Keith Yoder

The Camp Guy

If you have attended any of the popular bluegrass music camps that occur around the country every year, you have probably met Keith Yoder. Keith has been an instructor at Steve Kaufman’s Acoustic Camp, Colorado Roots Music Camp, Merlefest Jam Camp, NimbleFingers, Strawberry Jam Camp, Acoustic Music Camp, Acoustic Alaska Guitar Camp, AmanaJam, Mountain Fever Bluegrass Camp, Hideaway Camp, Wander Down Music Festival and Walker Creek Music Camp—to name a few.  

Keith is a popular addition to these camps because he loves to organize jams with the campers. He said, “I love to play music with others. When class is done, I enjoy hanging out and jamming with students.” Because this is what he loves to do, camp organizers usually put Keith in charge of the organized jams and open mics. Since Keith can play every instrument in the bluegrass band, he is able to lend advice to everyone at the jam.

Background

Keith started his musical life as a drummer in the fifth grade in school band. During his junior year in high school he also started to learn how to play the guitar. Although Keith’s music of choice at the time was 1970s and 1980s rock and roll, he had a cousin who recommended a Bill Monroe album. Keith said, “It was unlike anything that I had ever listened to.” Listening to Monroe led Keith to explore other bluegrass groups. He said, “Once I heard Tony Rice, Sam Bush, New Grass Revival and David Grisman, I was hooked.”

Keith started exploring bluegrass guitar and attending bluegrass festivals. He also started playing bluegrass with friends right away. He emphasized the importance of playing with other people right from the start, stating that many of the students he meets mostly practice by themselves at home and don’t have, or don’t make or take, the opportunity to jam with others. He feels like he was able to develop as a good backup player early on because he took the opportunity to play with other people as often as he could.

Although Keith started learning bluegrass guitar by playing rhythm—because that is all the guitar was doing on the Monroe records—he later started listening to Doc Watson, Tony Rice, Clarence White, Norman Blake and Dan Crary and started playing lead guitar. Additionally, he started to explore the bluegrass banjo because he found that every jam he attended had too many guitar players and he wanted to play something different.  

Keith graduated from high school in 1981 and stayed in his home state of Iowa when he went to college at Iowa State. It was while he was in college that he started to dive into the acoustic instrumental music of David Grisman and learned to play mandolin. He said, “Kirk Stimson, a mandolin playing friend of mine, loaned me an instrument and I started by just chopping and providing back up at jams. Having been a drummer for years, the mandolin chop made a lot of sense to me. It is the snare drum of the bluegrass band.” After learning the banjo and mandolin, fiddle, Dobro and bass followed later.

Keith’s group of bluegrass friends also formed a band called The McPunk Brothers. Keith said, “We learned to jam and play together as a band. The other members were Paul Roberts, Kirk Stimson, Mark Wilson and Daryl Yoder. We performed at a lot of festivals and events around the mid-west… in Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri and Illinois. We still get together and play occasionally.”

Teaching Bluegrass

Keith began teaching others how to play in 1994 while living in Holy Cross and then Farley, Iowa. He offered both group and private lessons and started a Monday night jam class that ran for 20 years. He said, “In Iowa it was hard for people to find anyone teaching bluegrass. I started teaching all of the bluegrass instruments and rock and roll drums. I eventually had up to 75 students per week.”

Keith taught at his first music camp in 2007 at the first AmanaJam in Iowa. That same year Steve Kaufman hired him to teach the jam class and host the open mic at his camp. He has taught at Kaufman’s camp every year since that time. The word spread about Keith’s teaching abilities and offers from other camps started coming in. 

About fifteen years ago, Keith and Linzy Martin started the Strawberry Jam Camp in Strawberry Point, Iowa. One of the goals of this camp was to encourage young people to become involved in bluegrass…and it is working. This past July the camp had 80 attendees and half of the students were kids. The camp offers six instructors (the 2023 instructors were Keith Yoder, former Blue Grass Boy Bob Black, Scott Amos, Bill Cagley, Paul Roberts and Daryl Yoder). In addition to these instructors, the camp provides four college-aged assistant instructors who are all former campers. Keith said, “The camp is like a family reunion where everyone gets along.” Students at camp receive instruction in band-size groups, large group instruction, and also get individual breakout sessions by instrument. 

The Unadvertised Camp in East Tennessee

Wanting to escape the mid-west winters and move to a musically rich environment, Keith and his wife moved to a rural area near Maryville, Tennessee, in 2015. They have nearly ten acres of land and 1800 square feet of their home is dedicated as the “music area.” In 2017 Keith started hosting small week-long camps at his home. The size of the camp is typically two to five people since he hosts them at home and his wife prepares some of the meals.

Keith started this no-name camp after people at the other camps he taught at asked about studying more with him. He said, “People came to my home and brought friends.” Some students have brought their whole band. Keith said, “It is kind of like a bluegrass music bed and breakfast.”

In addition to offering instruction on all of the bluegrass instruments, Keith said that he also takes the students on musical field trips. He said, “WDVX has a live show every day and we sometimes will go to that. We also go to Cade’s Cove in the Smokies and I take them to the Music Outlet in Sevierville. I may also take them to Lynn Dudenbostel’s shop since he is close by and we will go to the Jig & Reel Pub for the Tuesday night old-time jam or the Rocky Branch Community Center for their jams.” Keith adds, “Students that come to our place in East Tennessee also are given the opportunity to try different instruments, play drums and record.  These activities have become very popular. These camps are customized to meet their musical needs.  Relaxation time includes frisbee golf on the property.”

Regarding the instruction that he provides at his home camps, Keith said, “My teaching is not tune oriented. We are not going to sit and learn a break to a tune note-for-note. I like to focus on musicianship and getting people playing together.” Keith feels that if he can teach someone how to sound better in general, they can learn how to sound better on every song that they know.

While some of Keith’s small home camps may have a group of people who all play the same instrument, others are like “band labs” where he teaches musicians how the different instruments work together and function as a band.

If you, and a small group of your friends, are interested in setting up and attending one of Keith’s bed and breakfast style music camps, you can get in touch with Keith through his website, keithyodermusic.com.