Today is set aside to honor one of the most beleaguered sectors of our retail economy – the small independent record store. Special events are underway at nearly all the economically pummeled and most certainly doomed establishments. For years it has been an article of faith that the shop you go to when you want to physically peruse an assortment of non-mainstream recordings will soon be extinct.
So think of this as the day the Dodo Bird decided to have an open house. How will you feel about yourself the day after you find out he’s gone for good? And you didn’t even visit when you had such a nice invitation!
Having said that, I must note that there are many small shops that continue to defy these dire predictions and (knock on wood) always will. They enrich our communities and give us hope.
Chief among these sturdy stalwarts is the Homestead Pickin’ Parlor in Richfield, which has catered to an acoustic and roots music crowd since its founding in 1979. The shop is also an academy where some of the finest local musicians of today teach the finest local musicians of tomorrow. The Homestead, under the steady leadership of Marv and Dawn Menzel, is an invaluable resource – a place where performers and their fans find nourishment.
I talked to Marv yesterday and he confirmed that the shop is a survivor.
“There’s no question that small businesses received the brunt of the downturn in the economy. But we’re alive and well. The rent’s paid. The lights are on. And we’re open for business.”
When I pressed him on the dismal economic predictions for those who sell CD’s in a world increasingly in love with the download, Marv acknowledged that the Homestead Pickin’ Parlor is more than a record shop.
“But records are certainly a big part of what we do. Every CD that’s released by an artist, and I’m sure there are exceptions to this, but … it’s a work of art. The artist puts a lot of him or her self into that product, not only the selection of tunes but the art itself, the liner notes … it’s a package that they’re putting together with their fans in mind. And with the advent of the downloading and everything we’ve lost sight of that. Or we are abdicating our right to have such a thing. And that troubles me dearly.”
As a consequence of it’s location on Penn Avenue just south of 66th Street in Richfield, the shop suffered from years of highway construction on the Crosstown and Interstate 35W – a disruption that made it difficult even for not-too-distant customers to get to and from Homestead. Now that the work is done, Marv Menzel is optimistic.
“We’re back to having easy access … and we’re looking ahead to a brighter future.”
The Homestead Pickin’ Parlor will celebrate Record Store Day with live music and hot dogs. There will be specials. And though you can always visit them online, if you don’t find the strength to get up and walk away from that computer, you’ll cheat yourself out of a wonderful and whimsical experience.
Who knows what you might find, just thumbing through the bins?
Share a record store memory.
Sunday Extra:
When I stopped by the Homestead Pickin’ Parlor yesterday, business was brisk.
Live music and free hot dogs added to the festivities. Added advantage: It was cozy inside despite the gale force winds and barely-above-freezing outdoor temps.
Marv admitted this was far from a normal Saturday crowd, and he appeared to enjoy the commotion. Shoppers stood elbow-to-elbow going through raggedy cardboard boxes full of CD’s and LP’s – just the way it should be.
And when I say “raggedy cardboard boxes”, I’m not kidding. At Homestead, every type of display option is on display. From the ‘nice tidy bin’ approach to the ‘box on the floor’ strategy to the ‘stack of discs in the corner’ configuration, the product is out and ready for you to discover it!
There’s a lot to see at the counter. A retail consultant might say there’s too much here for any one thing to make an impression, but I hope that consultant’s advice would get lost in the clutter. The cash register is more than a place to check out with your purchase – it’s a day’s worth of distraction.
All in all, it was a warm and cheerful place to be on a blustery afternoon in April. If only every day could be like Record Store Day!
Trail Baboon 
Rise and throw a snowball, baboons!
The good shops are not businesses so much as they are institutions with distinct personalities. The Homestead Pickin’ Parlor is that. Odegard’s book store was that. I used to clerk in a fly fishing shop that was such a place.
I have two memories of the HPP. The first time I was there, I asked Marv for a general recommendation. He handed me a CD by Bourne and MacLeod, two refugees from the Tannahill Weavers, who were briefly a group. Marv said he always recommended this CD, and everyone always liked it. “Dance and Celebrate” is one of those gems in the folk CD stacks, a bewitching album that nobody ever heard of (unless they were a patron of HPP).
Another time I was trying to select a CD by a woman whose work was fascinating to me: Kate Wolf. Which one should I get? Marv laughed and said it didn’t make much of a difference. “If you like her, you’re going to want to get all her stuff.” And so it was.
