Old-Time Week

Click on the “See More” for the lineup of teachers at Old-Time Week 2015!

This year we are excited to introduce a diverse team of outstanding teachers that have both a deep connection to the music and a passion for sharing it. Students will begin each day with a single morning class from 9:00 – noon (with a 15 minute coffee break) with their primary instructor. These in-depth morning sessions create an intimate learning environment where students get to know their instructors and classmates while developing new skills, awareness, and repertoire that build throughout the week. After lunch we begin with a presentation from Old-Time Week instructors and older master musicians from around the region. In the afternoon students can choose from an array of elective workshops and demonstrations, or attend classes offered by Vocal and American Vernacular Dance Week. Evenings are packed with lively jams, slow jams, song swaps, and concerts. There will be square dancing every night this year! Augusta Old-Time Week is a nurturing, friendly environment that encourages attendance by new musicians as well as seasoned players. Wherever you start, you can be sure that by the end of the week your musicianship will be elevated and you will have new friends from around the globe.

We are delighted to offer a new type of morning class this year! Classes in this category include story and listening components as well as hands-on exploration of specific musical styles. Students will learn about the people, places, and rich culture of old-time music through personal stories, recordings and live musical demonstrations as conveyed by some of old-time music’s most compelling personalities. These new classes include a study of northwest North Carolina and southwest Virginia music by Paul Brown and Terri McMurray, 19th century banjo by Greg Adams, and African American fiddle and banjo traditions by Rhiannon Giddens and Hubby Jenkins.

Tuition is $450 plus room & board. Registration is now open! To register, specify Old-Time Week and select the class that you would like to attend.

Joe “joebass” DeJarnette
(Coordinator)
Originally from Madison, Virginia, Joebass discovered old-time music through 78 rpm records which he began collecting at age 6. Eventually he traveled to Brooklyn, NY where he spent a decade playing music full time throughout the US and internationally, concluding with over two dozen shows on the 2009 Bob Dylan/Willie Nelson tour. He now runs Studio 808A, a “band and breakfast” recording studio that specializes in traditional music, working with artists such as Bruce Greene, Lake Street Dive, and the Carolina Chocolate Drops. He currently plays with the band the Bucking Mules, who took first at Clifftop in 2012 and 2014.

Ben Townsend
(Banjo I, Beg.)
Since growing up in Romney, WV, Ben Townsend has studied the music extensively on both banjo and fiddle. As a member of The Fox Hunt and Old Sledge, and now as a solo performer, Ben has traveled across the country and around the world spreading his take on West Virginia old-time music. He has shared the stage with acts varying from Ralph Stanley to the Henry Girls of County Donegal, Ireland to the Taiko drummers of Yamagata Prefecture, Japan. Ben recently returned from a cycle tour from West Virginia to California collecting old-time tunes and stories for several upcoming projects.

Mark Olitski
(Banjo II, Int.)
Mark Olitsky has taught clawhammer banjo in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio for the last 25 years and has participated in banjo workshops in Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and California. Mark has been interviewed/reviewed in The Old-Time Herald, Banjo Newsletter and Bluegrass Unlimited. He was selected to represent old-time banjo in the First Voice film project in 2009, showcasing Ohio roots musicians. He won the 2012 Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Seth Rosenberg prize for performing arts.

Greg Adams
(19th Century Banjo, Int./Adv.)
is an archivist, ethnomusicologist and musician. For 20 years, Greg has been working with researchers, collectors, musicians, dancers and instrument builders to foreground the banjo’s multicultural history. Grounded in critical heritage research and programming, his efforts include fieldwork in West Africa, compiling data about banjo-related material culture and co-curating the exhibit Making Music: The Banjo in Baltimore and Beyond. Greg currently works as an archivist in Washington, DC, and regularly lectures and performs at universities, museums and historical sites. Learn more about his collaborations in Stephen Wade’s Banjo Newsletter interview “Greg Adams: Making the Early Banjo Audible.”

Riley Baugus
(Banjo III, Adv.)
Riley Baugus was born and raised near Winston-Salem, North Carolina, started playing banjo at the age of 10, inspired by the traditional Appalachian music that he heard in his family’s community in the Blue Ridge mountains of NC and on the records played and cherished by his family. He also learned as a young man from such greats as Tommy Jarrell, Dix Freeman and Robert Sykes. Riley has played with numerous old-time stringbands, including The Red Hots and the Old Hollow Stringband, and currently plays with Dirk Powell, Old Buck and with Ira Bernstein. He built the banjos that appear in the Academy Award winning film “Cold Mountain,” and his singing features on the soundtrack. Riley has toured throughout the US, Canada, Europe and recently in Australia. You can also hear Riley’s work on the Grammy Award winning recording by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, “Raising Sand”, and the Willie Nelson release called, “Country Music.”

