SPEAKER_03 1:24

Oh man. Have you ever had this experience like where you've been like where you've been like somewhere far away from home, and then like you just hear someone with like the the same accent from like your region of your has that ever happened to you before? Um because that's how it felt for me just listening to you play right there. Yeah. I was like, oh my god, that's that's like my guitar sister over there. That's like seriously, man, just the the cross picking and everything. Um it's like we speak the same language, you know. It's it's it's funny to to feel that, you know, from like I've never even met you before, right? Oh, sounds so good. All right, howdy there, folks. Uh, welcome back to the flat picking podcast. Today I am joined here by someone whose career I have been following pretty closely for the last, I guess, five to six years. Um, when I we were all tucked away in our homes uh during the pandemic, you know, uh glued to our phones uh for for whatever, you know, our favorite hobbies were. I kept seeing this series of like really obscure, interesting fiddle tunes being played on the flat pit guitar that I was just like, you know, kept coming back to every week, really excited. And um, we have the kind of creator of that series here, uh Charlotte Karavic, or uh your last name now, Breeze. Is that how you say it?

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Uh Breeze.

SPEAKER_03 2:50

Um Breeze, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

So I still use Caribic or Caribic. To be honest, I'm not really sure how to say my own name. Uh that's great. I love it.

SPEAKER_03 3:01

So Charlotte Karibic Breeze. We'll say that, right? And then I can edit it. I can chop it in whatever order we want.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Um, breeze is cool if we still use caravic.

SPEAKER_03 3:14

Yeah, that's awesome. Well, thanks for joining me, Charlotte. Um a lot of folks know about you through your um your work with Midnight Sky Racer. That was kind of the first first place that I saw you playing out live. Um, but Charlotte's located in the UK. Can you tell me exactly where where you are right now?

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Uh I am in Wiltshire, which is southwest, but not that south.

SPEAKER_03 3:37

Cool. Yeah. That's something that I feel like I need a full lesson on too, is just like regions and directions in the UK. You know what I mean? Because like I feel like there's some south stuff that, like you said, isn't south, you know, and the Midlands are further south than I thought they would be.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

And you know so much of what I'm like just there's a lot of Scotland before you actually get to England. So actually it's kind of compressed.

SPEAKER_03 4:03

Yeah, yeah. That's funny. Um, well, yeah, Charlotte's joining me here today. And and like I said, Charlotte is is a multi-instrumentalist, but I I've come to know her through her flat picking. Um, Charlotte, could you just give me a little bit of your your background on how you got started playing music? And and uh, you know, it's it's always cool for me to see flat picking that is outside of where I'm from because like I said, I'm from Ohio. We're Kentucky's hat, so we're supposed to have flat picking here, you know. Um but how did you get into that and and where did that influence come from?

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Um, it's kind of a roundabout way, really. Uh I started out playing classical guitar, but self-taught. Sort of well, semi-self-taught. My dad plays guitar as well, and he the way he showed me to play was he wrote out every in tab and notation, he wrote out every note on the fretboard in every position and said, learn that. So that's how I started out learning to play.

SPEAKER_03 5:02

I love that he's like he's like, here's the whole map. Yeah, don't worry about it, kid, you know, just memorize it one step.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

And then from that point, just learning classical pieces. Um probably with terrible technique. Well, actually definitely technique. But uh yeah, my husband now is a a proper classical guitarist, and he's a lot better at um uh yeah, and then my s I have a twin sister and she was learning the violin. Um and she was kind of getting into this series of folky books and things like that. Um, and so we there was a school folk group we both went, and uh I kind of picked our dad had a mandolin under the bed that he still can play two tunes on. Um and uh and uh so I kind of picked that up to kind of join her in the folk group because classical guitar wasn't really the thing. And uh he was our dad was then looking for a mandolin teacher for us and came across this course in Oxfordshire, which is still kind of south, but not as south as we were living then, more more this kind of south. And and uh so we went to that for a a week-long course. Um my teacher there was Matt Flinner. Um he is like number one musical hero to me. Um and and so I kind of got into mandolin before flap picking guitar, and then because my sister and I played together and it kind of we were singing songs and someone had to play the guitar, and and because I already played guitar of some sort and mandolin, it sort of fell to me, and I ended up being guitarist by default.

