Welcome to Homespun!
Welcome to Happy Traum's Homespun Blog!
Happy Traum's skillful musicianship and avid interest in traditional and contemporary music has brought him worldwide recognition. He has performed extensively throughout the U.S. Canada, Europe, Australia and Japan, and has appeared on recordings as a featured artist and as a member of various ensembles. He has recorded and/or performed with many top artists, including Bob Dylan, Chris Smither, Maria Muldaur, Eric Andersen, Rory Block, Jerry Jeff Walker, Allen Ginsberg, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and numerous others.
Here;'s another "Lick of the Day" for you to work on. It's a cool blues lick in E that you can use in a number of ways. Check out players like Lightnin' Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, and other traditional blues artists for inspiration.
Hi Everyone. We hope you are all staying healthy and safe. Here's the first of a series of licks and other instructional tidbits that we'll be posting in the coming days and thereafter. We hope they will keep your fingers busy and your thoughts in a musical direction. Keep watching this space for more musical tips, licks and even some songs. Let us know how you like them.
In 1957, I was 19 and already a committed folkie and a frequent participant in the Washington Square jam sessions on fair-weather Sundays. I had heard of a place that was opening on MacDougal Street, just a few blocks away, so I went over there one May afternoon for the Grand Opening. I found myself in a group of fellow folk singers having a jam of our own in the back room of the little shop. Jean Ritchie was there with her dulcimer, as were Carolyn Hester, Roy Berkeley, Cynthia Gooding, Mollie Scott and several others. Jean’s husband, photographer George Pickow, captured this now-iconic photo at that event.
Sometimes odd bits of ephemera show up from your past, as did this poster from a festival in Culpepper, Virginia in 1973, thanks to Fred Robbins. This event was one for the books. It was billed as a "bluegrass folk festival" and it sure had a lot of everything, including much post-hippie craziness.
Woodstock, NY has always had a musical resonance to me, ever since I came to play at the old Cafe Espresso on Tinker Street one wintery night in 1963. I took the bus from New York City and was picked up by the proprietor, Bernard Paturel, French and suave with his brushed mustaches and vaguely Gallic accent. He took me to his apartment above the club to meet Marylou and their small children, and then down to the Cafe, which was warm and cozy after the long, snowy bus ride. The room was already crowded with local folk who had come more to get out of the cold than to see a young unknown folksinger from the city, but everyone was as welcoming as the room itself. That summer I was invited back to perform at a much larger venue, the first of many appearances I made over the years at the Woodstock Playhouse. As before, many Woodstockers showed a keen interest in the folk music that I loved, and I began meeting more of the colorful citizens of the art colony.