The Yellowstone Bluegrass Association has announced an effort to help relative beginners learn to play bluegrass music. It will be on September 7th at the Catholic church in Billings Heights. Several good musicians are scheduled as instructors and the attendees will have an hour to learn two new tunes and then perform them before an audience. It sounds like a good idea, but similar efforts have not resulted in much success in the past. One example was a few years ago in dedicating the beginning of each Friday night Lincoln jam to one or two simple tunes for novices. That was a good idea, but my criticism was a decision to give them printed lyrics with chord changes. Then instead of really LEARNING the tune people just put them in 3 ring binders and opened them on music stands. No one ever learned to really JAM that way. There are no music stands around a campfire. Later an attempt was made to introduce bluegrass music in the local schools. Only the Catholic schools allowed them in and then they did not really produce any new pickers to the local jams. Regarding this new effort one aspect that I can't figure out is why they want to charge the attendees a fee of $10. Why? Perhaps they want them to feel the instruction would really be valuable and worth the money. On the other hand it may simply discourage some from attending. Only time will tell. Let us all hope that this is a successful endeavor in spite of my personal reservations.
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