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Introduction -
For the Easter event, we recruit the main tutors from the best available Bluegrass and Old Time musicians in the U.S.A. Over the years this has ensured that Sore Fingers Week has offered students based in the UK and Europe the equivalent of what you might expect at a camp on the other side of the Atlantic without having to travel there!
We accommodated over 130 different artists from the US in the nineteen years Sore Fingers Week has been in existence. This year’s line up continues this trend and there is a good cross section of modern and traditional players on offer. We welcome back some old friends and welcome some new ones to the Sore Fingers Experience.
If you haven’t sampled it yet, it’s time you did! Sore Fingers Week has been one of the most successful events to become part of the annual Bluegrass and Old Time calendars and many life long friendships have formed there. It has also given many the opportunity to develop their skills as musicians and learn from the best the scene has to offer.
So, who’s coming this time around? Just read on…. |
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Karen Mueller - Autoharp
Karen Mueller is one of the top autoharp and mountain dulcimer players performing today. Her exciting and innovative performing style, featuring Appalachian, Celtic and contemporary music, has been applauded by critics and audiences from LA to Boston. Bluegrass Unlimited magazine has said "Karen Mueller's touch, timing and taste make her a true virtuoso. Her talent and clarity...deserve a wide audience."
She is an experienced teacher in a wide range of settings: private lessons, workshops at camps and festivals, school residencies, and school general music classes. Coming from a family where both parents were teachers, Karen has always felt a natural affinity for teaching.
“Karen is a skilled, articulate teacher who is both focused and goal oriented. She has the ability to help students achieve a high level of competence in a short time frame.” — Workshop student
“In the hands of a few gifted people, the Autoharp can swell into the sound of a whole orchestra. Karen Mueller is one of those few.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune Website
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Julie Elkins --------------------------------CLASS FULL - Banjo
Julie teaches banjo, guitar and vocal lessons in Raleigh,occasionally flies around the country to perform with several different bands, conducts workshops, and has recorded all kinds of cool music on various projects throughout the past two decades.
With family roots in East Kentucky, Elkins comes from a long line of
bluegrass musicians and singers. By age 12, she was the three-time winner
of the Classic West Open Banjo Competition and was invited to join her first band before she was old enough to drive. She's been a professional musician ever since.
She received her bluegrass education while performing a long stint with North Carolina's renowned bluegrass band, New Vintage. In 1999, she joined the trailblazing bluegrass/Americana band, Kane's River. She was awarded an IBMA award for "Recorded Project of the Year" for her contribution to "Back To The Well," with the Daughters of Bluegrass. In 2005, she released
"My Feet Won't Miss This Ground," with friend and long-time musical collaborator,David Thompson. The duo have begun work on a follow-up .
Julie Elkins has appeared on the following recordings:
"My Feet Won't Miss This Ground" by Julie Elkins & David Thompson
"Fishing Music" by Ben Winship & David Thompson
"I Am A Stranger" by Jeremy Garrett
"Same River Twice" by Kane's River
"Kane's River" by Kane's River
"Back To The Well" by Daughters of Bluegrass
"Runaway" by Megan McCormick
"The Lost Coast" by Ivan Rosenberg
"Sands Of Time" by New Vintage
"Northern Track" by Lee Watson
"Old Friends" by Danny Gotham
And many, many others... Website
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Tony Furtado -----------------------------CLASS FULL - Banjo
By the age of 19, Furtado had earned himself a reputation as a young banjo prodigy, winning two National Bluegrass Banjo Championships. Despite the press and praise as one of the most promising bluegrass artists, Furtado decided that one genre wasn’t enough for him. Creatively, he had something more to express. “I don’t think I could ever be happy staying in any one place musically,” says Tony Furtado.
