The Abbott Family Blog

Tomorrow I will be flying to Cordova, Alaska for to teach at the annual Cordova 4-H Music Camp. This will be my second year. I’m excited! Last year was a blast, and this year I have a better idea of what to expect, and plus it’ll be interesting to see how their new book works out (more on that in a minute). The camp is a week long, but I’ll be gone for ten days total. (In fact, it’ll be the longest stretch of time I’ve ever been away from my family.)

The camp itself consists of five days of classes. The kids, which range from eight year-olds to teenagers, each take three hour-long classes on (generally three different) bluegrass instruments, Monday through Friday. They also rehearse together in bands, each coached by an instructor, which perform around town Saturday afternoon and at a concert Saturday night. I’ll be teaching all banjo this year. Would rather be teaching various instruments, but they need more banjo teachers. (And I thought they were trying to be a good influence to the kids! )

There are also camp activities in the evenings. My personal favorites are the square dances, which are filled with young kids so there’s lots of energy. Sadly, our wonderful caller last year won’t be returning, so hopefully they were able to find someone else. They also had an epic squirt-gun battle on the edge of a lake; there was even a small motor-boat in the lake with teenagers that lobbed water-balloons onto shore. (I sat out and ate instead.)

Obviously, when you get a bunch of bluegrass musicians together, there’s going to be a lot of late-night jamming. I’ll try not to stay up too late. (Especially since I was just sick.)

Then, of course, there’s the Alaska experience. Glaciers, mountains, fishing, that kind of thing…

I posted more pictures from 2007 on flickr. I don’t think I’ll be bringing my camera this year, though. One less thing to think about.

There’s one thing that makes this year extra-interesting, for me. The camp has been using a popular songbook, which shall go unnamed. I won’t go into the details, but suffice it to say, I saw room for major improvement, so as soon as I saw it I started thinking about how we could make something better. Thus, over the following 10 months, we labored away at a new book, which ended up being called Get Started with Jammables. And the camp will be switching over to using our book! They bought one for each camper and staff member, as well as two CDs of ours to go with every book. So I’m excited, if only a little nervous. This is the first time we’ve had one of our products put to use with such a large group.

Well… I leave tomorrow at 6:00 AM! It’s gonna be an adventure! I’ll try not to leave my instruments behind this time. (Long story.)