Modest mandolin wins hearts at Camp Bluegrass

And I thought I was getting a late start at age 52 on guitar.

This Camp Bluegrass sounds interesting.



Modest mandolin wins hearts at Camp Bluegrass
By Marlena Hartz AVALANCHE-JOURNAL

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

She met her mandolin - a dainty, eight-stringed instrument with a tinny sound - a few months ago. Love at first touch.

"There's just something about holding the mandolin," said Pat Givens, a 69-year-old bass player turned mandolinist from Port Isabel. "There's just something about the way you can cradle (it)."

A friend and fellow mandolinist hand-carved her mahogany-colored instrument, shaping its tear-shaped body from trees on his Tennessee farm. He presented it as a gift and gently suggested she learn to play.

So, she is here, in Levelland, about 30 miles west of Lubbock. Givens is one of about 100 musicians enrolled in the 22nd annual Camp Bluegrass, a six-day residential camp for musicians, and one of 11 beginners under the tutelage of Roland White, a legendary bluegrass mandolinist who earned a Grammy with the Nashville Bluegrass Band in 1996. His strumming can be heard in the hit movie "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" and elsewhere.

- rest of this very interesting story at www.lubbockonline.com/stories/072208/loc_307491324.shtml

 

Here's another story about Camp Bluegrass:

www.lubbockonline.com/stories/072607/loc_072607029.shtm

 

That is neat! :thumbs: