Take a strong lead. Add a high lonesome tenor harmony, and from time to time, a baritone line. That close harmony, discovered in reaction to the lead, is what makes bluegrass so much fun to sing. This class will give you the tools to create your own memorable solos, duos, and trios.
Through the use of ornaments, phrasing, and concentrating on technique even down to the same breathing, we will work to help you make a song your own. We will work to help you find that sometimes hard-to-pin-down third part as well. Song selection will include famous numbers that you’ll be glad you know, and new songs that sound old. We will not be using sheet music, but will use lead sheets and the “Nashville number system” that uses relationships between chords rather than specific notes.
Bring recording devices, something to write with, and a willingness to explore different ways of approaching a song. We’ll be doing a lot of listening to some great bluegrass singers, and will move keys around so everyone feels comfortable singing in a range that suits their voice.
Instructor Bio
Known around the world for his clawhammer banjo playing, Joe Newberry is also a powerful guitarist, singer and songwriter. The Gibson Brothers’ version of his song “Singing As We Rise,” featuring guest vocalist Ricky Skaggs, won the 2012 IBMA Gospel Recorded Performance award. With Eric Gibson, he shared the 2013 IBMA Song of the Year award for “They Called It Music.”
A longtime and frequent guest on A Prairie Home Companion, Joe was a featured singer on the Transatlantic Sessions 2016 tour of the U.K. with fiddler Aly Bain and dobro master Jerry Douglas, and at the Transatlantic Session’ debut at MerleFest in 2017 with fellow singers James Taylor, Sarah Jarosz, Declan O’Rourke, Karen Matheson, and Maura O’Connell. In addition to performing solo, he plays in a duo with mandolin icon Mike Compton, and also performs with the dynamic fiddler and step-dancer April Verch.
Joe has taught banjo, guitar, singing, and songwriting at numerous camps and festivals, including Ashokan, the Midwest Banjo Camp, the American Banjo Camp, the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop, the Targhee Music Camp, the Swannanoa Gathering, Centrum Voice Works, the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, Pinewoods Camp, the Australia National Folk Festival, the Blue Ridge Old-Time Music Week, and the Bluff Country Gathering. At the Augusta Heritage Center, Joe has taught at Vocal Week, Bluegrass Week, and Old-Time Week, and was for many years the coordinator of Old-Time Week.
Growing up in a family full of singers and dancers, he took up the guitar and banjo as a teenager and learned fiddle tunes from great Missouri fiddlers. Newberry moved to North Carolina as a young man and quickly became an anchor of the incredible music scene in the state. He does solo and studio work, and plays and teaches at festivals and workshops in North America and abroad.
Check out Newbeery at Augusta in 2016:
Jen Larson is a Nashville-based vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter who draws deeply from the early country and bluegrass catalogs. Along the way, Jen has garnered critical praise and national airplay for her work with the bluegrass band Straight Drive, and she’s performed widely at regional and national festivals and concerts including the Wheeling Jamboree, Carnegie Hall, and Town Hall on several live broadcasts of Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion. In 2014 Jen released her first solo EP recording, Burning House, produced by the Grammy-nominated NYC bluegrass powerhouse Michael Daves. Jen thoroughly enjoys working with students and has led festival workshops on bluegrass vocals and co-taught country and bluegrass music harmony singing with Daves as well as having contributed harmony vocal tracks to his ArtistWorks “Bluegrass Vocals” study materials. Aside from her performance and teaching activities, Jen is also the archives manager for the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, TN.