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Hey! That’s MY line.
OK. I’ll share.
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This is easy… I was just at Homestead Pickin’ Parlor yesterday afternoon! Picked up a CD that they had put aside for me.
Him: Would you like a bag?
Me: No thanks?
Him: Trying to quit?
Of course, he says this every time — and it makes me laugh every time!
AND, Homestead Pickin’ Parlor is also the place you can pick up your farm share in the summer!
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this was a record store in a strip shopping place maybe called “miracle mile?” in the western suburbs? a trip in to “the cities” with a friend’s Mom – very exciting. had burgers at King Henry the 8th, a little shop on the corner with the Normandy Hotel. Gogi Grant on the speakers singing “Wayward Wind.”
on the way home we stopped at the shopping strip and went into a record store. i had money to buy a 45. one could pick a record, take it into a booth and listen to it and buy or listen to another – what fun! i bought “Poor People of Paris.”
OT – snow on the ground and snowing – only an inch or so. would like to be in a warm little record store today. thanks, Dale.
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Little snow here in the TC as well. Streets and sidewalks clear and it appears to have actually stopped snowing now. That April “out like a lamb” had better hurry up if she’s going to get here in time!
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Did you hear it, Barb? Gogi Grant singing “Wayward Wind” on Radio Heartland! It seems someone there is reading TB this morning.
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was out milking, Steve – but thanks Mike! love that song (and loved those King Henry the 8th burgers.
Clyde – just looked up the dates – was 1956 and i was 10.
all of this reminds me of a little video store in Duluth – “9th Street Videos on 8th Street” – when we lived in that neighborhood we’d go there. it was almost spooky how the guy would remember every little detail about who one was, what one rented, etc. “how’s your cat Bubba and do you still have that rash?” (not really what he said) spooky but cool. that little shop is still there – heard on the news they were robbed a couple weeks ago. shame on the thug that did that.
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barb, you and I are the same age. I remember the Miracle Mile as THE BIG CITY shopping experience when we would visit our relatives in Hopkins when I was about 14. Good story about our “cousins” there I must tell someday. But today the grandkids will be at our new place for the first time. Big Deal event. I will make another post and then be off the rest of thew day.
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Barb’s excellent memory just triggered another one for me, if you don’t mind. On the first day of my undergraduate college career, I left the campus and walked into downtown Grinnell. The town and campus were very separate, but a number of businesses tried to appeal to college kids. One of them was a little music store.
As I walked around that store, I heard an LP being played and sent out over speakers around the store. It was the purest, sweetest voice I had ever heard . . . or HAVE ever heard, even now. The music was beautiful but strange to me, being nothing like anything I had heard on the radio at home. I queried a clerk. This was a new singer named Joan Baez, he said, and he called her music “folk music,” I spent the $5 that was supposed to support me for three weeks, getting that first album, and nothing in my musical life has been the same since that discovery.
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she is something
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Good morning to all:
I don’t buy as many recordings as I did in the past and haven’t visited the Homestead Pickin’ Parlor for a while. There are some CDs that I would like to buy and I should stop by there soon. I do have many recordings I bought there. I was very glad to discover that store when we first moved to Minnesota.
I started collecting recordings of music when I was in high school. We had one record store in Jackson, Michigan that had a fairly good selection of all kinds of music. At first I just bought 45s of my favorite rock music. Then I started looking at the LPs. I bought an amazing LP that was a collection of the early Atlantic stars including Ray Charles and Ruth Brown.
Then I started buying jazz and blues LPs from that store. I got an LP that in which Harry Belefonte paid tribute to some of the great blues singer and a great blues LP by Big Bill Broonzy with notes on the back by Studs Turkel. I can’t remember buying my first jazz LP, but I know I bought some from that store.
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jackson michigan. did you know art hicks?
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I can’t remember any one by that name.
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Rise and Spin a Disc Baboons:
HPP is such a unique place. When I moved to the Twin Cities to go to grad school so many years ago, it was one of the first places I wanted to go after hearing about it on MPR.
However, the record store I remember well was in my home town of LeMars, Iowa. Parkinson’s Music Store. It was run by Shubert and Ruth Parkinson, the music family of that small town. Mrs. Parkinson was also my pre-school Sunday School teacher. We bought all our musical instruments at their store, as well as 45 and LP records. These records still reside in my basement. I used to spend hours browsing records. I did not buy many because my allowance did not stretch too far. But when I did buy a record I bought it there.
