Patrick Costello: the Creative Commons and the Folk Process
Patrick Costello explains why he released his Banjo Instruction books under a Creative Commons license. As usual with Patrick that involves a story…
Right about now we need a little bit of back-story: Earlier that year Dear Old Dad and I had given up taking bluegrass banjo lessons in the hopes of finding somebody to teach us how to frail. We had discovered frailing by accident. You see, back then Dear old Dad was a crack shot with a black powder rifle and most of our summers were spent going out to rendezvous. We had a pretty accurate fur-trade-era campsite right down to a Sioux lodge. Anyway, we were bunked down for the night and I was lying by the fire wrapped up in an old carriage blanket made from a grizzly bear pelt. I was watching the smoke wave up through the opening at the top of the lodge where the poles crossed when all of a sudden we heard this sound coming out of another camp in the darkness of the forest. It was a banjo, but it wasn’t like anything I’d ever heard before. Dear old Dad bolted up and ran out into the woods to find out who was playing. He came back a while later saying that the guy with the banjo said he was “frailing”. “Frailing? What’s that?” “I don’t know. The *#&$^% wouldn’t tell me.” That started us on a search for somebody how knew what frailing was. We couldn’t get the sound out of our heads. Back to the library: So I’m looking at this grizzled and grubby old guy with a banjo and I decided to ask him if he knew anything about frailing. He gave me a big grin, swung the banjo from behind him and knocked out a tune. As soon as he was finished playing I dragged him by the hand to my house telling him in no uncertain terms that he was staying for dinner and giving my dad a banjo lesson. That was the start of a friendship that lasted more than twenty years.
Patrick is a great story teller and his pieces are worth reading for that alone.
Creative Commons licenses allow musicians/authors/artists etc to selectively release some rights to reproduce & modify their work. I agree with Patrick that it’s a concept the folk community should be interested in.
He used to make the full text of his books available online. The links that lead to them now just lead to offers to purchase the printed book. I’m not sure if he decided to pull them or it’s just an accident in the course of reshuffling his web site. Oops I missed this post where he explains that they were eating too much bandwidth and that he will email you a copy if you ask.
Update 3/18/07 These days you can find Patrick’s books at his website howandtao.com.
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Scott December 6th, 2006 at 5:20 pm #
I emailed Patrick asking about his books, I was short at the time and Christmas was coming up, so for my ten year old boy’s sake, I was just making sure if the one I wanted to order was the right one for me. He responded telling me to save my Christmas money and download it for free. This was the 5 String Banjo book, he also gave me the link for the Tao of Banjo and the Tao of Guitar for my use. I responded that it was very generous of him, and he said no it wasn’t, that 20 yrs ago sharing information was standard practice in the folk world.
The books are absolutely great, and if you can, not very expensive for the content, very cheap. This is a true folk artist in every sense. He’s passing on a wealth of information that he accrued during his youth and onward while doing what folk artists do, go everywhere with their instrument and playing without a care of what others might think, and reactions he got, and often from true masters. Highly recommended
John Dotson January 30th, 2007 at 11:20 pm #
Patrick is a straight shooter and his video’s are well done. But, don’t purchase any of his video’s just for the excellent instruction. Be prepared to watch how he interacts with his Father. They have a laid back,”folksy” act that is fun to watch. I would like to see more jamming and less chatting. Still he has outstanding materials. Get your hands and eyes on them as soon as you can.