On the heels of Rick's new CD I realised that He has musically and personally influenced many people in a lot of ways. I thought it would be nice to agknowledge some of these in public on the Mudcat. I hope we can all join in.
here are some of mine:
- I flunked a personal audition with him many years ago to be part of his traditional music band
- Later complimented me and Kathy Reid's performance of tradtional material at a "Ragged But Right" concert and we became reaquainted. Encouraged us to play traditional music in performance.
-Advised me and Chris Coole to make our first recording into a commercial CD intead of an informal banjo music tape - good advise. But He warned me that only extreme banjo nerds would care about it which turned out to be partially correct.
-Crafted a beautiful "Ragged But Right" sign in leather (which I should photograph and post) and came over and hung it up on the wall at one of our concerts as a surprise. Many hours of labour went into that piece of work.
-Conducted brilliant guitar extravaganza events with other local elite players at our weekly venue.
-Lent me "Truth is Stranger Than Publicity" Delmores autobiography after finding out we were both great fans of their music.
-Would pop in from time to time and sit in with us or do free guest spots because He cared about the music and the local folk music community.
-Gave us numerous spots on his radio program and used one of our CD cuts as his opening theme music for quite some time.
Thats starters- I'm sure there's more.
Arnie