The Great Groove Band

Download 2019 Music

OLD SONGS FESTIVAL – Altamont NY – June 28-30, 2019
PHILADELPHIA FOLK FESTIVAL – Schwenksville PA – Aug. 16-18, 2019
Under age 12 admitted free at both festivals when accompanied by an adult.

Email director Molly Hebert-Wilson to register for either festival band once you have festival tickets.

“I want to immediately clone the Great Groove Band at every festival in the country. THIS is how you make sure young people want to play folk music! You lead them around by the ear for three days and then you put them on the great big Martin Stage at the Philly Folk Fest, with all the lights and TV cameras. They will NEVER forget that!” Leslie Berman, Jambalaya News (Photo © 2014 Susan Deckhart)

Past years on YouTube

What is The Great Groove Band?

Old Songs Festival director Andy Spence has supported the program from the start: “Fiddle tunes provide an opportunity for the players to share the thrill of making music with friends, playing for dancing and just for fun! In the relaxed atmosphere of the Festival, Groove Band members keep the traditions alive, meet new friends from distant places, and begin the process of passing the music on.”

Donna Hébert developed this landmark performance program with Andy Spence at the Old Songs Festival of Music and Dance in 1998. Thanks to Mary Lou Troy and Fred Kaiser, the Philadelphia Folk Festival imported the program in 2006, where it has grown its own distinct personality.

School-age musicians (ages 6-17) bring acoustic instruments and voices to both festivals. In six hours of focused rehearsal over three days, they experience the joy of music – learning, arranging, and performing fiddle tunes and folk songs by ear.

Working cooperatively as a band, they prepare three numbers for a Sunday afternoon performance on the main stage. The band’s transformation from chaos to harmony is both remarkable and predictable, proving that music truly is our birthright!

“One of the most emotional moments in the 50th Annual Philadelphia Folk Festival for me came when a crowd sang along to the only real national anthem this country ever deserved, Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” performed by a group of children whose parents were longtime festival goers.” John Swenson: Music on My Mind, 8/24/11.

Who plays in the Great Groove Band?

Singers and players aged six to seventeen are welcome, with or without an instrument. The group averages 40 participants at each festival and many members come back for years, often with friends in tow. ALL acoustic instruments (and we mean all – voice to violin to xylophone, harp to horn) are welcome. All levels are welcome. Every single child, regardless of skill level, has a part to play. Even if it’s the simplest part, we’ll help them find it!

Sight-reading music is optional. We post the year’s program online in the spring. This includes audio files for ear-learners, with song lyrics and music notation for strings and horns. But even if you miss these, we teach everything at the festival, so don’t let that stop you from joining the band. We don’t use sheet music on the performance stage, though the rhythm section sometimes tapes their chord charts on the floor like the pros.

We want them to be a band, have eye contact, communicate with each other and the audience. This is not a recital. Teachers play with them onstage. We all played with our mentors as young people – that’s how we developed the traditional repertoire and styles that we teach.

Some band members have grown up with the group and playing music together is a high point of their summer. Albany area fiddler and program alum Colleen Holroyd (now an associate at the National Council for the Traditional Arts), went from charter member to teaching volunteer. She says:

The Great Groove Band has shown me how to play, perform, and pass it on, opening windows and doors of opportunity.”

Says her mother, Nancy Holroyd,

Not only did Colleen learn to make the kind of music that she loves, she learned to pass it on. Particularly valuable is the Groove Band experience of turning a tune into a performance.”

Who are the teachers?

Molly Hebert-Wilson – director, songs, vocal arrangements, acoustic bass
Donna Hébert – founder, fiddle, string arranging
Max Cohen – guitar, rhythm, vocal & instrumental arranging
Autumn Rose Lester – fiddle
Lui Collins – songs, ukulele, horn arranging, clarinet
Rob Pruyn-Bush – winds, banjo, keyboard
Alex Bell – percussion
Noam Berg – mandolin

Multi-instrumentalist George Wilson joins us at Philly Folk Fest. We couldn’t do it without our skilled volunteers, including school music teacher Brian Weilland and others. Our crew transforms even the youngest from shy newbies to band members in three days!

What music do we play together?

The repertoire ranges from Amazing Grace to Norwegian waltzes to Irish jigs and Scottish marches and Old-Time reels and folk songs from around the world. Each group learns a new set of tunes, chords, rhythms and lyrics on the spot, by ear, sometimes in Irish or French or another language. One year we heard a girl tootling “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” on a recorder and turned that into one of our songs, with vocal, lead, harmony and rhythm parts. It’s never the same program and it’s always FUN!

Jammin’

Don’t be afraid

Just let go

Take a deep breath

and look into

each other’s eyes

Friend and peer

Equals

Tuck your fiddles

and raise your bows

ready to share

music:

conversation

without words

Enter the sound

Let its will

guide yours

Swing on

the groove

Hand it

back and forth

Magic carpet ride

Roller coaster tune

A journey round your ears

and every so often,

your eyes – softly shut

to better hear the music

in your head –

open wide, and you catch a

through-the-looking-glass glimpse

of another soul