Enrol in Sore Fingers Old Time classes!

John Herrmann (picture from Old Time Herald magazine)

The organisers of Sore Fingers Summer Schools have appealed to Old Time players to rally and book for Sore Fingers Week 2009 (13-17 Apr. 2009):

We have Joe Newberry teaching banjo and John Herrmann teaching fiddle, but only three students booked across both courses.

We know it’s got nothing to do with the recession since the bluegrass courses are booking at just below the normal rate. A little slower, but that was to be expected this year with all that's been going on.

Our cutoff is early January, when we book flights and totally commit to bringing a tutor over to teach. At this point, we will make a huge loss on these two courses unless we can attract at least thirteen students for each class. If it was always your intention to book, please let us know at the earliest opportunity.

This appeal has been necessary every year. We are seriously reviewing the viability of the Old Time classes and whether we should run them under a totally new format which didn’t involve flying a tutor in from the US. Sore Fingers will always have Old Time represented in some form or other and we have had some very loyal support over the past years which we feel we are indebted to. So there would be an alternative, but not in the current format.

If anyone out there has any suggestions or ideas about this, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us [e-mail]; we run these things for you, not us!

Joe Newberry and John Herrmann will both be familiar to attenders of the Omagh festivals, where Joe has appeared with the Original Red Clay Ramblers and Big Medicine, and John with Ralph Blizard.