Colorado Roots Music Camp
Camp I
May 31 – June 6, 2026
Arrival: 4:00pm Sunday
Departure: 9:00am Saturday
Colorado Roots Music
Camp I
May 31 – June 6, 2026
Arrival: 4:00–5:00pm Sunday
Departure: 9:00am Saturday
Activities
Daily Instrument Classes
taught by professionals
Daily Jams & Music Circles
Band Scramble
Daily Class Schedule
2026 Instructors – Class Offerings yet to come
craig akin
Whether he’s playing upright or electric bass, on stage or in the studio, Craig Akin is comfortable and creative, and consistently delivers the goods. Born in Tulsa, OK to a musician mother, Craig was encouraged to take piano lessons before learning trumpet in the public school music program. In high school he picked up the guitar and soon began learning theory and harmony.
This obsession led Craig to pursue a degree in music education starting in Gunnison, CO. While at Western State College, he switched from guitar to electric bass and after two years transferred to the University of Kansas to play trumpet, electric bass, finish his degree, and begin what would change his life forever-the upright bass.
After 10 years cutting his teeth in Kansas City’s jazz & blues scene, followed by 17 years in NYC where he played blues, jazz, pop, rock, and bluegrass, he currently can be found playing and recording in Nashville, TN. Craig has performed over 5,000 shows, contributed to more than 100 albums and added a home recording studio to his artistic arsenal.
The summer of 2024 he was honored to teach at the Kansas City Bass Workshop, where 65 bass players gathered to further their skills on the instrument.
John Corzine
Man/Human on the porch – A unique feature of Colorado Roots Music Camp, this position is dedicated to jamming with campers, playing along with their songs or teaching a new tune. Often, there are treats from the kitchen.
John Corzine has been part of the southern California acoustic music scene for more than 40 years. Festivals and contests, Disneyland and dance floors, coffee houses and concert halls — John has performed throughout the southland, having gathered a collection of some of the best bluegrass, old-time, country and folk music you’ll find. Influenced and inspired for life by meeting Doc Watson at age of 9 years old, John spent his early years in local flatpicking and clawhammer banjo contests and began performing bluegrass and old-time music professionally shortly thereafter. John performed and toured with Philo/Flying Fish recording artists Jim Ringer and Mary McCaslin, and was featured on Mary’s A Life and Time album.
John has played in many area bands over the years, often with his wife Peggy Corzine on bass and vocals. John and Peggy currently perform with their youngest son Cody as the Corzines, and you can hear him this summer with the Coyote Brothers at the California Bluegrass Association’s Father’s Day Festival in Grass Valley, CA.
John comes to Camp to share his teaching and performing experience in the use of the guitar as a lead instrument, as the rhythmic foundation in a bluegrass and old-time band setting, and as the melodic and complementary background to vocal performance. (Last update 2021)
Mandy Danzig
Classes: Ukele & Clawhammer banjo
Mandy plays almost anything with strings, and during her shows, she flows effortlessly from one instrument to another, weaving in and out of songs with her effervescent storytelling. Shows are rollicking romps through traditional and original music filled with joy, and an invitation for everyone to join the choir and sing along.
As a teacher she is dedicated to the idea that the act of making music belongs in everyone’s life regardless of skill. Classes are a joyous supportive between student and teacher in pursuit of that goal. Mandy (She/Her/Hers) used to perform and teach under a different name and pronouns but she changed her name when she came out as transgender in December of 2019.
A member of the duo Otter Creek, her song “The Fiddle Preacher” reached the top 10 on the Folk DJ charts. She has performed with the Salt Lake Choral Artists, the Southern Nevada Musical Arts Society, and the Utopia Early Music Ensemble in state premiers and programs that blend both classical and folk traditions. In collaboration with Wendy Lowder, her arrangement and performance was on TLC’s Sister Wives. She is on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as MandyLynnDanzig and can be found online at MandyLynnDanzig.com. (Last update 2025)
Ryan Drickey
Classes: Fiddle
Ryan Drickey is a lifelong student of musical styles. He immersed himself first in classical music, eventually earning a Masters degree in Violin from the University of Colorado at Boulder. There he studied jazz in addition to classical violin, which began his fascination with American musical traditions. He cut his teeth in the thriving bluegrass scene of the Colorado Front Range, winning the Rockygrass fiddle contest and playing at festivals across the country. He plays with the bluegrass/americana outfit FY5, and freelances in styles ranging from classical chamber music to old time American fiddle. Ryan is a Fulbright scholar, having spent a year in Sweden teaching American roots music through the Royal College of Music, Stockholm, while learning from Swedish folk masters such as Roger Tallroth, Ale Möller, and Ellika Frisell.