Jason Sypher
(Bass, All Levels)
is a restless creative force on the upright bass. He has lived in the mountains of North Carolina and on the canals of Amsterdam absorbing the music wherever he travels. He has performed and recorded with Leon Redbone; Joe Newberry; Irma Thomas; Clifton Chenier, Jr.; Little Freddie King; Kermit Ruffins; Clarence Gatemouth Brown; Raphael McGregor; Mark Olitsky; Laurelyn Dossett; Lunasa and Grammy award winning Irish singer Susan McKeown. In the fall of 2014 he toured with the Carolina Chocolate Drops and will tour throughout 2015 with the talented Rhiannon Giddens in support of her first T-Bone Burnett produced solo record.

Erynn Marshall
(Fiddle I, Beg.)
has carved out a niche for herself as an old-time fiddler in North America and abroad. She has played for thirty-five years, performed and taught at many music camps in the US, Canada and England and learned old-time music from visiting 80- to 95-year-old southern fiddlers and singers. Erynn authored the book Music in the Air Somewhere on West Virginia fiddle and song traditions, filmed an instructional DVD and recorded four CDs. She has won many awards including a prestigious first place in fiddle at “Clifftop” (The Appalachian Stringband Festival), in West Virginia. Erynn lives in Galax, Virginia.

Shay Garriock
(Fiddle II, Int.)
is a Virginia native and has spent over 30 years studying and striving to emulate “old-timers” from Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina. Shay is a respected old-time fiddler in Southwest Virginia and has won numerous awards. Most notably in 1998 he won First Place in the Old-Time Fiddle category at the Appalachian Stringband Festival. Shay currently owns and operates a violin shop in Pittsboro, NC, where he makes and repairs violins and regularly teaches individual and group fiddle lessons.

Emily Schaad
(Fiddle III, Adv.)
has been playing and teaching music for nearly her whole life. With a background in classical music and public school music education, she went to North Carolina to earn an MA in Appalachian studies, learning from well-known fiddle masters. She is known for a complex and powerful fiddling style and has taken first place in numerous stringband and fiddle contests, including the Appalachian Stringband Festival in Clifftop, WV. Emily currently performs with old-time stringband Old Buck, teaches fiddle and
violin and is working toward a doctorate in music education.

Jesse Milnes
(Guitar, All Levels)
learned to play the fiddle and guitar from his father, Augusta’s longtime folklorist Gerry Milnes. Growing up in central West Virginia, Jesse was exposed to the music of masters like Melvin Wine, Sarah Singleton and Woody Simmons. From 2008 to 2013 he toured with neo-traditional honky-tonk band the Sweetback Sisters, traveling across the United States and several European countries. He plays a variety of fiddle styles from old-time to country and also performs his own brand of fingerpicking on guitar. When not playing music, he repairs fiddles at Smakula Fretted Instruments near Elkins.

Ron Mullenex
(Mandolin, All Levels)
is a popular teacher with a long history at Augusta. He grew up with old-time music in his family and community and as a young man sought out the older generation for musical inspiration, friendship and for stealing licks whenever the opportunity arose. He views the music itself as the principal focus and the selection of instrument and technique as a means to the musical end. His mandolin playing of the old tunes features clean noting with intricate picking patterns, embellishments, and ornamentation. Prominent musical influences include members of the Hammons family, Oscar Wright, Melvin Wine, Frank George and many others whose names are not well-known in the broad old-time music community.

Rhiannon Giddens
(African American Stringband Traditions, Int./Adv.)
is an American original—an artist with an unforgettable voice who culls the music of our collective past to point the way to the future. Reviving, interpreting and recasting traditional material from a variety of sources has been central to Giddens’ career, especially in her groundbreaking work with the Carolina Chocolate Drops. The CCDs have shared the role African-American performers and songwriters played in US folk music history, while making recordings that are vital, contemporary and exuberant. Rhiannon is also making a mark as a solo performer and in other collaborations like T-Bone Burnett’s The New Basement Tapes project.

