NOBLE PURSUITS

Finger pickin’ good

By Tanya Whiton

I like them speedy pickers.

I grew up listening to bluegrass and folk, with a liberal dose of Neil Diamond and some marching bands thrown in for variety. And I’m enthusiastic about almost all styles of music — save anything involving the bagpipes or the Theremin. (If I ever lose my mind, the sound track to my lunacy will be composed entirely on those two instruments). I love raunchy metal, melodic indie-rock, and most varieties of world music. But when I’m all alone, feeling blue, overdosed on gangsta rap and the Gypsy Kings, you know what I like?

Dueling banjos.

Yes, that’s right. Deep in my blood there is a toothless hillbilly, a flatfooted, Appalachian coal miner’s daughter. Which is why I’m mighty wound up about the first annual New England Flat picking and Banjo Championships, happening Saturday, July 28th at the Ossippee Valley Bluegrass Festival.

Put together by local guitar hero Harvey Reid and festival coordinators Bill Johnson and Raetha Stoddard, the competition is based on the Nationals that take place in Winfield, Kansas every year: no vocals (too bad, yodelers), unamplified instruments only (makes it more like the front porch), and no chewing tobacco (just kidding).

Contestants will be judged on their arrangement and repertoire, technique, execution, and timing — and showmanship. They gotta hit the notes and keep the beat, engage the crowd and be original.

The prizes? A Dana Bourgeois guitar and a Jan Deering banjo.

The judges? Brian Sutton, a Nashville session pro who played most recently on Dolly Parton’s Grammy-winning The Grass is Blue; Canadian flat picking legend J.P. Cormier; and of course, Harvey Reid.

Players to watch? Well, I’m rooting for flat picking sensation Jason Phelps — known ’round these parts as the sweet-faced lightnin’ fingered fella in Jerks of Grass — though he’ll be facing a tough adversary in Roy Curry, last year’s winner at the Nationals. (Curry will be driving all the way up from Tennessee to try and lay claim to that Bourgeois guitar.) And in the Banjo camp, I’m backing Carter Logan, also of the Jerks. Though I confess I’ve only ever seen the Jerks through the bottom of the glass, they moved me. And if there’s no tear in my beer, well, it ain’t bluegrass.