Last week I attended the 2nd week of the 20th year of the California Coast Music Camp in the Sierras outside Foresthill, near Auburn, California. I was encouraged to attend after reading about Dennis' experience at Puget Sound Music Camp last summer. It was a beautiful setting, with great weather, and a blast to spend time with some great musicians and music lovers. I think there were 88 student attendees with 33 of us first-time music campers and 16 instructors, the camp staff, some volunteers who run the camp program, and a California brown bear who ate from the dumpster at night and was seen a few times during the day also
The fellow attendees were what I would call mostly "white people of a certain age"
, but there were about 5 mother-daughter attendees, a grandfather/grandson, several 20-something girls, and, did I say, a bear.
I brought my guitar, an ukulele, and a couple of harmonicas. The most common instrument, besides voice, was the guitar, of course. I was amazed at how many people brought along an ukulele. There were also several mandolin players, about a half dozen stand-up bass players, some violinists, a viola, etc.
A lot of the instructors and return campers brought tents. I would probably do that next time as there were lots of nice places to pitch a tent. I stayed in a cabin with four other randomly-assigned male campers and that worked out pretty well. We got along fine and shared some beer, red wine, and scotch in the afternoons and evenings. Four of us had brought ukuleles and the five of us joined together as the Cabin 38 Ukulele Band and performed Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue and & Please Don't Talk about me When I'm gone at the student concert.
On Sunday evening, the instructors all give a sample of what they will offer in their classes and are available for questions. As a student, you pick a first period class, a second period class, a third period class (after lunch) that you want to attend (out of 6 choices for each time period.) That may be the hardest part of camp - selecting which classes to attend. If you don't like your first choice, you can switch to a different class. Some of the classes were held inside, but most were held outside under the trees. The choices ranged from Intro to Ukulele, how to play Stand-up Bass, Beginning voice, Performance coaching, and repertoire classes and technique classes.
After reading the brochure, I had been thinking of taking technique or skill-building classes, like "Intro to flat pick leads", "Intro to swing chords", or "right'handed finger picking bootcamp". I ended up taking classes more about learning songs and playing with others, namely, "Your First Band", "Building your Jam Repertoire", and "Irish Session Repertoire". The first two were about playing with others, arranging songs with leads, listening to other instruments, and learning a lot of cool songs. The Irish session I took on a whim (I am 100% Irish and 3 of my 4 grandparents were born in Ireland). The instructor played mandolin and would spend about 20 minutes teaching other mandolin players and a violinist how to play the melody of the song (we learned a horn-pipe, some jigs, and reels) and then I would play chords to back the melody. Four of us from the Irish Session class performed the RossCommon Reel and Anything for John-Jo at the student concert. And about 12 of us squeezed on stage with the Jam Repertoire class and did a cool version of "White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation"
There were plenty of opportunities to perform. They had a coffeehouse on Monday & Wed nights, you could sing or play with the band at a dance on Wed night, and the big event of the week is the student concert on Thursday. There was also a Teacher Concert on Tuesday night that was great as they all were very accomplished musicians. Some of the students were amazingly talented. Many of the students had CDs to sell or played regularly at open mikes or were trying to break into the music business. I was happy to perform 3 times with a group and will save my solo debut for next time
There were also workshops in the afternoon and plenty of jam sessions to join at all hours. It seemed like each day at the first period, I would hear about a jam session at the teacher's hall that lasted till 3 or 4 in the morning, but I was happy to get some rest. They also had a pool that was open each afternoon.
Most of the students were from Northern California, although we had some from Alaska, Washington, Oregon, So California. One of the cool things about camp was meeting a half dozen guitarists that live within 10-20 miles of where I live and we talked about getting together in the future to play.
This camp costs $800 if you tent and $925 if you stay in a cabin. So, it's not cheap. I was thinking do I go to camp, or buy a second guitar? So, I did both
. I bought the Taylor GS-Mini and took it to camp!
