Floyd Music School Plans Seventh Year of Band Camp at FloydFest
-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on March 24, 2022.
The Mike Mitchell Band opened up the main stage at FloydFest last year on Sunday morning for Blue Grass Day, adding to front man Mike Mitchell’s regular festival itinerary, heading up the FloydFest Band Camp as director of the Floyd Music School.
Every day of the festival at 11 a.m., the Band Camp kids of FloydFest bring their guitars, ukuleles, banjos, fiddles, flutes, drums, kazoos, voices and clapping hands to the Children’s Universe to learn a set-list and practice for a performance at the end of the festival.
There is a dress rehearsal on the CU’s Forever Young Stage on Saturday and a final featured performance on the Workshop Porch on Sunday. This year the kids are going to start practice online with Mitchell in April.
Mitchell started teaching the Wildman siblings when they were four and five years old.
“Seven years ago, they were getting old enough and they transitioned out from under my instruction and began going to other teachers,” he said. Both Wildmans — Eli on guitar, mandolin and vocals, and Aila on lead vocals and fiddle — are award winning musicians who went on to study at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Mass.
Originally, they performed alongside their mother, Deb Wildman on upright bass. Today, the band includes another award winning young musician, Victor Furtado on banjo.
The original Mike Mitchell Band was slated for the very first FloydFest in 2002, but plans changed when Mitchell went on the road with a nationally known band. Two of the original band members, Tom Ohmsen and FloydFest CEO John McBroom, stayed together, brought in other musicians and formed the band Blue Mule, which has been on the FloydFest artist roster ever since.
Mitchell has performed at FloydFest for the past four years. “It’s a great festival to have on your resume. It’s internationally recognized,” he said, adding, “I have students of the Floyd Music School who live in Germany who met me at FloydFest.”
Mitchell believes that the credibility gained by playing festivals like FloydFest and Merlefest has likely led to bookings at other festivals across the country.
Mitchell won’t be playing FloydFest this year (July 27 – 31) because of a non-compete clause with the Center that inhibits him from playing in the area for 30 days before and after the show, but The Floyd Music School will be doing Band Camp at the Children’s Universe for the seventh year.
FMS students play in the Roanoke Youth Symphony and consistently place in the top three at numerous competitions and fiddle contests.
The School has been located in various locations in town, but several years ago was moved to Mitchell’s and Brooke’s home at 3416 Christiansburg Pike.
“Our business has picked up. We have five teachers and our studios have been full,” said Mitchell. There are plans to eventually expand the teaching studios to include a state of the art recording facility.
Home place is important to Mitchell.
“I could have left here, but I chose not to. This is my home. It’s where I raised my kids,” Mitchell said about a rough time he went through before the reopening of the FMS at the Christiansburg Pike location.
He recalled that during his time of struggle, he was welcomed by the late renowned fiddle maker Arthur Connor into Connor’s workshop. He apprenticed with Connor for 18 months, learning to make fiddles “the Arthur Connor way,” and one day he hopes to revive that tradition.
This past fall Mitchell was signed with Turnberry Records for a two-record deal. His debut single with Turnberry, I Hear Banjos was recently released and an upcoming album, titled Fathers and Sons, will follow. Mitchell’s 2018 album Small Town debuted as No. 2 on the Billboard bluegrass chart.
“We’ll also be on The Song of the Mountain TV show in June, which is aired on 190 public television stations across America,” Mitchell noted.
As great as all the recent attention has been for Mitchell, he says there is something even more special. Thankful for the local interest in his music, the FMS and his work with FloydFest, Mitchell said, “It means the world to be recognized by our neighbors.” _____Colleen Redman