Intermediate / Advanced Clawhammer
Intermediate/advanced clawhammer banjo players will focus on the southern old-time music tradition of the Blue Ridge Mountains. We will explore the rhythmic, melodic, and chordal connections between the banjo and fiddle, how to use chord shapes to find melody notes and accompany fiddle tunes you haven't heard before, and how to achieve a driving, forward-leaning, danceable sound as part of a band or in solo performance. We will look at and consider techniques for both the right and left hands, primarily in G and C tunings. We may also explore some 2-finger picking techniques for song accompaniment. Bring a capo so we can also play in A and D.
Phil Jamison
Phil Jamison is nationally-known as a dance caller, old-time musician, and flatfoot dancer. He has called dances, performed, and taught at music festivals and dance events throughout the U.S. and overseas since the early 1970s, including over 40 years as a member of the Green Grass Cloggers. His flatfoot dancing was featured in the film, Songcatcher, for which he also served as traditional dance consultant. From 1982 through 2004, he toured and played guitar with Ralph Blizard and the New Southern Ramblers. He also plays old-time fiddle and banjo. Over the last thirty years, Phil has done extensive research in the area of Appalachian dance, and his book Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics: Roots and Branches of Southern Appalachian Dance (University of Illinois Press, 2015) tells the story behind the square dances, step dances, reels, and other forms of dance practiced in southern Appalachia.
A 2017 inductee to the Blue Ridge Music Hall of Fame and a 2022 inductee to America's Clogging Hall of Fame, Phil teaches traditional music and dance at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina, where for 25 years he served as coordinator of the Old-Time Music and Dance Week at the Swannanoa Gathering.
