2010 Summer Travels
© Adam Granger
I have just returned from my last musician road trip of the summer (of 2010), and will herewith offer descriptions. All of these trips were by car, and the brains (and looks) of the outfit, Renee, went along on all of them.
The first trip was in late spring to Norman, Oklahoma to play a release concert, for an album of songs written by my old friend John Hadley, who splits his time between Nashville and Norman). Norman is eight hundred miles south down Interstate 35. We drove nonstop both ways; each was thirteen hours. I carried a sound system, my guitar, CDs to sell and performance clothing. We left early on a Friday and arrived Friday night. The concert was on Saturday; we celebrated Mother's Day with the Hadleys on Sunday, I visited with old friends, and we left early Monday morning, getting home Monday night. We were gone 93 hours, door to door.
The second trip was to Maryville, Tennessee to teach guitar at Steve Kaufman's Flatpick Guitar Kamp. This is a six-day long immersion-type camp: group classes in the morning and afternoon interspersed with workshops and jam sessions, with concerts by the staff at night. These camps are staffed with the top players in the world in the areas of bluegrass, fiddle and old-time music. They are not necessarily names anyone outside of these genres would recognize, but names everyone into the music would recognize and revere. People come from literally all over the world to attend these camps. This was a thousand-mile drive, one-way. We stopped south of Cincinnati and drove on in to Maryville (near Knoxville) the next day. One the way back, we stopped in southern Indiana to spend the night.
The third trip was to Levelland, Texas, west of Lubbock, to teach at Camp Bluegrass. This trip was 1200 miles one way. We left early Saturday morning, driving south on US Highway 169 from the Twin Cities to Sioux City, Iowa, and then westward through the Platte River Valley in Nebraska. From there, we went straight south into Kansas, spending the night in Oakley, Kansas. After driving through the godforsaken Oklahoma panhandle, we proceeded south into the equally desolate Texas panhandle, through the home towns of, among others, Waylon Jennings, Bob Wills and Tom T Hall. We pulled into Levelland at four Sunday afternoon. The camp finished Friday at noon, and we departed promptly, driving 600 miles that day and arriving in Wichita, Kansas at nine that evening. Saturday was an easy ten-hour drive the remaining 600 miles, and we got home at seven Saturday evening. We had driven 2600 miles and were gone seven and a half days.
Some of my colleagues do eight or nine of these camps a year; I've put a cap of three on myself, having learned the hard way that that is my limit.
FOOTNOTE: Had Renee not gone along, I would have been reluctant to take these trips. Where it used to be exciting to get out on my own and have adventures, it is no longer so. I feel as though I’m pressing my luck, maybe like an airline pilot: How many trips can I make before something bad happens to me? Fatalistic thinking, that, but it’s part of the mix. Mitigating that is the fact that travel is part of what I do, faculty positions at these camps are very prestigious, and they are a great chance to connect and reconnect with colleagues from around the world.
The first trip was in late spring to Norman, Oklahoma to play a release concert, for an album of songs written by my old friend John Hadley, who splits his time between Nashville and Norman). Norman is eight hundred miles south down Interstate 35. We drove nonstop both ways; each was thirteen hours. I carried a sound system, my guitar, CDs to sell and performance clothing. We left early on a Friday and arrived Friday night. The concert was on Saturday; we celebrated Mother's Day with the Hadleys on Sunday, I visited with old friends, and we left early Monday morning, getting home Monday night. We were gone 93 hours, door to door.
The second trip was to Maryville, Tennessee to teach guitar at Steve Kaufman's Flatpick Guitar Kamp. This is a six-day long immersion-type camp: group classes in the morning and afternoon interspersed with workshops and jam sessions, with concerts by the staff at night. These camps are staffed with the top players in the world in the areas of bluegrass, fiddle and old-time music. They are not necessarily names anyone outside of these genres would recognize, but names everyone into the music would recognize and revere. People come from literally all over the world to attend these camps. This was a thousand-mile drive, one-way. We stopped south of Cincinnati and drove on in to Maryville (near Knoxville) the next day. One the way back, we stopped in southern Indiana to spend the night.
The third trip was to Levelland, Texas, west of Lubbock, to teach at Camp Bluegrass. This trip was 1200 miles one way. We left early Saturday morning, driving south on US Highway 169 from the Twin Cities to Sioux City, Iowa, and then westward through the Platte River Valley in Nebraska. From there, we went straight south into Kansas, spending the night in Oakley, Kansas. After driving through the godforsaken Oklahoma panhandle, we proceeded south into the equally desolate Texas panhandle, through the home towns of, among others, Waylon Jennings, Bob Wills and Tom T Hall. We pulled into Levelland at four Sunday afternoon. The camp finished Friday at noon, and we departed promptly, driving 600 miles that day and arriving in Wichita, Kansas at nine that evening. Saturday was an easy ten-hour drive the remaining 600 miles, and we got home at seven Saturday evening. We had driven 2600 miles and were gone seven and a half days.
Some of my colleagues do eight or nine of these camps a year; I've put a cap of three on myself, having learned the hard way that that is my limit.
FOOTNOTE: Had Renee not gone along, I would have been reluctant to take these trips. Where it used to be exciting to get out on my own and have adventures, it is no longer so. I feel as though I’m pressing my luck, maybe like an airline pilot: How many trips can I make before something bad happens to me? Fatalistic thinking, that, but it’s part of the mix. Mitigating that is the fact that travel is part of what I do, faculty positions at these camps are very prestigious, and they are a great chance to connect and reconnect with colleagues from around the world.
