And this one time ... at guitar camp ...

Michael Ventre

At most camps, they sit around and sing “Kumbaya.” At the Fur Peace Ranch, they’re more likely to sing “Baby, Please Don’t Go” or “Nine Pound Hammer” or just about anything by the Rev. Gary Davis.

Located in the hilly farmland of southeastern Ohio, about two hours from Columbus, the Ranch was not created as a place for kids to hold potato sack races but rather for adults to polish their guitar and music skills. Dreamed up by world renowned guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and his wife Vanessa as far back as 1989, the camp has gradually evolved since then into an oasis for pickers who can escape their jobs and families for a long weekend as they indulge their fretboard fanaticism while eating well and making new friends.

I recently attended the camp on a chilly March weekend. As most guitar heads know, Jorma has a long and distinguished history in the field. As the lead guitarist of Jefferson Airplane, he helped to create a sound and to define an era. The Airplane reached its highest altitude in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, a period during which it played at such seminal rock events as the Monterey Pop Festival, Woodstock and Altamont. During that era, Jorma and his good friend and Airplane bass player Jack Casady formed a splinter group called Hot Tuna, which still performs today.

Jorma’s first love was the blues, especially the acoustic variety best sampled with fingers. He learned to fingerpick while a college student in the early ‘60s, when he became enthralled with the music of the late Rev. Davis, a blues-gospel great who influenced such performers as Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead.

Now fingerstyle devotees far and wide seek out Jorma’s tutelage at the Fur Peace Ranch. Many of them make return trips, such as Frank from Toronto, a longtime Airplane and Tuna aficionado who has attended the camp several times and travels there in a vehicle dubbed the “Jefferson Campervan.”

On Sunday afternoon, just prior to the student performances, all the campers get together for a group photo. Everyone puts their cameras into a plastic bin, and John Hurlbut, the camp manager, takes photos on each of them.

Then there’s myself, at the far, far, far other end of the guitar spectrum from Jorma and his regular students. A beginner to the guitar but with no experience at all at fingerstyle, I nevertheless forged ahead and signed up. I was assigned to a beginner’s fingerpicking class with Happy Traum, a longtime folk/blues singer-guitarist and a friend and contemporary of Bob Dylan. Traum spends most of his time these days teaching and performing when he’s not running a company called Homespun, which makes instructional videos for all types of musical instruments.

At guitar camp, as in life, quite often our greatest fears never come to pass. I was somewhat apprehensive and a bit intimidated at the thought of taking a class with a bunch of players who would be Chet Atkins to my Barney Fife. But it wasn’t like that. The camp in general is warm and welcoming, and so was my class. Happy is a patient man and I got the impression he’s seen all types of students, including those as inept as me. And there were students at varying levels of the beginner’s category in my particular class who were just there to learn whatever they could and then take whatever knowledge they obtained home to practice it later.

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The camp, located in Pomeroy, runs from March through October. My weekend was typical of most. Jorma teaches a group of about 15 students inside one cabin that is adorned with old Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna posters and stills. Happy’s class was held in the cabin next door. Casady taught bass guitar in another studio. And singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier conducted a songwriting class in yet another building. There are other classes scheduled on other weekends, including an electric blues class with G.E. Smith (formerly the leader of the “Saturday Night Live” band), a mandolin class with Barry Mitterhoff (who also tours with Hot Tuna), country blues with Roy Book Binder, jazz guitar with Larry Coryell and a keyboard class with Pete Sears. David Bromberg is also set to teach a deluxe “Bromberg” weekend.

A day at the camp usually consists of breakfast, followed by a morning class session of about two hours, followed by lunch, then an afternoon class, then dinner. On Friday night — weather permitting — there is often a campfire jam, where students can trade licks and compare musical notes.

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On Saturday night, there is a concert inside Fur Peace Station, a 200-seat concert hall on the premises; students can grab seats in the first couple of rows, and the rest of the hall is filled by the general public. On my weekend, Jorma and Jack performed a scintillating set as Hot Tuna Duo, followed by Gauthier, who had a self-deprecating country charm to go with a crisp and rousing cache of original compositions.

On Sunday, more eats and instruction. Then the afternoon brought the student performances. The show is open to anyone who wants to perform, and nobody is pressured to do so. Jorma’s pupils took the stage first to perform “Keep On Truckin’” as a group, a song they worked on together in class. That was followed by smaller acts, and even though most if not all were amateur musicians, they were surprisingly adept and enjoyable. I did my part by snapping photos while they played, all the while promising myself that, if I practiced hard, I would return someday and snap even better photos.

Later on Sunday evening, both Happy and Marjorie Thompson, Jorma’s teaching assistant who is also a singer-songwriter and fingerpicking maven as well as the dean of the biology department at Brown University, put on a show for the students. Happy has two distinct personas: guitar academic and folk/blues demon. Both he and Thompson left us students with the harsh realization of how little we knew, but also with the promise of the possibilities that lie ahead.

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