Next, Furtado picked up the slide guitar and soon established that his dexterity transitioned with ease. Using fingers and a bottleneck, it wasn’t long before Furtado began writing songs that had a folksier feel and featured himself as the vocalist. Previously he had released banjo albums that featured the vocals of talents such as Allison Krauss and Tim O’Brien. But Tony wanted to add singer to his songwriter and instrumental talents. And, in true Furtado fashion, he accomplished that as well.
From his teenage years until the present, Tony has wandered through genres and styles, never growing static and always evolving musically. He has toured tirelessly for over two decades and has garnered a great deal of respect from his peers, and has opened for and toured with acts such as Greg Allman, Susan Tedeschi, Taj Mahal, Leftover Salmon, Eric Johnson and he has shared the stage with the likes of Sonny Landreth, Keith Richards, David Lindley, Derek Trucks, Norah Jones, among many others. Like his vast catalogue of recordings, a Tony Furtado show has something to offer everyone. His music has taken him all over the country and into the hearts of many a music lover. Whether he’s playing with a band, or recording as a solo artist, his playing and considerable skills as a multi-instrumentalist and his strong songwriting prowess have led to him to be embraced on record and on stage.
Tony is an extremely skilled musician with a riveting voice who blends rock music with elements of Americana, folk, and pop. His musical reach is broad enough to resonate with fans of Ry Cooder, The Band, Bruce Springsteen, CCR, Bela Fleck and Tom Petty, among others. Furtado’s extremely impressive, furious slide guitar skills and 25+ years of banjo experience will blow away the musicos; for the lovers of a story in a song, Furtado has a few tales to tell; and to those who are looking for a performance, get ready to be captivated, charmed, and entertained. And on Deep Water you will find yourself pulled in and drawn under. Website
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Ben Somers - Bass
Ben Somers grew up surrounded by music as his father Steve Somers was and still is a very active professional musician. Steve was a long time colleague of Peter Sayers well known for his part in the UK country and bluegrass scene.
Ben began playing the saxophone at the age of 16 and went on to study jazz at university in London. It was around this time that he got drawn back to the sounds of his childhood and got hooked on bluegrass, country and western swing. He got hold of a double bass and fully immersed himself in the music.
Currently Ben tours regularly with Seal, singing backing vocals and playing sax. He has also played and recorded with the likes of Dr John, Dizzee Rascal, Mika, Leon Hunt, Krystle Warren and many more. He is also very active on the jazz and world scene playing as a regular member of the Gareth Lockrsne big band, Kate william's septet (daughter of John ), Real Word recording artists Dub Colossus, Latin ensemble Manteca.
Ben is interested by all forms of music and by making music with others. Website
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Ivan Rosenberg - Dobro
Over the past decade, Ivan Rosenberg has gained a dedicated following for his recordings of melodic, expressive acoustic music on Dobro and clawhammer banjo. Millions have heard his original songs playing in the background of over 300 television programs including The Daily Show, Oprah, and the Emmy-nominated documentary Libby, Montana. In recent years, he earned an IBMA Award for co-writing the 2009 Song of the Year; played on the CD Southern Filibuster: A Tribute to Tut Taylor (produced by Grammy winner and Dobro legend Jerry Douglas); engineered and/or produced recordings for Pharis and Jason Romero, John Reischman, The Breakmen, and more; and performed throughout North America with musicians such as Chris Coole and Chris Jones. Website
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Brian Wicklund - Fiddle
Brian was born on a hot day in June in the ancient city of Kyoto, Japan. To the Japanese nurses, he was shockingly large, bald and white. It may have been the early influence of Japan carrying over to his life in Minnesota that got him enrolled in Suzuki violin lessons as a seven year old. He did pretty well as a violin student but probably wasn’t exceptional. At the age of nine, his formal instruction ended when his teacher left town.
When Brian was a third grader, his mother went back to college to finish her undergraduate degree. Writing a paper on country music for an anthropology class, she brought home a Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs record called “Foggy Mountain Banjo.” The drive of the banjo, the ferocious speed of the tunes and the fiery fiddling of Paul Warren instantly changed Brian’s life forever. He was smitten. His father was too, and bought himself a banjo and Scruggs’ instructional book.
