In December of 2019, my guitar teacher announced, “Henry, today will be our last lesson. I’m retiring.” This is after 15 years (my longest relationship to date) of hearing, “Well, I’m going to retire soon…” I asked, “What do I do now?” He told me that there wasn’t much more I could learn from a one on one tutor (his nice way of saying that I had sort of hit the ceiling of what I could do), so I should get into an ensemble class at the Old Town School of Folk Music. I had taken a Grateful Dead ensemble class there a few years before and it was a terrible experience, and almost ruined The Grateful Dead for me. That’s a story for another time.
Anyway, scrolling through the classes I saw “Monday Night Special,” with the description, “Come join us. In the spirit of our founder Frank Hamilton, we'll learn by ear, making music with others creating our own arrangements of some core tunes and songs. We'll draw from gospel to blues, old time numbers to lyrical ballads. Let the Monday Night Special shine it's light on you!” The reference to that amazing song, plus that very sweet description was good enough for me. From the moment I walked in, I was entranced by the beautiful folk music, sweet and kind teachers, and fun group of talented people. It became clear that there were enough guitars and maybe I could try something else. One of the teachers, Mark Mitchell, was playing Mandolin and Fiddle. I told him I have a mandolin, know some of the chords and asked, “Should I bring it?” He encouraged me to give it a try, and I haven’t put it down since.
I’ll share more stories about the Monday Night Special and the genius of it’s creator, Peggy Browning, down the road but for now, know that she is a human catalog of folk music and loves Bob Dylan too. The best part is, she always thinks of me when she picks a Dylan song. So here we are, performing The Mighty Quinn (Quinn The Eskimo).
Enjoy!
Lotta joy! It's great to see where Roger McGuinn got his start is still inspiring new generations!