SPEAKER_03 6:55

Yeah, she's like you already know the G chord, you know, so yeah, it's it's it just makes sense. You already know the chords. Dad already showed you the map, right? That's cool. Uh, how old were you guys uh around that time?

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Uh um we had our 14th birthday there.

SPEAKER_03 7:12

That's super cool.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Yeah, that's good.

SPEAKER_03 7:17

Um, so started out early on with Matt Flinner as an influence. I guess that explains to me a lot of the one of the things that I immediately noticed about you when you were, you know, playing these great fiddle tunes on the Instagram series was just the kind of fullness of sound and great tone and and everything um that you get on the guitar. Was was Matt like, did you study with him for a while? I know you had him at that camp and he doesn't live in the UK, obviously.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

But um just that one week, but I mean it's it's a really intense course. Um, like incredibly intense. And yeah, so you come away with a lot of material. It's not really much work. That's that week.

SPEAKER_03 7:59

That's great. Well, and if it was like, I I know what it's like to be a 14-year-old kid obsessed with this stuff, you probably just went home and you know, yeah, got to work, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:08

I used to sleep with my mandolin.

SPEAKER_03 8:12

That's amazing. Uh, I can relate. Um, so you definitely um so you had a band with your sister eventually, right? Was that was that like started pretty early on, or or was that after this this 14-year-old experience? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

Well, I think we were probably younger than that when we started trying to find things that we could play together. Um, you know, like it would be like, oh, I I've got this piece of music for this this thing on the guitar. Uh I remember actually I was learning that we had a book of ragtime tunes. I was learning the entertainer on guitar, it was really fun. And then Laura had the entertainer in a fiddle book she had, and so it's like, okay, I've got to put the capo on the seventh fret, but we can play this together. So it started on pretty early on, really, and then we sort of decided to actually be. I don't know when we actually became a duo, but yeah, it's sort of we've been doing this for a really long time anyway.

SPEAKER_03 9:10

That's great. Um well you you mentioned the kind of like ragtime influence, and I'll say one of the I got a little bit of that because some of the fiddle tunes you played were like old rags or something like that. Um, but I was recently digging back through your Instagram feed, just kind of catching up on what you had been up to, and you you make these kind of like little jingles to uh advertise for like gigs coming up.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

I have the this latest tour, yeah. Just like you know, it's so hard to get through on social media these things.

SPEAKER_03 9:46

I love it. So why not make a ragtime tune or something, right? Yeah, yeah. It's uh it's been really cool to see that. Um and and kind of an interesting uh, you know, I like I was I was trying to get at a minute ago, an interesting influence that I guess I like heard in your flat picking from the the get-go, but it's interesting to hear you actually explicitly say that you you studied some ragtime. Who who else were like your when you when you shifted to guitar, like what other styles influenced your your flat picking when you kind of got into that?

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Um I I love ragtime. I've I think it's just the one tune that I ever learned from that book, but it's it's kind of um but yeah, other styles. Um I love sort of earlier jazz. Um I can't play it. Um but I I have played in big bands for a few years doing doing that kind of stuff. Um so just rhythm guitar and that stuff. But I I I really love the Plektrum guitar kind of people. But I guess my my main influence has always really been David Greer. I just love David Greer and and you know, the kind of solo flat picking things because it's it can get kind of lonely in the UK.

SPEAKER_03 11:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Playing this stuff. There are there are some great players around, but um I guess I should get out more.

SPEAKER_03 11:10

I d I totally get it though, and I mean as someone who's toured over there and and in you know the UK and Europe, like there are there is a community, right? But but you guys are kind of further apart.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:22

Right. So it's it yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

I think there is there is quite a a good core of players in fairly cro close proximity to where I am now. Um good. But I guess we all we're maybe all just recluses, so nobody's brave enough to pick up the phone, right?

SPEAKER_02 11:40

Yeah, organize and yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:42

Yeah, that's that's cool. Um, well, it's interesting to hear you say David Greer, because I think, you know, if we go back to what I said a minute ago about about tone and and just the kind of like fluid sound that you have on the guitar, lots of cross picking, lots of you know, extra stuff around the melody. I can totally hear that influence. Um I knew that we had something in common, you know. Um what is there anything in particular? I can name the like one David Greer thing that kind of set me off, but was there one kind of uh first exposure to his playing that you you kind of remember?

