How does one even begin to sum up what Roots Rock Revival can do for your soul. Five days of pure musical bliss in the Catskill mountains. Two hundred miles away from the New York City madness you'll find the most beautiful oasis at Full Moon Resort in Big Indian, NY. This unique music camp started by Butch Trucks, Oteil Burbridge, Luther & Cody Dickinson attracts some of the finest talent across the globe and they gather to learn from these incredible mentors but also each other. Past guest counselors have included Bill Evans, Johnny Vidacovich, Col Bruce Hampton, Bruce Katz, Roosevelt Collier, Jack Pearson and so many more that I'm forgetting at the moment. Each one of these musical giants have dropped off some of their knowledge into the RRR basket and it is up to us the camp-goers to pick from that basket, digest it, and build upon it. Roots is a bridge from the Allmans/Dead family to push forward into this 21st century which has given us no shortage of surprises. 

I've been fortunate enough to have attended this camp for several years now thanks to one Luther Dickinson. This a better time than any to let anyone who's curious know how I got into guitar. After a childhood playing and enjoying baseball there comes a time when every great athlete has to know when to hang it up. For me that was the summer going into high school when I was benched for nearly an entire season. At the time thirteen year old me was devastated, but that fall my dad had received his monthly package from The Blues Foundation and in this months was a DVD of the North Mississippi Allstars 2004 performance "Keep On Marchin'". To this day still contains some of my favorite jams. IT was before school one morning we popped the DVD in and first song they come out and the lead guitar player was playing a cigar box guitar! They played "Mississippi Bollweevil" and I was floored. That day at school was useless cause my mind was still trying grasp WTF I saw that morning! Sure enough this led me to going upstairs to my dad's office and pulling out a cough syrup purple Washburn electric guitar signed by the band Drowning Pool he had won in some raffle at some point for a charity. 

*sidenote* this was one of the most expensivest mistakes of my life...I picked up this rigt handed guitar upside down like a lefty, ever since left handed guitars cost at least 33% more than righties...

I picked this Washburn up grabbed an old BILLY BEER can my dad had and just started messing around sliding up and down the neck entering a world of endless possibilities, unbeknownst to me. 

Fast forward back to going to see North Mississippi Allstars about fifteen times in five years I developed a connection with the band more specifically lead guitarist Luther Dickinson. Having playing this whole time seeing them and trying to pick up what I could from them. All these weird coincidences began, winning a contest to play with The Word (w/Luther) at The Capitol Theatre which set forth a whole other series of amazing events. In 2015 Luther had told me about Roots Rock Revival and I knew I had to get in there...to be continued