As an eleven and twelve year old, Brian started meeting bluegrass and folk musicians in Minnesota. He learned his music and technique from records and by cornering older players with a tape recorder and soliciting impromptu lessons. Many a patient fiddler endured Brian’s grilling.
Over the next few years, Brian started winning fiddle contests. His dad switched to bass. A regular jam session turned into a band called “River Basin Bluegrass.” Playing in a band was definitely a perk for Brian as his dad drove and could get him into bars to perform.
With the few other kids in Minnesota who where interested in bluegrass, Brian formed a band called “Bluegrass Connection.” They won first place at the Minnesota State Fair talent contest in 1980, which awarded them a contract to perform the next year. Apparently the heady success was too much for the band and they broke up. Brian continued to perform with various bluegrass bands through high school.
In college Brian traveled back to Japan to study the language and culture. While there, he formed a band with the Osaka area’s finest bluegrass players. Named after the commuter train between Osaka and Kyoto, they were called the “Keihan Railroad Boys.” Brian graduated college with a degree in East Asian Studies and Elementary Education and minors in Hacky Sack and Beer Drinking.
As it would happen, fate came a-knocking with a telephone call from the bandleader of “Stoney Lonesome.” The band was going through personal changes and they were in need of a fiddler. Much to the initial disappointment of his parents, Brian forwent the career path of a second grade teacher and instead joined the band in 1987. In the next seven years, the band toured nationally and internationally (including a trip back to Japan in 1990). They released seven recordings and played on Prairie Home Companion radio show.
Between 1995 and 2004 Brian played with an array of nationally and internationally tour bands. He was a member of the Ethnic Dance Theater, Judith Edelman Band, Kathy Kallick Band, Lorie Line’s Pop Chamber Orchestra, and the Chris Stuart Band. He has been busy as a studio musician and producer laying down fiddle and mandolin tracks on hundreds of projects. His own critically acclaimed recording project “Arrival” was released in 1998. In 1999 he received the Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship Grant.
In 2005 Brian and good friends Ben Winship and Eric Thorin formed the acoustic power trio Brother Mule. Their debut release “Big Twang” won them an Indie Music Award for best Americana CD of 2005. He also performs in Minnesota with a band he fronts called Brian Wicklund and FiddlePals.
Brian is also the author of the best selling books, American Fiddle Method Volume 1 and 2 books and DVDs published by Mel Bay. Spin-offs from the initial books for fiddle include viola, cello and piano accompaniment books. He is currently expanding his offerings with the FiddlePal Explore Series focusing on Canadian Fiddle Styles and Texas and Contest Fiddle Styles. He plans to release a mandolin and bluegrass fiddle book in the near future. Brian is also a co-founder of the online bluegrass instructional website Bluegrass College. He teaches dozens of fiddle workshops and camps each year.
He and his wife and their three kids live in a town of 600 on the Minnesota side of the St. Croix River. Founded by Swedish immigrants in the mid-1800s, the town’s landmarks such as the general store, bar and diner were inspirations for Garrison Keiller’s Lake Wobegon. Brian is also a runner and competitive Nordic skier.
Brian has been performing for over thirty years. Playing music is spiritual for him. “I love playing for people. I always have. Those moments when all the stars align and the audience and the musicians are really listening, creative energy flows unimpeded through my body like electricity through a wire and becomes sound. I feel like a conduit for the creator. Time spent dealing with emails, telephone calls, noisy crowds, bad sound systems, lost luggage and seedy hotels is absolutely worth it for moments like those.”
Brian says of his diverse musical experiences, “I’ve been a side-man in a lot of groups. I think it’s been a good thing. I’ve played a variety of music with so many musicians from all over the country. New music challenges me and I always learn so much from my band mates about music and life.”