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Well, it was probably those uh those two Matt Flinner albums. We brought one home with us, The View from Here we brought home with us, and then uh I can't remember if I bought it, like it might have been the first album that I bought myself, or maybe it was the first album I asked to have was Latitude is the other one. And obviously, guitarist on there, so it's kind of that's probably where that came from.

SPEAKER_03 12:43

Yeah, it's like you see you see greer on the album, it's like add to cart, right? Um, the so that's funny you should say that because actually the the first uh the first tune that I learned and and heard from him was the uh uh yeah, that one from the the Phillips Greer Flinter album. What's that one called? Paint It Shut. I think yeah, um, where they kind of go into like that slow like uh 6'8 feel, like it's uh it's in four for Matt Solo, you know, and then when David gets there, it's kind of like a slow breakdown thing. I remember just being blown away by by his playing on that one. Um so let's let's say uh what what age maybe were you when you just discovered Greer's playing? Are we still like teenage years, I guess, around this? Same yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

None none of us really knew what bluegrass was at that point. It's just we purely went because I could learn mandolin. My sister, and then our dad had to come because we were too young to go on our own, our own. So he he now plays flat picking guitar as well.

SPEAKER_03 13:54

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

We've just and it's because I think it's a well, it's a really welcoming scene anyway, because it's small and everyone, you know, people are always trying to bring more people in, but then they see young people, it's like, come join us.

SPEAKER_03 14:09

Dude, isn't it crazy?

SPEAKER_00 14:12

Very welcoming.

SPEAKER_03 14:14

It's good to know that the culture's still the same over there as it is here, you know. Um, that's fun. Um, so so you you kind of pick up the CD at 14, you start listening to Greer, you're listening to Flinter, you get exposed to bluegrass music. Was it pretty like uh quickly after that that you just started ingesting kind of like everything, you know, where you did you go home and buy, you know, every Brian Sutton record and Tony Rice and all this kind of stuff, or was it a narrower kind of path into the rest of bluegrass music, you know?

SPEAKER_01 14:43

Hazy. Uh but um yeah, I guess I guess so. I just and the internet was kind of new then. So I didn't I I guess it kind of didn't really occur to me to get CDs online. We lived sort of we didn't live in a city of any sort, so there wasn't really anywhere to buy CDs. I remember like later on into teenagers when like in in secondary school, we were at lunchtime in the sort of the the last couple of years, you were allowed to wander into town and we found an Allison Krauss CD in a shop, and it's just uh that's probably the best day of our lives.

SPEAKER_03 15:22

That's so cool.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Yeah, so it's probably quite limited influence, really. Um, but kind of spanning from Matt Flynn.

SPEAKER_03 15:31

Anything on this kind of that's cool though, and I mean uh there's something to be said for that though, because I I've heard conversations with like um Mike Marshall and and some of the guys from like the DGQ uh band, right? Like they they've talked about how like in a pre-internet time, yeah, you didn't have access to to kind of everything. You know, you couldn't just go like, oh, I'll have my Brian Sutton and my David Greer and my Tony Right. Like you just had what you had, and that became your influence. And um, there's something kind of beautiful to that in a in a way, I would, I would say, right? It's like the universe limits for you. Um, well, luckily you stumbled on David Greer. I think that's that's about as good as it gets. Yeah. Um, so uh 14, you're moving forward. When do you guys uh start running running into like the the Midnight Sky Racer crew and and some of those folks? Late.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

Well, probably later for all that lot. Um yeah, and we kind of see Eleanor, the bass player, she was always at sore fingers. This which is this course thing. So we kind of knew her, but she was I mean we kind of think of her in the same age bracket as us now, but at that time she was older. And so she was what like one of the cool cool kids scared of her. So so it was quite a few years before we sort of dared to ask her to play on a duo album that we were doing. So we must have been I don't know, probably in our twenties at some point. So this is a a lot later.

SPEAKER_03 17:06

Um yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

And uh we sort of just knew of Leanne and we'd met Tabitha maybe a couple of times and uh and just sort of thought, well, let's try let's ask them all CSL be in a be in an all-girl band just uh just for fun. Yeah, we thought, oh, we'll do a couple of festivals for free tickets and it went quite well really.

