Guitar
Val Mindel is a longtime musician, teacher and workshop leader, known for helping singers achieve that close, buzzy harmony that is a pillar of American old-time and early-country harmony. She also addresses such indefinables as tone (that high lonesome sound), ornamentation, blend and more. She is a veteran staff member at the Augusta Heritage Center’s various weeks and in addition has taught at numerous music camps across the U.S. and abroad, including: the Ashokan Center (Southern Week and the Old-Time Rollick), Centrum (Voice Works and Fiddle Tunes), Allegheny Echoes and, in the U.K., Sore Fingers. She is a founding member of the California-based Any Old Time string band (check out the band’s compilation album, I Bid You Goodnight on Smithsonian Folkways), and has two CDs with daughter and old-time country musician Emily Miller (In the Valley and Close to Home). Val is also the author of So You Want to Sing Folk Music, part of the “So You Want to Sing” series for Rowman & Littlefield and the National Association of Teachers of Singing. She is also coauthor (with Dr. Kathy Bullock), of a chapter on traditional singing for the soon-to-be-published Oxford Handbook of Voice Pedagogy. When she is not immersed in country music she plays fiddle and sings with the West Virginia-based Celtic band, The Mud Larks. She lives in Elkins, West Virginia.
