The New American Banjo Festival presented by Greenfield musician Michael Nix will be a live concert this year. Due to COVID-19, the festival was postponed twice in 2020 and was a virtual event in 2021. So this year Nix will host the festival at the Shea Theater Arts Center in Turners Falls on Saturday, April 23, at 7:30 p.m. The festival will also be simultaneously streamed and the performers will include Nix and banjo virtuoso Aaron Jonah Lewis.
As he prepared for the festival, multi-instrumentalist Nix found that not everyone was ready to enter the live music arena quite yet.
“There were a number of artists and lecturers that I wanted to come that still didn’t feel safe and people that I talked to about jam sessions that still weren’t comfortable with that. So I put that off for a year,” Nix said in a recent phone interview.
Because there was some hesitation among some audience members and performers to go out in crowds, Nix made some changes to the festival’s format.
“I decided I’d make it one night and work harder on expanding it next year, depending on where Covid is,” said Nix, on scaling the festival back to one night instead of the two he hosted last year. “One of the benefits of doing this last year was we found the live stream enormously successful, so I decided to do a combination of both,” he said. NixWorks and Couchmusic.live will handle the live streaming portion of the event.
The New American Banjo Festival is not your typical bluegrass or old timey festival. It will also be an exploration of interesting performance styles, old and new, as listeners gain an understanding of where the banjo came from and where it’s going. Concert-goers will be treated to all types of music — everything from Bach to rock.
As a longtime banjo enthusiast and an innovator on the instrument, Nix is well qualified to host a banjo festival. He is a banjo scholar, composer of banjo music, and a well-established performer. He launched the New Classic Banjo Project as a way to develop a repertoire for the five-string banjo and the Banjar, a seven-string banjo that he designed that sounds somewhere between a banjo and a lute or harpsichord.
Nix was recently signed to PARMA recording’s Big Round Records imprint and will record an album of material from his New Classic Banjo Project.
Nix is also involved with a group called “the banjo gathering,” a somewhat academic gathering of individuals who research and write about the banjo and explore the history and cultural impact of the instrument. Nix learned a lot from attending the conferences held by this group, and it got him to think it would be great to combine the academic elements of this organization with innovative and entertaining performances. This idea was one of the inspirations for the New American Banjo Festival.
Each festival has a specific theme that it explores. Last year’s festival focused more on exploring what the banjo is capable of and some of the ways that musical boundaries are being pushed. This year’s theme will be classic finger style banjo, a form of playing not based on set patterns, making almost any kind of music and style possible. Why was that chosen for this year?
“Because I do that and Aaron does that, and both of us do that to a high level, and for people who do banjo, it’s a really interesting style that predates the finger styling of bluegrass,” explained Nix.
Aaron Jonah Lewis, who is from Detroit, played the festival last year and is a master of the classic finger style banjo and is devoted to keeping the style alive. He will perform music ranging from the ragtime and golden classic banjo eras.
“Aaron is entertaining and engaging and is also is a banjo scholar especially of English music,” said Nix adding that Lewis will be heading off to Britain after this festival to share his expertise on the work of British virtuoso composer Joe Morley (1867-1937). Most of us don’t associate Britain with the banjo, but the country actually has a very rich history with the instrument. This is the kind of information you learn at the New American Banjo Festival.
Nix also plans a set that will be entertaining and engaging. He will be accompanied by Joe Fitzpatrick on hand drums and his longtime collaborator Chris Devine on fiddle. They will perform a wide range of material from his New Classic Banjo Project.
“People always come to me and say that they love to hear the background story of the pieces,” added Nix, who has promised plenty of stories to be shared along with all this innovative playing.
He hopes that COVID will be in check by next year and the festival can feature more performers, lectures and a jam session.
“The theme for next year is hopefully women and the banjo,” Nix said of his future plans. “I’m hoping to invite a panoply of women who play different styles and try to get someone to come in and talk about the history of the women in the banjo which is rather significant but does not get the airing it should.”
But that is all in the future. On Saturday you can enjoy the New American Banjo Festival either in person or from the comfort of your couch. Tickets for the Shea Theater are $15 in advance and $20 day of festival. The live festival stream is free, but donations are appreciated. To purchase tickets or to register online, visit www.sheatheater.org or learn more at nixworks.com.
Hanneke Cassel, one of the premier Scottish and Cape Breton-style fiddlers in the country, will take the stage at the Whately Town Hall as part of the Watermelon Wednesdays series on Wednesday, April 27, at 7:30 p.m. The Boston-based fiddler will be joined by her band, award-winning fiddle player/vocalist Jenna Moynihan who is considered one of the best in the new generation of fiddle players, and Newfoundland-born Keith Murphy on guitar and vocals. Their spirited brand of music draws heavily from the influence of the Isle of Skye and Cape Breton and combined with some Americana grooves. Cassel’s latest album, “Over the Sea to Skye,” is a collection of tunes from Scottish and Cape Breton traditions.
Tickets are available at watermelonwednesdays.com.
Sheryl Hunter is a freelance writer who resides in Easthampton. Her work has appeared in various regional and national publications. She can be reached at Soundslocal@yahoo.com.