Blues Mandolin and Beyond

Matt Flinner Trio

The Grant Street Inn, Kimble Mandolins and I are pleased to announce that the Matt Flinner Trio — Matt Flinner (mandolin), Ross Martin (guitar), and Eric Thorin (bass) — are bringing their “Music Du Jour” tour to Bloomington on Thursday April 29th, 2010!

Supporting an album released last year, Music Du Jour, Matt, Ross, and Eric will perform compositions, both established and written the day of concert.  Expect to hang on to your seat, because this will be a whirlwind of acoustic music.

Will Kimble (of Kimble Mandolins fame) and myself will open with a small set of Jim Richter originals and maybe a tasty cover.  It’ll be a good 15 minutes of Norman and Nancy for you, though I’m unsure which of us will be Nancy.

Read more of the particulars (and to buy tickets) here  . . .

I receive letters such as this periodically, but this has been one of the nicest so far. It definitely adds value to what I do. Thanks Josh!

Hi, M. Rictcher

I have a little story to share with you. I am teaching music in a high shcool in Québec, Canada (that explain my poor english sorry). But I’m not a musician. Actually, I am just an ordinary elementary school teacher who knows a little bit about playing guitar… Last year, while teaching how to play some basic chords to the kids, I got frustrated to realized that they were not able to do it. To me it was so darn easy… So I decided to put myself at their level. I got home and went to the internet so I could pick one intrument that i didn’t know nothing about. After a couple of hours, I chose the mandolin. Well I made up my mind when I saw your video of you playing Voodoo Child. Every students of mine saw your perfomance too. Now, I’m teaching the mandolin and the guitar at school. And that’s because of you. I just want to thanks you for sharing your talent with the rest of us.

As a teacher, I know how it feel to be a model for other people and in what concerns the mandolin, you were mine. I just tought you might like to know.

Well that’s it. Have a good day

Josh

Mandolin buddy Adam Paul of Houston, Texas requested recently for me to do an instructional video on incorporating octaves into mandolin soloing.  The following are Parts 1 and 2 of that video.  Instructional tab to come.

I’ve recently become National resonator happy and have become owner to a couple of vintage Triolians:  a 1929 Triolian mandolin and a 1933 or 34 Triolian tenor guitar.  I’ll post more on them later.  For now here are some videos.