Summertime = summer camp, doesnât it? To musicians, though, camps of summer are only marginally related to The Parent Trap or Wet Hot American Summer motifs. Music camps borrow the familiar grounds, dormitories, and wood panel-clad mess halls and classrooms for a week or two here and there, when they would otherwise be left vacant, and then fill them with pickers and tunes. Itâs an entirely different summer camp category, but theyâre never less nostalgic, or memorable, or convivial, or sweltering than their more mainstream counterparts, even if they are a special breed of their own.
Mike Block, an acclaimed and traveled cellist, is a founder, proprietor, and curator of just such a music camp, and an experienced instructor at many others as well. His latest album, Final Night at Camp: Deluxe Edition, plays exactly like an end-of-week faculty concert, drawing on musicians and pickers who are just as familiar with the wonders and woes of folk music camps as he is. The title track seemingly mirrors a week a camp, for just as you begin to become comfortable and familiar with your surroundings, the craziness (sleep deprivation? One crazy, all-night jam? That one student who refuses to ask an actual question, opting for, âThis is more of a comment, reallyâŠâ instead?) sets in! On the cello-centered, original instrumental, that âcrazinessâ is a wildly dissonant, dynamic breakdown, that reharmonizes the tuneâs melodic hook fantastically and frenetically mid-song. But, just like camp, when everything settles, everything is finally sorted out and the time has elapsed, weâve learned something — and we wish that the âFinal Night at Campâ hadnât come to a close so soon.