I digital download is so handy, but really, it does not recall such ambient memories!
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One recording that I bought at the pickin’ Paelor is a recording of Hamish Moore playing with Dick Lee doing jazz tunes featuring Moore on bag pipes and Lee on reeds. This is an amazing and unique recording that I heard Dale and Jim Ed play on the Morning Show and I was very happy to find it at the Pickin’ Parlor. Of course, many of the other recordings I bought at the Pickin’ Parlor were ones I heard first on the Morning Show.
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SO…. any of the Twin Cities Baboons gonna head down to HPP today? I’m not sure when I can drop by (have the wrest the car keys from the grip of the teenager)….
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full day but its worth a shot.
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i have great memories of hpp. i have taken guitar lesson there form a variety of teachers. i bought a friend harmonica lessons one year and found out he wasn;t going so i went. clint hoover is a kick. shudied hammer dulcimer there too comt o think of it. marv did still sell lps when i first went there and was concerned about how to get rid of all that vinyl and transition to the cds. looks like he figured it out. the jam sessions are something i would like to plug into my life. indeed more than a record store.
i remember a record promotion at electric fetus where if you came in naked you could have an album free. not profitable from that standpoint but the crowd that gathered to see the free record give away paid for the day.
my first record store memory was downton minneapolis at the age of 4 or 5. my uncle paul was in town from fargo and we were on 7th street by the radisson hotel and we ducked into the strip of stores running between the radisson and daytons. carmel corn was there and ther ewas a little record store. uncle paul said lets go in there and we got in and he said what songs do you like? well i didnt know any other than the tune i played on the record player at home so he asked the guy for something and he returned with this old man on side a and surrey with the fringe on top on side b. uncle paul took it and me into the record listening area and approved making the purchase and giving it to me. he must have been trying to show me how the world works. my dad never bought a record in his life. he had all the tunes in his head and would sing in the shower and driving his car and uncle paul taught me about the other side of the music appreciation end of the deal. god bless record stores. many a happy moment int hee wax museum over the years too.
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GK and JEP (TK) played a Don Walser song on the Morning Show while I was driving to work. The wonderful sounds and yodeling were in my head all day as I taught classes full of HS sophomores.
I detoured to HPP on the way home and bought two cassettes (yes, it was the that long ago) by Don Walser. I played them both until they broke.
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I remember playing Don Walser on the show, Ken. But I’m concerned – I hope you didn’t break into a faux yodel in front of a group of HS sophomores.
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Anyone out there share my affection for The Podium? When I was in grad school at the U of MN, the Podium in Dinkytown was a little center of folk music that attracted some big names of the time. I bought my first two guitars from the Podium (and the third from HPP). The Podium was run by a harried looking fellow named Lynn who, I just found out, was a jazz trumpet player in Paris. His colorful wife Paulette had been an actress. Many of the customers had a little crush on her. I can still hear her lilting voice recommending her favorite pipe tobacco: BAL-kan so-BRA-nee!
I guess the Podium is still there. Lynn passed away. Paulette drops by.
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Yes, it’s still there. Beautiful instruments: http://www.thepodium.com/c-66-instruments.aspx
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I was never a record or CD buyer until lately. And then, living where I where do, I order online. But I have wonderful memories of HPP not as a record store but as a picking parlor. My son has fiddled with the mandoline and guitar for years, not ever getting very good, just having fun. We would drop in for him to get strings or arrange lessons or repair, always somehow in a rush. I have never had the time to examine the CD collection, a bit overwhelming in that delightful atmosphere at first sight. But just to be in that space!! But I always impressed how they knew who my son was and treated him as an old friend who mattered, as if he were one of the people who hear on RH.
We are going to go up some weekday in a month or so to the Russian Museum and maybe I will try to visit the CD collection, but my wife would have nothing to do for the time it would take me to get into it. We’ll see.
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OT, but I thought you might like this report I got from the city via daily email report:
Mankato Department of Public Safety police officers responded to a report of a disturbance at 1600 Warren Street around 1:35 a.m. this morning. Officers were unable to locate what caused the disturbance, but stayed because of the many patrons exiting area bars.