Dave Firestine
Classes: Mandolin & Old time tunes
Dave pulls out the “take no prisoners” style of playing at every dance – bringing the tunes to their full potential and beyond. He is a tune-meister and music jams are super fun when he is in the driver’s seat.
Originally a drummer, his strong sense of rhythm and syncopation is the foundation of his playing and tune writing, and truthfully he is never happier than when he gets to pull out the laptop drum kit to back swing and honky tonk tunes. Don’t worry, he can access his sensitive side when playing waltzes and beautiful melodies.
Dave is a music vagrant retiree now, but before that, he was Senior Gyzmologist building lightning detection systems. He is currently playing with the dance bands STEAM! (www.dancetosteam.com) and The Privy Tippers.
Abbie Gardner
Classes: Dobro & Beyond beginning guitar
Best known as a founding member of Americana harmony trio Red Molly, Abbie Gardner is a joyful dobro player and singer/songwriter with an infectious smile. She loves teaching dobro and songwriting, whether in person or with her down-to-earth “Woodshed” YouTube lessons filmed from her home in the shadow of New York City. Abbie goes out of her way to make it fun and achievable, while seeking to forever expand her own knowledge.
Abbie has taught dobro at Nashville Dobro Camp, Grand Targhee, ResoSummit and Rockygrass Academy. She specializes in singing while playing, dobro as a rhythm instrument, treating musician’s injuries (as an Occupational Therapist) and creating lyrical solos in G tuning or D tuning. On the songwriting side, Abbie has taught at Swannanoa Gathering, Summer Songs, and New England Songwriter’s Retreat; as well as running her own Zoom writing classes seasonally since April 2020. She’s endlessly fascinated by music, so there are no dumb questions in her classes. (Last update 2023)
emory lester
Classes: Mandolin
Emory Lester has been a notable fixture in the acoustic mandolin world for the past four decades, and is an innovator of mandolin technique and a renowned creative artist, multi-instrumentalist, and instructor. His large body of recorded work has placed him among the elite mandolinist of our time. He has inspired and influenced many of our current generation’s mandolin players, and pointed the way with his clean, clear, fast and efficient mandolin technique.
Emory has performed across the U.S., Canada, Europe, U.K. and Czech Republic, with Clawgrass banjoist Mark Johnson, Wayne Taylor and Appaloosa, and his own Emory Lester Set, as well as a roster of famous notables such as Del McCoury, Tony Rice, Steve Martin (on The David Letterman Show), Babik Reinhardt (son of Django), and Jim Hurst, to name a few.
He has a long and impressive body of recordings including nine solo albums, all of which showcase Emory’s skills as a composer, arranger and creative multi-instrumentalist. A sought-after instructor of mandolin, banjo and guitar, he has a world-wide roster of online students and has taught at many prestigious music camps and workshops in the U.S., Canada, Europe and the U.K. for the past 25 years. (Last update 2024)
Lewis Mock
Classes: Rock blues licks for acoustic guitar & Bluegrass guitar
Lewis Mock is a multi-instrumentalist/vocalist who began performing professionally at eight years of age.
In 1990 he became the house guitarist at the Broadmoor International Hotel and Resort in Colorado Springs, where for almost twenty-seven years, he performed nightly. He has opened for many internationally known artists, and has performed with award-winning artists: Melissa Manchester, Maureen McGovern, Suzy Bogguss, and Debbie Boone, and the John Denver Band.
He is a multiple award winning songwriter. He has performed on award-winning national television commercials and movie soundtracks. His licks have been published in Guitar Player Magazine. For ten years he was a Professor at the Colorado Springs Conservatory teaching guitar and musicianship, and is a regular instructor at the Colorado Roots Music Camps. He is a 2018 inductee into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame.