Of late, Brian has been excited about performing his own music. “It’s taken a long time for me to figure out what it is that I do. I see my colleagues perform and it’s easy to see that so-and-so is a bluegrass fiddler or a Canadian fiddler or a swing fiddler. But my musical interests have always been diverse so I’ve had difficulty labeling myself. But I have grown to realize that a fiddling “jack-of-all-trades” is a musical identity in itself.”
In 2005 Brian joined forces with good friends Ben Winship and Eric Thorin to form acoustic power trio Brother Mule. “It is so fun playing with these guys.” says Brian. “The only downside is that we live so darn far away.” Ben lives in Idaho, Eric in Colorado and Brian in Minnesota. When do they practice? “We send ideas via email and sometimes play for each other’s answering machines. Otherwise, we show up a day before a tour and try to remember how our tunes go and teach each other a few new ones.”
Brother Mule in concert is a musical conversation between three of America’s most gifted acoustic musicians. The bandmates share the spotlight in a three-ringed circus of extraordinary talent and variety. Brian Wicklund ignites the stage with his fiery fiddling, Ben Winship plays tasty mandolin as he croons one of his finely crafted songs, while Eric Thorin pushes the boundaries of bass playing as an extreme sport.
Their debut recording, Big Twang which was re-named Brother Mule, earned them the Indie Music Award's Best Americana CD of 2005. It's a showcase of original and traditional vocals and instrumentals spanning genres of swing, old time, Celtic, old country and acoustic funk. Website
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Orrin Star -------------CLASS FULL - Wait List Available - Guitar
Orrin Star is a nationally recognized folk & bluegrass performer and teacher based in the Washington, DC area. Winner of the 1976 National Flatpicking Championship (the largest bluegrass guitar contest in the country), he plays guitar, banjo, mandolin, sings, and performs solo, duo and with his band Orrin Star & the Sultans of String.
His repertoire spans old-time, western swing, celtic and original songwriting in addition to more mainstream bluegrass and folk material. An accomplished storyteller and entertainer (he worked as a stand-up comic for five years in the Boston area) he has appeared on A Prairie Home Companion and has three recordings on Flying Fish Records. He is the author of a popular guitar instruction book ("Hot Licks for Bluegrass Guitar", Oak Publications) and a columnist for Flatpicking Guitar magazine.
Orrin is another who’s return is well overdue having taught at Kingham several years ago. On that occasion he made us laugh a lot and I can tell you his workshop on “Cool Chords for the guitar” is worth coming for on it’s own!
Orrin was one of the original people who saw the value of passing his skills onto Bluegrass players and has been teaching for many years.
An occasional graphic designer, his hobbies include table tennis, zydeco dancing and cribbage. And if there are any cribbage players among the 2012 students, bring your playing card and crib board, Orrin’s up for a late night game! Website
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Grant Gordy -----------CLASS FULL - Wait List available - Guitar
Musicians with the talent, perseverance and passion to develop a personal style that impacts a whole field of music only come along a few times a generation.
Being asked to assume the guitarists’ role in the fabled David Grisman Quintet, a spot previously held by such guitar notables as Tony Rice, Mark O’Connor, Frank Vignola and Mike Marshall, has firmly established Gordy as one of the pre-eminent young voices on guitar. Just ask his boss, David Grisman, who says Gordy “belongs to the new elite of American acoustic practitioners who are pushing the ever-expanding envelope of a musical frontier.” Website
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Joe Walsh --------------------------------CLASS FULL - Mandolin
Hailed by Nashville’s Music Row Magazine for his “lickety-split mandolin work” and by Vintage Guitar Magazine as “brilliant”, Portland, Maine-based Joe Walsh is emerging as one of the best mandolinists of his generation. Walsh is known for his exceptional tone and taste, and his collaborations with acoustic music luminaries including legendary fiddler Darol Anger, flatpick guitar hero Scott Nygaard, bluegrass super group the Gibson Brothers, and pop/grass darlings Joy Kills Sorrow have taken him all over the map, both musically and literally. He’s played with everyone from John Scofield to Bela Fleck to Emmylou Harris, and performed everywhere from bluegrass festivals to laundromats to Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. Walsh has two solo albums to his credit, and teaches mandolin at the Berklee College of Music. Website
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Rachel Eddy ------------------------------CLASS FULL - Old Time Banjo
Rachel Eddy learned to play banjo and fiddle growing up in West Virginia's coal country. She played for many years in Old Time stringbands, picking up guitar as well. In 2008, Rachel moved to Nashville, TN, to make her solo record, "Hand on the Plow," backed by Tim O'Brien, Mark Schatz, and more.
