Homespun Music Instruction | |
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Founded | 1967 |
Founder | Happy Traum Jane Traum |
Distributor(s) | Hal Leonard |
Genre | Acoustic music, folk, country, bluegrass music, jazz, rock, blues, old-time music, classical music, Irish music, Cajun music |
Country of origin | USA |
Location | Woodstock, New York |
Official website | www |
Homespun offers music instruction for many instruments and styles on CD, DVD and streaming media.
Happy Traum's inspiration for Homespun came in 1967, when he was a musician and part-time guitar teacher in New York City. When he moved to Woodstock, New York and began to tour with his brother Artie Traum, he made tapes (based on his 1965 book Fingerpicking Styles for Guitar) for his guitar students to use when he was unavailable. [1]
He also received letters from others who wanted to learn to play, so he made more tapes and sold them via classified advertisements in Guitar Player , Rolling Stone , and Sing Out! magazines. [2] [3]
He decided to turn this effort into the Homespun business, with his wife Jane as co-owner and his brother Artie assisting. They invited musicians they knew to record instructional tapes. Bill Keith (banjo) and Kenny Kosek (fiddle) were among the first to participate. [4]
Homespun's first instructional lessons were recorded in Traum's home and sold on five-inch reel-to-reel tapes, as cassettes were not yet generally available. [5] The tapes were manually reproduced one by one at home: thus the name "Homespun." [3]
Traum produced the sessions, and provided guidance for artists who were uncomfortable teaching. [6] As the business grew, Traum traveled to other locations to record more musicians, and invited musicians outside their circle of friends to participate. [1]
In 1983, Homespun introduced music instruction on VCR tapes, before most homes had video players. Through the years, Homespun has expanded its audio and video formats, moving from audio cassette and video tape to CDs, DVDs, and streaming media. [7] [8]
The Hal Leonard Corporation has been distributing Homespun products since 1995. Homespun products are also sold at their website, and the Roots music channel offers a web subscription service for Homespun streaming media. [9]
The following is a partial list of artists who have provided music instruction on a Homespun release.
John Benson Sebastian is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, harmonicist, and autoharpist. He is best known as a founder of the Lovin' Spoonful, as well as for his impromptu appearance at the Woodstock festival in 1969 and a U.S. No. 1 hit in 1976, "Welcome Back".
Jericho is the eighth studio album by Canadian-American rock group the Band. Coming seventeen years after their "farewell concert", it was released in 1993 and was the first album to feature the latter-day configuration of the group, as well as their first release for the Rhino subsidiary Pyramid Records.
Illusion were a British progressive rock band formed in 1977. They released two albums, Out of the Mist (1977) and Illusion (1978) on Island Records, before folding in 1979. A third release titled Enchanted Caress was released in 1990.
Eric Andersen is an American folk music singer-songwriter, who has written songs recorded by Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Linda Ronstadt, the Grateful Dead and many others. Early in his career, in the 1960s, he was part of the Greenwich Village folk scene. After two decades and sixteen albums of solo performance he became a member of the group Danko/Fjeld/Andersen.
Stefan Grossman is an American acoustic fingerstyle guitarist and singer, music producer and educator, and co-founder of Kicking Mule records. He is known for his instructional videos and Vestapol line of videos and DVDs.
James Jeffrey Weider is an American guitarist, best known for his work with the Band. He joined the reformed version of the Band in 1985 to replace original guitarist Robbie Robertson.
Arlen Roth is an American guitarist, teacher, and author. From 1982 to 1992, he was a columnist for Guitar Player magazine. Those ten years of columns became a book, Hot Guitar. His father Al Ross was a cartoonist for The New Yorker Magazine and many other publications over a 75-year career. He lived to the age of 100, and was one of the 4 Roth Brothers: Al Ross, Irving Roir, Ben Roth and Salo, all of whom became cartoonists. Al Ross was also a great painter and fine artist, and he was the one who encouraged Arlen to become a guitarist when he saw Arlen playing along with the Flamenco records he would play in the Bronx apartment.
Happy Traum is an American folk musician who started playing music in the 1950s and became a stalwart of the Greenwich Village music scene of the 1960s and the Woodstock music scene of the 1970s and 1980s. For several years, he studied blues guitar with Brownie McGhee, who was a big influence on his guitar style. Happy is most famously known as one half of Happy and Artie Traum, a duo he began with his brother. They released several albums, including Happy and Artie Traum, Double Back, and Hard Times In The Country. He has continued as a solo artist and as founder of Homespun Music Instruction.
Amos Garrett is an American-Canadian blues and blues-rock musician, guitarist, singer, composer, and musical arranger. He has written instructional books about music and guitar. Garrett holds dual citizenship and was raised in Toronto and Montreal. He is best known for his guitar solo on Maria Muldaur's recording "Midnight at the Oasis". He has written books about music, such as "Amos Garrett—Stringbending: A Master Class".
Jim Kweskin is an American folk, jazz, and blues musician, most notable as the founder of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, also known as Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band, with Fritz Richmond, Geoff Muldaur, Bob Siggins and Bruno Wolfe. The Jug Band was a significant part of the folk and blues revival of the 1960s. Maria Muldaur, formerly with the Even Dozen Jug Band, joined the band in 1963. During the five years they were together, the Jug Band successfully modernized the sounds of pre–World War II rural music.
Arthur Roy "Artie" Traum was an American guitarist, songwriter, and producer. Traum's work appeared on more than 35 albums. He produced and recorded with The Band, Arlen Roth, Warren Bernhardt, Pat Alger, Tony Levin, John Sebastian, Richie Havens, Maria Muldaur, Eric Andersen, Paul Butterfield, Paul Siebel, Rory Block, James Taylor, Pete Seeger, David Grisman, Livingston Taylor, Michael Franks and Happy Traum, among others. Traum's songs were featured on PBS, BBC, ESPN, CBS, and The Weather Channel. He toured in Japan, Europe and the U.S.
Maria Muldaur is the 1973 debut studio album of musician Maria Muldaur. The album includes "Midnight at the Oasis", her best-known single, which charted at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and "Three Dollar Bill", which charted at #7 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary charts. The album, which peaked at #3 on The Billboard 200, was certified gold by the RIAA on May 13, 1974.
David Bennett Cohen is an American musician best known as the original keyboardist and one of the guitar players for the late-1960s psychedelic rock and blues band Country Joe and the Fish.
John James is known, primarily, as a solo acoustic fingerstyle guitarist, composer and entertainer. His popular appeal is attributed to his ability to entertain with musicianship and humour, a blend of presentation and performance that has brought the art of the fingerstyle guitar, from the dedicated guitar fans to the appeal of a wider audience.
Rainbow Quest (1965–66) was a U.S. television series devoted to folk music and hosted by Pete Seeger. It was videotaped in black-and-white and featured musicians playing in traditional American music genres such as traditional folk music, old-time music, bluegrass and blues. The show's title is drawn from the lyrics of the song by Seeger "Oh, Had I A Golden Thread".
Edward John Renehan Jr. is an American writer, consultant, publisher, and Grammy Award-winning musician.
Doug Marks is a musician, guitarist and guitar instructor.
Home spun literally refers to hand spinning, see spinning (textiles).
Jerome Henry "Butch" Baldassari was an American mandolinist, recording artist, composer, and music teacher.