About 10 minutes later, an officer observed Shawntay Benton, 38, of Mankato, driving a vehicle in the parking lot. She appeared intoxicated. The officer moved the squad car to prevent her from driving further in the crowded parking lot and initiated contact. Benton backed up and into another officer’s squad car, damaging the front of the vehicle. She attempted to drive away and struck an unoccupied Toyota Sequoia, damaging the rear of the vehicle, and her car became partially lodged beneath it. Benton’s vehicle had rear and front end damage.
She fought with police officers, who took her into custody and brought her to the Blue Earth County jail pending charges of:
* Fleeing police officer
* Criminal vehicular operation
* Assault
* Driving after suspension
* Disorderly conduct
* Driving while intoxicated (DWI)
* DWI refusal
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Clyde, Benton did a bang up job.
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Reminds me of that scene with Kathy Bates’ VW in Fried Green Tomatoes, but with likker.
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I’m older and I have more insurance!
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Love it.
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What memories this has touched off, Dale! Thanks.
1. Storm Lake, IA about 1958 – I’m in Bell Music Store (very like Jacque’s LeMars entry) trying to decide what to buy with my $1.00 – I think it was Well, All Right by Buddy Holly. A bonus was I saw my third grade teacher there, too.
2. SF, CA circa 1972 – I’m in Tower of Power Records (this was a BIG record store, must have been a local chain), buying a Joy of Cooking… http://www.scaruffi.com/vol3/joyofcoo.html
album for $3.00.
3. Minneapolis 1978 or 79 – Wow, I hadn’t imagined so many cool record shops could be in the same city. Besides HPP, which I didn’t discover till maybe 1980, there was The Electric Fetus, and Oar Folkjokeopus (now Treehouse Records).
4. Later after the CDs moved the LPs out, you could still get LPs at Hymie and Hazen’s on Lake Street. Anyone know if there’s still a remnant of that?
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Hymie and Hazen’s is still going strong. One of my friends from my little town up along Lake Superior is a collector of vintage jazz albums. A trip to Hymie and Hazen’s is a bit of heaven for him.
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But the name has changed: Hymie’s Vintage Records.
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When Daughter was a preschooler, and TLGMS was still on the air, Dale and Jim Ed played 3 Mustafas 3 for Daughter’s birthday. She was delighted (that may have been the year you also played the Hippopotamus Song from Flanders and Swann for her since it involved mud – also a hit with her). Homestead was on the way home from work and preschool/daycare, so we stopped in to see if we could get a CD of 3 Mustafas 3 to have at home. We explained our mission (and why), and in their delightful/delighted way, led us to the back part of the store where we could find the CD we wanted. By the time we got back to the front of the store, someone was blowing bubbles up front. Daughter was, of course, enthralled, and tried to pop many of them. Wanted to know if we could get “piggie” out when we got home (“piggie” is a battery operated bubble blower – bubbles come out of the pig’s mouth). Well, sure – it was a lovely May day, why not. Then the woman behind the counter needed to know more about “piggie” because she liked blowing bubbles and her husband liked pigs…I think we were in the store less than 10 minutes, but what a memory.
My other record store with specific memories is not a record store at all, but the record section from the old Woolworth’s at Southdale. Woolworth’s from back in the day when it was a two-level store and the records (along with the guinea pigs and birds) were in the lower level. I would save my allowance money until my cousins were in town from Brainerd. There was almost always a trip to Southdale when they were visiting, and Southdale meant Woolworth’s and a visit to the 45s section with my cousin Tom. My first 45 purchase was a Captain and Tennille (was likely either “Shop Around” or “Love Will Keep Us Together”). If memory serves, cousin Tom and I both bought the same 45…later on when I had advance to 45s by the likes of The BeeGees, we teased my youngest cousin mercilessly for his first 45 purchase (also from Woolworth’s, no doubt) of “Forever in Blue Jeans” by Neil Diamond – you can decide whether or not any of that music stands the test of time…certainly not Joan Baez, that’s for sure.
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One of the great things about the 50s was the rock and roll music from that time that does stand the test of time. Elvis, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and many others.
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The 70s has little to offer – especially the era where I was getting to be old enough to pay attention. Disco and late 70s vintage bubble gum pop left seemed great when I was 10 or 12…now, not so much. I did better with my high school years and 80s New Wave – not for everyone, but it has stood up a better (Elvis Costello, Cyndi Lauper, Squeeze…)
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I think you can find good pop music and bad pop music in any decade. Those pioneers of rock and roll that were very popular in the 50s stand out in my mind as some of the best musicans this country has produced. That’s just my opinion based on what I have heard. There is a lot of pop music and other music about which I know very little.