SPEAKER_03 17:34

I was gonna say, yeah, and then you became like the premier, you know, like UK bluegrass band, right? That's that's pretty cool. Um so around 17, 18, or 19, um, you guys are are like just getting off the ground. Um I I remember it was almost like you guys kind of took like the the festival circuit by storm and stuff like that. It was like, you know, I I kept seeing Midnight Sky Racer on online everywhere. Um what what were some of the highlights of of like you know gigging and touring with that band, other than the fact that you guys just made beautiful music together? Were there any great gigs or or funny stories?

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Um I don't I'm not sure about funny stories. I I have a really bad memory for things, but um yeah, I I it was really Cambridge was really fun, Cambridge Folk Festival. We were on like stage, it was only stage three or something. But it was one of our earlier gigs. And I remember just like the the first chord, or yeah, th like as soon as we started, people started screaming, which we never like the stuff I played with my sister and other bands I played in before, it's been a lot more kind of laid back, a lot you know, a lot more you know, it's kind of music to relax to rather than to think, you know, to get excited about. Um just to have that sort of reaction was really fun. Um and just yeah, festivals were were good with that. It was just yeah, a lot of a lot of fun. And it was we kind of we locked in nicely as as a group of people as well. So made some you know life lifelong friends doing that band, which is nice.

SPEAKER_03 19:16

That's great. It's it's that thing when you're watching from afar, you look at this group of people interacting musically and listen to them. I'm I'm a firm believer that like you can't um how do I want to say it? Like your musical personality reflects somehow your kind of maybe even like deepest inner personality. And if you if you can make good music with other people, there's like some kind of connection there. Do you feel that with those folks?

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Yeah, maybe so. I don't yeah, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I think you know from Leanne's Mantin playing, you'd think she was really hard and aggressive, but but no, she's lovely.

SPEAKER_03 19:58

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I guess uh I don't know. Sometimes our personalities, I guess, is all I was trying to say is we can keep some of those things secret unless there's an an instrument in our hands, you know what I mean? That's that's fun. Um, so you know, COVID happens. How did how did that affect all of you guys and maybe your personal career? Because this is when I remember starting to see uh, you know, the the kind of Instagram series pop up and and stuff like that. So fast forward I guess a couple years for the band, right? Maybe for the yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Yeah, so that was COVID was kind of what killed that band as it did for so many things. And we see we just had we just signed to Island Records with the band. And we put out our album came out in like July or June of COVID. And so everything just like it's gone. It's gone. And so yeah, so that which was rubbish, that was rubbish, but you know, other I think far worth time worse time, you know. So I can't kind of can't complain, but I'm gonna complain.

SPEAKER_03 21:10

Well, uh yeah, I don't I um I think that's okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

Um and yeah, so that that kind of that was the beginning of the end for that band, really. And and then because of that flight prices got more expensive, which made it much more difficult for Tabitha and everything, and it's just sort of so that so that ended there. And then that the video series thing, I kind of just started that as just a way to keep playing, really, just to kind of make myself play. I've never been um very disciplined with practicing or organized or you know, uh just not very good at motivating myself. And so I thought, well, if I make this a weekly series that I post online, I'm gonna have to do it, or it's just like I I've failed kind of thing. So Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:02

Or the rest of us are are gonna pester you and be like, Charlotte, where's our flat picking video this week? Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

I kind of was posting to like two people at the start.

SPEAKER_03 22:13

So so no, it's it was Well, you just met one of them, so like here we are, sister.

SPEAKER_01 22:22

Yeah, so it it was just it was it was for my own benefit. So I was coming up with and I set myself like a goal of once round a fiddle tune, but I wanted it to still sound like the tune, but have as much stuff crammed in as possible, but still kind of hopefully make some musical sense. Um and it's like I was kind of creating them almost as technical exercises.

SPEAKER_03 22:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

Um which they they kind of work as uh w without being too boring.

SPEAKER_03 22:51

There's a yeah. Is it d isn't uh like the fiddle tune catalog in general just a great I think they're all great technical exercises, right? Man, it's like all yeah, twisting your fingers up. Um what what kind of so I noticed that a lot of the tunes that you were bringing to this like you weren't playing Beaumont Rag every week, you know what I mean? Or or red haired boy. Like it was stuff I was like, where is that tune? Like, where's that come from? You know, I've never even heard heard of this tune before. So where where were you kind of mining for tunes?

