie Folk Festival (LEFF), who cited some precedent when asked why this was a good time for such an event. “I asked the same question about the Kent State Folk Festival when I first started coming to the area in 1991,” Lewis said. “I'm from Virginia where snow brings everything to a halt. But the Kent State Folk Festival happened regardless of the snow and cold, and provided a welcomed break from hibernation for the music community.” Considering that the Kent State Folk Festival ...