Recently, Rachel has found herself living in Stockholm, Sweden. She's spent the last year touring Europe heavily with the traveling World Music festival Klangwelten, and the American all-girl Old Time super-group, Uncle Earl. She also has a duet with Kristian Herner from Stockholm's Rockridge Brothers.
Rachel has nestled in quite nicely as part of the regular tutors at Sore Fingers Week just recently and it is her hard work and dedication to the cause that keeps bringing her back!
She’s been an absolute star with the classes and the overwhelming numbers of Old Time students at S.F.Week 2013 was probably partly down to her fabulous classes at the previous October weekend.
Rachel relocates to the US in summer 2014 so we couldn’t miss a chance to bring back to Kingham once more before she’s too far away. If you’re up for it, so’s Rachel! Expect a high energy O.T. Banjo class, Rachel takes no prisoners…. |
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Bruce Molsky -----------------------------CLASS FULL - Old Time Fiddle
Bruce Molsky stands today as the premier old-time fiddler in the world, the defining virtuoso of Appalachia's timeless folk music traditions. That must feel odd for a former engineer from the Bronx, who didn't begin a music career until he was forty. But folded into those strange facts is the secret to his unique genius.
In addition to a prolific solo career, performing on fiddle, guitar, and banjo, Molsky frequently joins genre-busting supergroups, like the Grammy-nominated Fiddlers Four, and Mozaik, with Hungarian Nikola Parov, and Celtic giant Donal Lunny. He was on Nickel Creek's farewell tour, and performs in a trio with Scottish fiddler Aly Bain and Sweden's great Ale Moller.
"Playing in these kinds of groups is an important part of what I do," Molsky says. "Regionalism was one of the hallmarks of traditional music in the old days; now we're in the Information Age, and I don't think that's what folk music does anymore. But the more cultures I discover, the more I realize that folk music performs the same function for everybody; and therefore is the same thing everywhere - just spoken with different accents."
Great fiddlers ask him to teach at their fiddle camps, including Alasdair Fraser, Jay Ungar, and Mark O'Connor, who says Molsky has "a mystical awareness of how to bring out the new in something that is old."
"Young people realize this is a guy who's tapped into the real deep emotional wellsprings of this music," says Matt Glaser, director of Berklee's American Roots Program. "He has a way of removing everything that's unnecessary; and young people are very hungry for something real. Bruce has that in spades."
Molsky was born in the Bronx in 1955, and fell in love with old-time music as a teenager. He moved to Virginia in the '70s, learning directly from old masters like Tommy Jarrell, and seeing how the music fit into people's lives.
"It was only the older people, of Tommy's generation, who still had the music as part of their everyday existence," Molsky says. "At first, I wanted to live like that; but then I realized I didn't want to claim the culture as my own - I just loved the music."
That personal authenticity deeply informs his music. Whether performing an ancient reel from Virginia, a Swedish waltz, or a loping cowboy ballad, Molsky presents himself as exactly who he is. Rob Simons, executive director of the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis, says that's the key to Molsky's enormous appeal as a live performer: "He's that unique blend of virtuoso and humble, nice guy that is irresistible to audiences."
Linda Ronstadt hears that same honest beauty in Molsky's singing. She placed his singing of "Peg'n'Awl" on her Rhapsody playlist, alongside Edith Piaf, Ella Fitzgerald, and Chet Baker. "Bruce has has that ability to track deep emotion in his voice, without any unnecessary adornment," she says. "It's pared back to only the essential architecture of emotion."