SPEAKER_01 23:22

So I'm as well and as well as the bluegrass, I'm also into old time music. Um, I'm an old-time banjo player.

SPEAKER_03 23:30

Um I was gonna say, I see that thing hanging over your left shoulder there.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

Um I knew some of those tunes from that sort of catalogue, and also I just like I really like sifting through old field recordings and trying to find the ones that actually buried in that horrible sound is something quite nice. Um, just kind of listening through to a lot and thinking, oh, that's actually there's a good tune in there.

SPEAKER_03 24:02

Yeah. What was there uh there are a couple resources that I've I've kind of hunted through for those tunes. What were were there some like online, you know, things that you were looking at for those?

SPEAKER_01 24:13

Yeah, the really good one is Slippery Hill, SlipperyHyphen Hill.com or something like that, I think.

SPEAKER_03 24:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

And there are literally thousands on there, I think.

SPEAKER_03 24:24

Um yeah, look at that. Well, there's the next year of my life.

SPEAKER_02 24:29

Uh more than that.

SPEAKER_03 24:31

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's so cool. Um well man, I'll I'll you you're gonna be getting Instagram messages from me like uh when I find the tunes that you were digging out of there.

SPEAKER_02 24:46

You did that basically.

SPEAKER_03 24:49

It looks like they've got got it by like, you know, player or or like you know, tunes and stuff like that, instrument. That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

Yeah, there are various ways you can search through it and several collections on there now, and that they seem to have added more since I first started using that site. But yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:07

Great. Um are you still uh I know the answer to this, but you know, this is an interview, whatever. Are you still doing the Patreon? Uh and is that like something you're keeping up with? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:17

I am, yeah. It's not weekly anymore, it's monthly now. I I've had yeah, I've had children since then. I just don't and a dog, I just don't I don't have time to do do it. One day I want to get back to it. Um I probably would have time if I was organized enough, but I've also started when I first doing because I was just doing it for myself, I was just doing difficult versions, deliberately difficult. Um so now I still do those, but I also do an intermediate one and a beginner one, then I started doing banjo ones as well. So it's kind of for each tune, it's actually become quite a lot of work. Um and eventually at some point I need to get to the point where I'm actually learning something from them as well as well again, rather than just churning them out. But uh but yeah, that's still there. That's great.

SPEAKER_03 26:08

Yes. I was waiting for someone to say it. No, yes, go join her Patreon. Um uh I'm I'm looking at it right now. Um, you can even gift this membership to someone. The holidays are coming up if you're if you're looking for that, you know, that gift for that special flat picker in your life. Uh that's great. Um, well, you've mentioned a few times um, so you know, the pandemic brought about this Patreon in the in the in the YouTube or excuse me, the uh the the kind of like Instagram and and transcription series. But but you've said that you've had had kids in the meantime and all that kind of stuff. So what's life looking for you like, you know, kind of maybe outside of music and how has that affected things since uh well I don't tour very much anymore.

SPEAKER_01 26:57

Um I do the you know I do what it as much as I can because I love it. Um but uh I also want to be at home as well. Um so yeah, I it's just kind of my general life is take the children to school, walk the dog, play a bit of guitar, go and get the children.

SPEAKER_03 27:17

It's not I love that. It's not yeah, that sounds great, Charlotte. Actually, I uh I love that so much. And I gotta say, I love the pictures of the dog too, you know. I think I saw one on Instagram with his just like feet like straight up in the air on the couch or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 27:33

You know, I'm too obsessed with him, but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:38

I have four cats, and I post way too many pictures of those guys online, so that's I get it.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

Is that correct?

SPEAKER_03 29:11

Yeah, yeah. So I am a posh owner as well. Yeah. I I have gift Yeah, I I've gifted it to my to like my number one student right now. She like she was playing a Yamaha and she's working it off right now. So I was like, you need a good guitar, take this one. Um what like can you tell me about your uh how did you find out about those guitars and and what's your relationship with that instrument and all that kind of stuff? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

Uh yeah, so uh many years ago, uh, with another band I played in Cardboard Fox that was with my husband on bass and my sister on fiddle and our friend on mandolin, uh, we were at IBM A as a showcase band, and Leo was there. And uh we kind of we had one of those uh trade stall things and we thought, well, how are we gonna win over the Americans? And we thought, well, we'll take lots of biscuits and we'll give them free tea and biscuits. And so we love that. It's like our our Mandalion player suitcase was full biscuits, and he was he was sweating so much going through security. Um yeah, so we took over. We spent uh like we got there a couple of days earlier. It spent, I think, two days trying to find a kettle in Raleigh. Turns out you don't have kettles there.

