 Backroads is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money by the vote of the people November 4th, 2008. My name is Cory Campbell. I'm originally from Central Michigan and I'm an old time musician, focusing mainly on claw hammer banjo and fiddle tunes. And when did you first get into music? I started playing music about 10 or 11 years ago right after high school. I just kind of dabbling with acoustic guitar, some electric, and then just moving more towards acoustic folk music, banjo and fiddle type stuff. And when did you first start performing music? I first started performing probably about five years into it just as like an open mic duet, just some people in the local music scene around my college, just kind of informally jamming and playing at parties and things like that. And then later on I was in a classic rock and country cover band. Who are you to old time music? Well like I said, I was hanging around that coffee shop a lot and on Tuesday nights they had an old time jam with about five people sitting around playing fiddle, guitar, bass. I mean it was just great to sit and listen to, do homework, you know, whatever. After a while I would just go there every Tuesday night and I decided to approach these guys and see if I could sit in and play some banjo with them. That's the other thing about old time music is it's very welcoming, it's very collaborative, so of course they're like sure, you know, and I just kind of, I didn't know much but I just followed along and eventually just learned by ear. So what's it like performing that style of music? Well I like performing old time music because it can be very trance-like. Kind of the main objective of old time is to immerse yourself in the tune and really get into the groove of it. And so that makes for an easy place to perform, to kind of go to while you're performing. Originally I was pretty shy, you know, with music and everything so old time really helped me open up to be able to perform well in front of people I think. Right, yeah, this tune is called Crow and the Spruce Tree. I figured that name out back in Michigan but I think coming here was really the place to finish the tune. Since you came from the Michigan music scene, now you're in the Minnesota music scene, what's kind of like the community in Minnesota been like? Well the community in Minnesota has been great, very welcoming. There is a lot of music going on here, that's something I never really knew when I was younger. I'm from Michigan, it's kind of a small town, you got to drive about half hour to 45 minutes to get to anything culturally relevant. So there wasn't a lot of music going on, definitely not a lot of old time. I was lucky to find the people that I did but it seems like there's a lot more going on in Minnesota and I'm glad to be here and be a part of it. Another one that I wrote probably about five years ago, it's called the Melting Snow. It was wintertime right before I moved out of Michigan. I just went through a breakup that I didn't really see coming and I was just feeling really lost, you know, and it was the end of winter which is always kind of difficult. I just started playing the banjo too, probably only about three months into it and it just kind of came out one day and that's kind of how all of my songwriting kind of happens. Whenever I plan a song it just never really works out but then I'll be just messing around either sitting in my backyard or on the porch or something and all of a sudden I start playing something and it's like, whoa, this could be a song. So yeah, that was probably the first good banjo tune that I wrote and I'm looking forward to playing that for you guys tonight and seeing what people get out of it. Thanks everybody. Thanks for coming. Thanks for sticking around.