OCTOBER 2017 – NORTH GEORGIA BANJO CAMP

Six students gathered over the weekend at Geoff Hohwald’s mountain retreat near Dahlonega, GA to learn new techniques and make new friendships. Geoff brought in Curtis Jones and David Ellis to teach banjo, mandolin, and guitar. There was even a chef to prepare nutritious meals served family style.

The students enjoyed individual attention and even left with custom instructional videos. There was time for evening jam sessions and a house concert featuring Dave Peterson.

RAVE REVIEWS

Thanks again for putting together a great extended weekend jam camp. Beverly and I are still working to process all of the material we learned over the weekend. Having three gifted instructors for only 6 students was a real treat for us. The amount of individual instruction we received on our instruments was exceptional. Curtis Jones’ patience and willingness to structure his lessons to our level of expertise was great. I am still reviewing all the videos we made of Curtis on both mandolin and guitar. We have enough material to work on for months. The book we got from Curtis was also was a great help in providing some structure to our practice sessions. David Ellis is an exceptional instructor and his knowledge and ability to play all the bluegrass instruments made him a great resource over the weekend. His explanation and videos of cross picking was one of the best I’ve seen. As always, your leadership in pulling together a camp like this is greatly appreciated. The jam camps are always fun, instructive and motivating. The House Concert with Dave Peterson and the instructors was a particular treat. It was thoroughly entertaining and gave us a nice break in the schedule. I hope you will consider including the house concert idea in future camps.

I really loved having the meals prepared for us over the weekend. Not only was it convenient, but the meals that Jaye Crawford prepared for us were spectacular. I will have to say that was the most delicious and healthy meals I’ve had in quite some time. Not only was the food delicious, but her presentation made it a work of art. The family style food setting also helped build a sense of comradely among the campers. Great idea.

Thanks again for a great weekend.

Vernon P.

Geoff! Thanks for a great weekend with the very BEST teachers anywhere!!! …and for me, a lot of AHAH moments!! Also a nice blend with familiar old friends from Folk School. Tell Jaye I’m definitely converted as I lost 4 lbs over the weekend!! Yeh!! ..and such an excellent idea about the meals making it so easy for me. What a terrific little gal she is!! Hope to be seeing you and Rick this summer at Folk School (with my girls of course)!!….Jackie

I can’t say enough about how much Vernon and I enjoyed the extended weekend music camp. I learned so much from the small group sessions with Curtis Jones, David Ellis and you. The individual attention was absolutely great! Each of you has a slightly different approach to the learning process and I came away feeling both encouraged and challenged by all of you. I can’t wait to do it again! Group Jams with gentle, but constructive, pointers from the three of you were helpful to push me along in my learning and really increased my confidence level. I plan to include some of those ideas the next time we jam here in town. I also brought home many ideas to incorporate into my regular practice with the specific intent of increasing my speed and being able to improve (and be more creative with) the dynamics of my playing and singing.

I also really enjoyed the healthy delicious meals so carefully planned and beautifully presented by Jaye Crawford. I’ve been to many camps where I had to run out for fast food by myself or bring my own food. It was such a pleasure to sit at the “family” table with our teachers and other class participants and discuss what we had learned, laugh (and laugh more) and just get to know one another better. Jaye was very open to sharing information about her prepared meals and I was encouraged to come home and make some notes to try and repeat some of her healthy ideas.

I’d encourage any of our friends to come to your camp. I’m very motivated to push myself more because I know I can get better. My improvement was even obvious to me in just the short time we were there and I had more than one “AH-HA” moment when something that I’d been struggling with on my mandolin suddenly made sense to me. Thanks again and we’re certainly looking forward to next time!

Beverly P.