Maidencreek Old Time Music Festival, 7/14/13

(There's been so much music, and so much *life* going on, that I've fallen way behind in things I want to write about. Hopefully a number of posts over the next few days will clear the backlog. Hopefully. :-))

Open jam (I'm not in the pic)

A few weekends ago, I saw a notice for the Maidencreek Old Time Music Festival, an annual event in the Reading vicinity. It sounded like a day of acoustic music (guitar, mandolin, banjo, fiddle, dulcimer, etc.) - with both scheduled performances, workshops, and jam sessions. I decided I wanted to go if vacation permitted, and thankfully it did. When the day dawned warm and sunny, Darling Wife decided to join me.

I decided to take the back roads route, rather than the turnpike, and it was a very pleasant drive through some rural areas between Pottstown and Reading that I wasn't familiar with. Oh, and I decided I was a mandolin player for the day. In retrospect, there's no reason I couldn't have taken a guitar too - but there were mandolin workshops, and I decided that would be my focus for the day.

The event was at Maier's Grove, a private picnic grove run by the Lions Club. It was small and intimate. Most of the workshops I was at had 10-15 people. We saw some individual performances to start, then the instrument workshops started in the middle afternoon. I sat in on the "beginning mandolin", then continued with the "advancing mandolin".

Both sessions were very helpful. All my mandolin work is self-taught - I'm working from books and YouTube lessons, but I haven't had anyone look at me and give pointers/corrections. The "beginning" workshop was good feedback that I'm on the right track with my basics, and the "advancing" workshop was good feedback that I'm on the right track with the things I'm currently working on (pentatonic scales, movable chord shapes up and down the fingerboard, picking patterns.)

While I was attending my workshops, Darling Wife was looking in on the other workshops, and then found herself captivated by the square dancing workshop. She said the caller was a Pennsylvania Dutch guy who was hilarious and made it a great time. She said that when our kids get married, we're hiring him for the wedding. (She hasn't broken this news to the kids yet.) She also almost got a degree from Yodeling University - but that's her story to tell.

There were no formal workshops in the late afternoon, so we listened to some informal jam sessions, then found a shady spot under a tree next to a bubbling stream and enjoyed the summer day. The Lions Club was there selling food and drink from a pavilion, and that's what we did for lunch and dinner. The food was really good, and much of it was homemade, including ice cream, which was to die for!

The last event was a concert by the workshop instructors. They were all good, but the highlight for me was the "advancing mandolin" workshop leader Ken Gehret. He played a few songs, including a beautiful solo version of George Gershwin's "Summertime."

All in all, a very fun day. What they call "old time" music is basically Appalachian music - fiddle tunes derived from Irish/Scottish folk music. They're mostly simple three-chord songs, but they're fun to play and fun to listen to. At the end of the day, they announced that next year's festival would be on the same Sunday in July. We vowed to mark our calendars and be there again - but within days, we got a "save the date" postcard for a wedding we'll be expected to attend. Ah well.

Here's an article from the Reading Eagle.