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Good morning! Husband is in Maple Grove for a conference, and yesterday a three CD compilation of Jefferson Airplane songs arrived for him from a place called Freakbeat Records somewhere in California. Sounds like an interesting place. We depend on the internet for CD’s and records. I loved going into record stores, but I don’t remember the names of any of them.
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When I was a teenager I had a friend who lived in Eau Claire, and I used to take the bus there for visits. There was a good record store near the campus. I think it was just called Discount Records. An uninspired name for a record store, but the price was right. At the time newly released LP’s usually listed for 4.98 or 5.98, but at Discount Records they were $3.80 with the sales tax. I bought many of my old favorites there. Joni Mitchell, John Prine, Tom Waits, Arlo Guthrie, many others.
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It’s been a really busy week for me. I’ve had to catch up on reading and I’ve had no time to post at all. Yesterday’s and today’s topics are both close to my heart.
I’ve been going to to HPP for years. It’s my favorite music store. I stop there almost every time I’m in Mpls. My trips to the metro area are mostly for work these days and that takes me to St. Paul so I don’t get to Mpls as often as I used to. When I do go to Mpls, it’s for fun or shopping and I always stop at HPP. I get strings for three mandolins and two guitars there. I’ve purchased LPs, cassettes, CDs, sheet music, music books, two recorders, guitar capos, straps, mandolin and guitar picks… the list goes on. I used to make a point of going on Sunday afternoons to catch the jams. I do holiday shopping there for some friends. Most of the CDs in my collection came from HPP. The last time I was there was Christmas. I told him that I’m so glad they’re still open and that I make it back as often as I can. His sense of humor is so great!
Yesterday’s topic is close to my heart and it’s part of my life every day. I’ve become a real birder over the last few years. I have several feeders in my yard and enjoy goldfinches, house finches, redpolls, chickadees, pine siskins, juncoes, cardinals, downy and hairy woodpeckers, white and brown-breasted nuthatches and others all winter. I had a barred owl in the oak tree over my deck last winter at night. Juncoes do stay around during the winter. It’s also normal to see robins. They change their feeding habits from insects and worms to seeds and berries. You can see robins along roadways in February.
I watched a sharp-shinned hawk take a “feeder bird” twice this past winter: one took a junco right out of the air in my yard and within a few feet of where I was standing; another one soared past my windshield in downtown Waterville, right in front of the city office, and nabbed a small bird right over the street! This is more common than you might realize and it’s exciting when you are able to see it.
This year’s spring migration has been tremendous. I’m pretty sure I’ve already forgotten some of the birds I’ve seen this spring. In February, I saw a pair of barred owls nesting in Sakatah State Park. The great blue herons came back in early March. All species of ducks and geese have migrated through, leaving Canada geese, coots and mallards behind. Pelicans returned in the last couple of weeks. I counted 22 trumpeter swans on Lower Sakatah Lake one morning in mid-March. A pair of sandhill cranes spent a week on the empty basin of one of the 1-acre fish rearing ponds in late March. Their primordial cry filled the air on a quiet morning when I took a walk. There are quite a few nesting in Le Sueur County now. Most people here see them regularly. Hawks (buteos and harriers) have been migrating through since February. Many bald eagles have been seen over Upper Sakatah Lake – I saw one juvenile. Turkey vultures have been back for about three weeks (they are relatively new in this area – they came from the east, like the caustic yellow parsnip that fills our ditches).
Most important to me is the osprey pair that lives at Waterville State Fish Hatchery where I work. The male returned on April 6 and the female on April 7. They don’t migrate together but they are mated for life (not necessarily a monogamous marriage). This is their third year to return to our nest pole. They got right down to business and fixed up their nest. I’ve noticed some courtship behavior but no actual mating. The first year they had three chicks. All three fledged but one died. Last year they had two chicks. I think only one of the chicks fledged last year but it was hard to tell. They’re back and I am so happy to see them! Boyd Huppert came and did a story on them in July 2009.
http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=819504
I couldn’t get the video to work. Maybe KARE-11 took it down.
I’ve gone on too long. Enjoy the day, Baboons.