After his Appalachian tenure, Molsky became a mechanical engineer, playing music in his spare time with his wife, Audrey. By the time he turned 40, both his parents had died. That got him thinking.
"I had this sit-down with myself," he says, "and asked what I was saving for my retirement that I'd regret if I didn't get that chance. And it was playing more music. I thought, well, maybe I'll try it for one year. I asked Audrey, and she said, 'I can't believe you didn't do this 10 years ago. Go for it.' So I took the year off, and never went back."
Perhaps that's how he discovered the real secret to the humble genius of traditional music: that it's real people's music; the honest expression of life as we all live it. You don't master that by imitating others, nor by trying to live in other people's worlds. You master it by being yourself; and at that profoundly simple and profoundly difficult musical art, Molsky is truly old-time's master craftsman.
"I'm still a social musician," he says, "in the sense that I talk to an audience the way I talk to people in my house; and I play for them just like we're all in the living room together. I want to present myself as who I am; and this music as what it is. The biggest lesson from changing careers at mid-life is that you discover the strength is not in what you do; it's in who you are." Website
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Erynn Marshall ----------------------------CLASS FULL - Old Time Fiddle
Erynn Marshall has carved out a niche for herself as an old-time fiddler in North America and abroad. She explores her artistic individuality while honoring the musicians and traditions that have influenced and inspired her along the way. She has been playing fiddle for over 30 years. Website
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Carl Jones - Old Time Banjo
For over a decade now I have been teaching at many music camps around the country on various instruments as a self proclaimed "confusion enhancement specialist"-- I truly believe out of confusion comes clarity! Some say I am over-inspired.
My favorite thing is letting music and words merge out of thin air as inspiration beckons. That moment never ceases to be miraculous to me. I am very fortunate that music and ideas come to call on a regular basis. My songs have been recorded by the Nashville Bluegrass Band, Rickie Simpkins, Kate Campbell, Mark Weems & Julee Glaub, and others. I wish that everyone who reads this finds more time for creativity in their life and letting things just happen. Website
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Val Mindel - Singing
Val teaches workshops for all levels of singers who are interested in American traditional, early and classic country and bluegrass music and want to improve their ability to create the buzzy, close-harmony sound that defines the music. Topics range from the basics of American country harmonies and harmony "stacks" to the fine art of duet and trio singing and singing lead, with a focus on ornamentation, phrasing and more. The workshops are always "hands on" with lots of singing and breaking up into small groups to work more intimately with other singers. Website
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Heather Farrell-Roberts - Autoharp-Beginner
Heather Farrell-Roberts has always been interested in music, playing a guitar and singing British Folk music in the late 60s, early 70s, but it was after meeting Mike Fenton when he took a music workshop at her school in Kent in 1993, that she fell in love with the sound of autoharps. Heather obtained a chromatic to learn the basics, but soon gravitated to the melodic sounds of a diatonic harp, and her bare fingered style has developed into a beautiful flowing technique and clarity. Her discerning ear for harmony and a range of dynamics has been heard and appreciated by many of the top autoharp players and her CD ‘Purple Heather’ shows the bonding between player and ‘harp that has become her trademark. Heather has competed at the prestigious Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering in USA five times, and was placed second in 2002.
Heather is one of the founder members of UK Autoharps, and for many years has been an instructor at the UKA Workshop days, and for several years a much valued President of the Association. Since 2005 Heather has also taken a Beginner’s class at Sorefingers Summer School, enabling complete beginners -who sometimes have not even held an autoharp!- to quickly gain the basic skills so they can progress to the main Autoharp class the following year. (She has been known to gently persuade a player to venture down to the ‘big’ class during the week!)
Heather’s teaching abilities are well known in the autoharp community, and much appreciated by her pupils, both individual and groups, who gain confidence and enjoyment from her classes. Website
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