SPEAKER_03 30:32

Um It's not a thing. I I'm sorry, you know, it's it's one of those things that like you know, when we travel to the UK, we're like, why is there a kettle in every room over here?

SPEAKER_01 30:41

How do you even make pasta? But anyway, so we we had to find a kettle. We took a teapot. My sister actually even knitted an IBM 8 tea cozy with the squirrel with the banjo kind of that's so cool, man. Um so yeah, we we decided to do it. That was our uh English charm that we decided to put across. But anyway, we ended up making a lot of cups of tea for Leo. We kind of hung out, we kind of we got on really well with him and uh sort of went over there. He actually owns the kettle now. We gave we sent it back with him. But it was workshop. Anyway, uh so my sister fell in love with one of his guitars. Um, and I think she lasted a week at home before she ordered it, sent shipped it over. Um and uh it was always better than my guitar. I just like it's kind of you're just like yeah, she plays guitar, but I'm the guitarist. It's not fair, everything has to be fair when you're twins.

SPEAKER_03 31:47

Um, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 31:49

Yeah, so it's sort of it was sort of inevitable that one day I'd get my posh. And uh I was approached by another maker to give me a really good deal on a guitar. Um and I wasn't sure because I didn't really know their guitars that well. Um and so it's like, wow, it's a really good deal. I don't need a guitar, I've got a lovely guitar, I don't need a guitar, but I was you know, you probably know this. If someone sort of tempts you with a guitar, you start thinking about guitars.

SPEAKER_03 32:23

And it's it's just uh yeah, there's nothing that you can that can break the cycle or the pattern of thought, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:31

And uh so well, why don't you just get in touch with Leo, see what he'd he'd do you want for if you're thinking about another guitar, why don't you get one of his? And so that's why that happened.

SPEAKER_03 32:42

Yeah, I'm sure he was so excited to hear from you too. I I've I've gotten to know Leo a bit ever since I bought my posh, and like you said, he's just generally a sweet man and yeah, very talented.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

When you like the person that's made it, it kind of it makes the guitar more special.

SPEAKER_03 32:59

Um absolutely. Yeah, I I actually only own guitars. I'm lucky enough to where I've gotten to the point that the the only guitars that I own now have some connection that way. You know, yeah, that that posh means means so much to me, and it's it's great that it's in my student Lino's hands because it's it's a like you said, it's a special thing to kind of develop a relationship with a luthier like that. I think he's just as passionate about you know carving the forward shifted X braces, you know, to to spec as we are about learning that cross-picking pattern off the rear record or something like that, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:38

Yeah, and the th yeah, and the the best thing was like he'd he'd met my other guitar. Yes, he knew what bugged me about it, yeah, what you know what wasn't quite where I wanted it to be. And so it's like he knows he knows what I'm looking for. And uh it took a while for this to open up, it was really kind of tight when I first got it. Oh, it's good now. It's two years on, it's so good. And it's and actually I've never enjoyed jamming before because I could never hear myself, and it's just like, well, I'm just wrecking my playing, trying to trying and failing to hear anything, and it's just isn't fun. So I kind of never I didn't really do much jamming on on guitar for years and years. But this one, like you push it harder and it goes harder, it's just yeah, it's amazing, and it cuts through, but it's also sweet and it's just uh nice. The neck is perfect, and yeah, it's just great.

SPEAKER_03 34:38

Is it uh is it a DM, I think he calls it, like a mahogany dreadnought?

SPEAKER_01 34:43

It is, but it's um it's Cuban mahogany rather than Honduran, which apparently I I didn't want it too dry on the top end, I wanted a bit of sweetness. Apparently that will do that for you. So it's kind of yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:57

I believe mine is the same spec. That's cool. Ah red spruce top.

SPEAKER_01 35:03

Is yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:05

That's I feel like that's the thing that drives Oh, it has a what inside of it? A cat?