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I forgot the loons. I saw a pair of loons a week and a half ago on Upper Sakatah Lake.
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Krista, thanks for all the info on birds and bird activity. I like watching birds and getting reports, like yours, about birds.
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Jim, I think Al Batt has an e-mail newsletter. I chat with him from time to time. I’ve learned a lot from him.
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Thanks for the suggestion, Krista. I also know Al. I didn’t know that he had an email newletter.
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Krista, I enjoyed your report. You noticed sandhills and said they are being seen a lot. What I’m hearing from many areas is that sandhill pairs are showing up in fields they didn’t use before, a sign that the restoration of their numbers continues.
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looks like we missed out on a great saturday, Dale – thanks for sharing.
fun place.
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Steve’s mention of Odegard’s yesterday set me to thinking about bookstores as well as record stores. A long time ago my sister worked at the Hungry Mind, and I used to go help out with inventory. The process, as I recall, was something like this: the store would be closed early on a Saturday, and the employees/friends/volunteers would split up into teams of three or four. One person would have a pen and paper, usually the person with the best math skills, and the other two or three would claim a shelf and start pulling out books and calling out prices. It might be a single figure, or if you had multiples at the same price, you’d call out “Six at 3.95” or whatever, and the person with the pen and paper was responsible for keeping a running total. (Seems kind of incredible, given modern computer inventory practices, that this actually happened in my lifetime.) The Hungry Mind was a pretty large bookstore, so this took quite some time and a pretty large crew of people. The employees got paid, but the rest of us worked for pizza and a free T-shirt. Still have a couple of the T-shirts.
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life can be simple
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Oh, man, I still miss The Hungry Mind. Lucky sister you have.
Our inventory system at Birchbark Books was almost that primitive…
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Hungry Mind was my college book store. I miss it. Miss the serendipity of what I’d find on my way upstairs to the text books, miss the goofy postcards (my mom still has one I sent her on her fridge), miss the smell of the place and finding cool stuff in the remainders and sitting down on the floor by all of the play scripts and trying really hard not to spend huge chunks of my work study money there and…
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Hi—
I bought my banjo at HPP and took a few lesson from Brian Fessler there. It was a long way to drive though for a 1 hour lesson. I try to stop in there when I can.
Here in Rochester there was MusicLand at the mall and a local store called ‘Face the Music’ that carried incense besides music and in their last few years trading cards and bobble head dolls. They were a better store in their early years than their later years. We joined Columbia House and got 8 track tapes before moving onto LP’s. (Never bought many pre-recorded cassettes; recorded LP’s to cassettes often).
I used to hang out in Daytons looking through their record collection. (There was a girl that worked there that was kinda cute.)
OT-When VCR’s were first coming out Dayton’s had a display of three or four VCR’s; one played westerns, the others might be movies or sports and one always had cartoons. I was 18 and me and the little kids were standing there watching Bug Bunny Cartoons.
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I stopped today at one of our local independent purveyors of guitars and musical instruments (Twin Town Guitars) and purchased a fine, pink ukulele. Not quite “independent record store day” – but it’s independent, and it’s music…even if it’s a day late. Plus – what’s not to love about a pink uke?
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Anna, what will be your first ukelele tune? Have you seen Prudence Johnson’s red ukelele?
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It was purchased, at least in part, so I could learn and play “All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir.” Last Bravo Music lesson with Daughter’s class is the voice as an instrument – and it seemed an appropriate song to teach the kids. (Being public school, I will have to rewrite the lyrics a touch to be something more like “All the World’s Critters…”) Figure there can’t be too many chords in that one, and it’s fun to sing. And a pink uke can be had, pardon the pun, for a song… 😉
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Bill Staines tells a wonderful story of doing a concert where the audience was quiet and barely clapped. When he sang “All God’s Critters” they all revealed the hand puppets they were wearing and wiggled along. Could the class make puppets to use with their voices?
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Oh that would be excellent! I have a bunch of paper bags and I know the kids have crayons and glue sticks. I could bring some other stuff for them to add (colored paper, etc.). Fabulous idea! Thanks Beth-Ann!
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P.S. It’s a three-chord song – D7 is the only tough one (have to hold down three strings with one finger…). Phew.
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im trying ot figure out how to plug peter ostrushko into my life with mandolin lessons. i see him every week with my kids lessons and not to do it seems sinful.
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