E-Greetings from Musician Harvey Reid

E-hello from musician Harvey Reid in Southern Maine... I still don’t have the hang of the “wired world” daily or hourly information blasts, so you hear from me a couple times a year, not twice a day. I trust you are well, and I hope I do a better job of keeping in touch with all of you. Reply to be pleasantly removed from this email list if you want to be...

Harvey Reid

In November when my last newsletter went out, a lot of you checked out my new web site at http://www.partialcapo.com and you may have gotten the picture that I am 1) not touring much, 2) being a family man, 3) working on CD’s, books, organizing & re-packaging my 30 years of recordings & partial capo knowledge 4) helping my wife Joyce Andersen (http://www.joyscream.com ) get ready to launch her ground-breaking new music project, and 5) generally re-tooling myself to face the next decades feeding a family in a crumbling music business. Here is what is up that you might be interested in:

Books 1 & 2 of my series of “Capo Voodoo” books are now done, and Book 3 is almost out the door. They are very detailed and extensive, and in my opinion vitally important if you have a partial capo and wonder why they don’t come with much in the way of instructions. After 35 years of exploring, I have been wanting to get this stuff out of my head and onto paper for years. It is a unique body of knowledge, and nothing like it is available anywhere else on earth. Partial capos unlock a whole world of new music in every guitar, but it’s surprisingly tricky and very un-obvious to figure out where to put the capo and then where to put your fingers... http://www.partialcapo.com or just Google for “Capo Voodoo.” Money-back guarantee if you are not thrilled/amazed/surprised/pleased by these books.

I am still making CD’s, and steadily remastering and putting more of my music up on iTunes and other digital download services. Still doing some concerts too. If you have a gig where I should be playing or if I have not been sending you the latest CD’s for your radio show, please let me know. With my young kids I am not on top of things...

I am doing increasing numbers of summer music camps and enjoying them hugely. This July I’ll be teaching & performing at Augusta Heritage Workshop in Elkins WV http://www.augustaheritage.com and at the Willammette Valley Autoharp Gathering near Portland Oregon http://www.wvag.com, and June 2012 I will be teaching at Steve Kaufman’s guitar camp outside of Knoxville, TN.

If you have never been to one of these “music camps,” they are pretty magical. They cost a lot less than a golf or scuba experience, and can yield some lifetime memories, new knowledge and new friends... There are typically a few dozen to a couple hundred people total that spend a week together, usually at a small college, camp or possibly a large hotel, where there are rooms, dorms or cabins to sleep in, classrooms, dining halls, and lots of jamming space for all kinds of weather. The instructors tend to be extraordinary musicians and very nice people, and in our world of “unpopular music” there is generally a startling amount of community and old-fashioned camaraderie, plus ridiculous amounts of music everywhere. These camps fit in with my personal idea of how knowledge gets passed on. Web sites can help you with some things, but in the model of the apprentice system, spending time with people who really know how to do something is the old, tried and true method of learning.

I am teaching a new “topic” at Augusta this year (July 10-16), and I call it “Troubadour Training.” I am finishing a new book that will be the troubadour Training Manual, and think I can do something valuable that draws on my 40 years of non-stop “troubadouring.” I want to assist people who are part of the way there— who have some musical skills and know some songs but don’t quite feel like musicians. Informing, encouraging, empowering, enlightening— there is so much more to music than just where to put your fingers and what words to sing, and I want to address professionally a long list of vitally important topics that don’t seem to show up in music instruction. We’ll talk about both chords and cords if you like, but I also want to delve into the magic, the fear, the insecurities, the motivations, the inspirations, and all those huge emotional, spiritual, technical, and social topics that surround us when we learn to play music...

And evenings in the West Virginia hills in July are hard for many of us to understand. It’s not hot or cold, and there are no bugs that bite you and you can sit on the porch of the old Hallehurst mansion and sing songs all night if you like... We’ll be sharing the week with old-time country music and Cajun people, so it will be a spicy mix of musical energies and sparkling people there...Mary Flower is the coordinator of Guitar Week and I think the world of her and her music. Think about attending and you’ll get a lot of time to pick our brains as well as your guitars.

Chordally yours,

Harvey Reid
http://www.woodpecker.com
York, Maine USA
hreid@woodpecker.com

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