SPEAKER_01 35:12

It is like a pencil drawing of a cannon inside it. Oh, a cannon! It also says for Charlotte, share with your sister or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 35:24

Dude, you don't need to bring up the sibling dynamics inside of my guitar, right? What's that all about?

SPEAKER_01 35:30

You know not sharing hers with me.

SPEAKER_03 35:34

Yeah, yeah, dude. Yeah. Was there a note inside of hers like that? That's hilarious. Um, I feel like that the red spruce, though, is there's something inside those guitars where, like you said, you can like kind of dig into a guitar like that, you know what I mean? And it gives more. Um, it's so important uh for a flat picker. Those banjos and mandolins, they just have a natural advantage over us, don't they? Um well there there was one other thing I kind of wanted to like spend two minutes on, and then I will let you go get your children. Um the the um there was a pretty recent, uh, in my opinion, like really cool accolade. You got to teach at uh Blue Ridge Guitar Camp, right? Yeah. So can you talk about that a little bit? That's yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

Yeah, well, uh yeah. Uh I think Brian sent me a message on Facebook or something, and I I just kind of assumed it was like someone impersonating him, just winding me up. I didn't say what it was about, it was just like uh I need to I want to talk to you about something or something like that. I just thought this is just Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:49

You're like, this is my sister with a fake account. Like maybe like just treading kind of careful, like, you know, is this person trying to steal my bank details or yeah, something Brian Sutton, he's like, Well, why does he want you know 50 gift cards for you know sent over to this address and yeah?

SPEAKER_01 37:15

Anyway, so yeah, um, yeah, because like aside from David Greer, Brian is the other person who I listened to more than anything as a child, you know, had his bluegrass guitar album transcribed the whole thing. It was kind of so that's uh yeah, that was weird and terrifying and wonderful. But um yeah, I I sort of it was the kind of thing where I thought, oh, I can't say yes to this, but also I can't say no. So it's sort of like yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:49

I thought, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

I I I know how to teach because it's kind of I like that his camp is everyone has a very specific lane that they teach in. Um and I thought, yeah, I can teach that subject, even if I'm gonna come out looking like a complete moron in any playing stuff. Uh it was terrifying and and great, yeah. That uh it's a good camp.

SPEAKER_03 38:15

That that's cool. Who who else was on staff? Because you were there 2024, like two years ago, is that right?

SPEAKER_01 38:20

Two years ago, yeah, it was um Courtney Hartman, Jake Workman, uh Raves. That's awful if I'm forgetting someone. I'm probably forgetting someone. I don't think I'm forgetting anyone.

SPEAKER_03 38:39

Is that the year that like Billy Strings randomly showed up too?

SPEAKER_01 38:42

He was there, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:43

Yeah, that's that's fun. Um, well, as someone so last year I didn't teach there. I was like one of the they have like these jam uh leaders and stuff, and I was there. Like, man, talk about imposter syndrome. Like you said, you're you know, Cody Kilby and all those guys are walking around and you're just like students as well. Isn't that yeah, it's it's like seriously, it's like the highest concentration of just like amazing professional and amateur flat pickers from everywhere, right? Yeah. Yeah, well that's cool. And it was great, it's really nice. Yeah. I'll say this though, Charlotte. Um, as someone who's watched your lessons and your videos, uh, you know, um, you deserve a seat at that table any day of the week. So uh yeah, I would have I would have taken your class. Yeah, man. Well, Charlotte, um I've I've definitely kept you long enough. And, you know, just to close things out, I I want to say thank you again for for chatting with me today and and for all the inspiration over the years. Like I said, it's it's weird to kind of watch someone from afar like this, and you know, like what, 10 years later we finally get to chat for the first time.

SPEAKER_01 40:02

But um thanks for everything that you've put out into the world of flat picking because you're it's it's I enjoy watching your your stuff and your your sort of take on practicing and stuff. It's it's great.

SPEAKER_03 40:14

Much better than hey man, it takes all of us, okay? Well, now that we're friends, uh I'm excited to hopefully meet you on that side of the ocean and maybe we can pick some tunes one of these days. That would be great, yeah. Yeah, yeah, nothing cooler. All right, Charlotte. Well, take care and uh we'll catch you later, okay?

SPEAKER_02 40:37

Thanks, Tony.