I spent the month of January teaching a blues history course for Colby’s “Jan Plan”. That’s their name for squeezing an entire semester of work into one dark, frigid Maine January! It was intense for sure, and we explored almost 50 years of recordings from Sylvester Weaver to Lightnin’ Hopkins. My students did some fantastic research on topics like the Great Migration, the history of blues record labels (Chess, Paramount, Okeh, Bluebird, Vocalition, Victor), John and Alan Lomax, African-American worksongs, Senegambian music, Chicago’s Maxwell Street, early recording technologies, and just about everything in between. Of course we also did some deep, deep listening, and it was a privilege to hear the music of John Hurt, Charlie Patton, Leadbelly, Junior Wells, and other favorites through the ears of some very bright college students. Hope to do it again next year!
My music theory course at the University of Maine is going strong, but I switch gears next week when I fly to Europe with Glorytellers. We’ll hit Spain, Italy, and Southern France this month, and be back for the north in May and June. Also, Chris Brokaw and I finally mastered our record with Jeff Lipton at Peerless in Boston, and it sounds great! It’ll appear on Chris’ Capitan Records in the US, and on Damnably in the UK in March, followed by a UK tour! Dates for everything are posted to the right. It’s been about 6 or 7 years since I’ve played in the UK, so I’m quite looking forward to it…quite!
