This class is not currently being offered in our catalog.
This class is not currently being offered in our catalog.
Join Ben and Joe as they teach a few logging, fishing and sawmill songs composed in the Pacific Northwest. Through playing and singing these tunes--and telling the stories about how and where they were composed--discuss and reflect with participants about the ways and which folk songs are tied to specific places. This class is open to all instruments!
About the teaching artists:
Ben and Joe have been playing together for almost 5 years, the last 3 of which sent them to the Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival, learning at the feet of the elders of the acoustic blues tradition. They found an affinity in the many branches that tied into the blues and created this duo as a way to explore these branches. Their musical kinship and sense of joy in interpreting this music is evident and was the basis of an invitation Dom Flemons (formerly of the Carolina Chocolate Drops) to form his band when he went solo. Ben and Joe joined Dom on his recent album, Prospect Hill, and toured the US with him, furthering their knowledge of Anglo and African American music traditions. Rather than thinking of their music as blues, it’s best to situate Ben and Joe (and Dom) as American songsters. A songster traditionally refers to an African-American artist whose repertoire is much broader than the old blues, and spans many of the genres that Ben and Joe Inhabit. Big Bill Broonzy and Mississippi John Hurt are classic examples of songsters. Whatever you want to call it, Ben Hunter & Joe Seamons make American music. They make music that hews to the rough-and-tumble collisions of musical inspirations from the early 20th century; music that paved the way for everything we enjoy today.