Hubby Jenkins
(African American Stringband Traditions, Int./Adv.)
is a talented multi-instrumentalist who endeavors to share his love and knowledge of old-time American music. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he delved into his Southern roots, following the thread of African American history that wove itself through country blues, ragtime, fiddle, banjo and traditional jazz. He developed his guitar and vocal craft on the sidewalks and subway platforms of New York City, performing material by those venerable artists whose work he was quickly absorbing. Since 2010 he has been an integral part of the Grammy award winning Carolina Chocolate Drops and continues to make solo performances.

Paul Brown
(Tunes from the Crypt, Tales from the Hills, Int./Adv.)
started singing the old Virginia songs his mom knew from her childhood when he was young. He picked up banjo at age ten, then fiddle and guitar. He steeped himself in the music of his elders by playing with them at home and on the road for decades. Paul is a veteran of the Toast String Stretchers and the Smokey Valley Boys with Benton Flippen, among other groups. He is a prize-winning fiddler and banjoist and a respected album producer. Paul is playing more music now that he ended his work as an NPR news anchor, reporter and producer.

Terri McMurray
(Tunes from the Crypt, Tales from the Hills, Int./Adv.)
shows up with a sharp wit, a memorable smile and great chops on 5-string banjo, banjo uke and guitar. She looked and listened hard during her years around some of the great master traditional musicians in North Carolina and southern Virginia and it shows in her playing. She won the Galax, Virginia old-time banjo contest in 1982. Terri played for more than 20 years with the Toast String Stretchers, the most active band in the well-known metropolis of Toast, NC, between Round Peak and Mount Airy. She currently plays with Paul Brown in the Mountain Birch Duo.

Ron Pen
(Appalachian Music & Cultural History)
is a music professor at the University of Kentucky where he also serves as Director of the John Jacob Niles Center for American Music. His research is focused on traditional Appalachian culture with recent publications including I Wonder As I Wander: The Life of John Jacob Niles and “Preservation and Presentation of the Folk: Forging an American Identity” in Music, American Made. Ron is also a performer, playing fiddle and singing with the Red State Ramblers. He is a founding member of the Appalachian Association of Sacred Harp Singers with whom he sang on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion. He has taught at several traditional music camps throughout the Appalachian mountains.

STAFF MUSICIANS

Carolyn Camp
(Staff Musician)
Carolyn Camp is a native of Phoenix, Arizona. She played classical violin as a young child, but quit at the age of 12. Thirty years later she picked up her old violin with the intention of playing fiddle, but she had no idea where to start. She took some basic fiddle lessons that touched on a lot of styles, but couldn’t find one that really resonated with her. It was only when an acquaintance suggested she watch the movie “Sprout Wings and Fly“ based on Tommy Jarrell, that she knew she had found the music she’d been yearning for. Her ancestors were from Ronceverte, WV, and it turns out there are family stories about an uncle who played fiddle for dances.

She eventually made her way to an old time week at Augusta, and took Erynn Marshall’s fiddle class. Returning home to Arizona, she tried in vain to find this same music and had a very hard time, but little by little she found a few others here and there. She started an old time gathering in Phoenix, and now hosts jams, house concerts, and square dances. It is still a fledging scene, but it is growing. Carolyn plays fiddle and sings with the old time string band Pick & Holler.

Rachel Eddy
(Staff Musician)
Rachel was born and raised in rural WV near Morgantown, where her father got her started playing fiddle as a little girl. Pretty soon she realized that it was more fun making old time string band music than just about anything else, which she has done pretty much full time since. Rachel performs on fiddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin and bass, as well as singing and telling stories, throughout the eastern U.S. and Europe. From the connection of working with a dedicated student to performing solo in front of small audiences, and the collective charge of leading large jam sessions or tight ensembles in front of thousands of festival goers,

Rachel’s love for traditional music comes from the heart! Over the years, she has had the honor of sharing stages, workshops and recording sessions with the likes of Tim O’Brien, Erynn Marshall, Dirk Powell, Russ Barenberg, Bruce Molsky, and the g’earls from Uncle Earl. For more info go to : http://www.racheleddymusic.com

Trevor McKenzie
(Staff Musician)
A native of southwest Virginia, Trevor McKenzie is a multi-instrumentalist and singer. He received much of his formal music instruction in traditional music at Jim Lloyd’s Barbershop, located in the town of Rural Retreat. In recent years he has been fortunate to play with several fine groups including the Elkville String Band and the Laurel Creek String Band. Trevor currently lives in North Carolina and works in the archives of the W. L. Eury Appalachian Collection at Appalachian State University.

Ben Nelson
(Staff Musician)

Betty Druckenmiller
(Liaison)