Lewis is currently recording, writing, and performing with the Colorado bluegrass powerhouse, the Red Mountain Boys. (Update 2024)
Cindy Scott
Classes: Voice
Cindy Scott’s path has been, well, different. Raised in a family of musicians, her first instrument was flute, which earned her a scholarship to Louisiana State University. She went on to get an MBA and learned to speak German and Spanish along the way. During a study abroad program, she began singing in the jazz cellars of Germany with local musicians. Back in the US, she climbed the corporate ladder for a while, but in 2005, left a successful business career for a musician’s life in New Orleans, where she promptly lost all her household belongings to Hurricane Katrina. She decided to stick around and has since become firmly rooted in the rich music scene of the Crescent City.
Cindy maintains an active performance schedule in New Orleans and elsewhere. She has performed in cities all over the US and Europe and in more exotic locales like Mexico, Turkey, and Kazakhstan. Her recording “Let the Devil Take Tomorrow” won OffBeat Magazine’s Best Contemporary Jazz Album award for 2010, and All About Jazz said of her, “The Devil may take tomorrow, but … Cindy Scott clearly owns today.” She is currently working on her fourth album, which will reflect more of her singer-songwriter tendencies.
Cindy is also a respected voice instructor of many styles. She has taught contemporary voice at both the University of New Orleans and Loyola University, and as of 2016, Berklee College of Music. She’s taught a myriad of professional vocalists, and was hired to coach Oscar-winning actor Octavia Spencer and actor-comedian Russell Brand. One of her former students, Jon Cleary, just won a GRAMMY™ for his recording “GoGo Juice.”
…and Roots Camp founder Charlie Hall was proud to claim her as his cousin. (Last update 2018)
Cosy Sheridan
Classes: Guitar & songwriting
Cosy Sheridan first appeared on the national folk scene in 1992 when she won the songwriting contests at The Kerrville Folk Festival and The Telluride Bluegrass Festival. The Boston Globe dubbed her “one of the best new singer-songwriters in the United States.”
She is a veteran touring performer of the folk coffeehouses from Boston to Seattle, as well as The Cowgirl Hall of Fame, Carnegie Hall and on the Jerry Lewis Telethon. “You can’t make it into double digits, and continue touring for twenty or so years, unless you know what you’re doing, and do it well,” wrote The Chicago Examiner.
Her 2021 CD A Beautiful Sound charted in the Top 10 on the folk radio charts, as did her 2018 release My Fence & My Neighbor. Her CD Pretty Bird was listed among Sing Out Magazine’s Great CDs of 2014.
When the pandemic hit she came off the road and now reaches her audience through her weekly Tuesday morning livestream concerts. She plays a percussive guitar style backed backed up by bass player Charlie Koch.
Cosy teaches classes in songwriting, performance and guitar at workshops and adult music camps across the country. She is the director of Moab Folk Camp in Moab, Utah.
Assistant to the Director
Charlie Koch
Classes: Falling in love with chords
Charlie Koch has trained horses, sailed across the Atlantic more than once, and fronted an R&B band. He skippered a race boat for Buckminster Fuller. He whipped in for a fox hunt in Ireland and saddle-broke young horses on a breeding farm in France. He taught tennis, skiing, and horseback riding. He trained as a body-oriented psychotherapist. These days, he tours playing bass for singer/songwriter Cosy Sheridan.
Jam Classes & Informal
There will be jam classes and a lot of spontaneous jamming during the camp, so join in as they are big fun. If you’re a newbie and experiencing the (unfounded) “Jam Fear” that everyone does, don’t be intimidated. Everyone experiences Jam Fear when they start, if they have any sense. At first it may be a little scary, but it’ll soon turn into a lot of fun. Some reasons you might hesitate:
- “They’re going to hear me mess up.” No, they’re all busy trying to do their own thing. Very rarely in the average jam does anyone even hear the stuff you’re doing, since they’re worried about their own.
- “I’ll make mistakes.” Yes, you will, as everyone does, and if you’re not beating the daylights out of your instrument, you’re the only one who will hear them.
- “I’ll be put on the spot.” No, in a jam, you can always choose to hang back. If anyone calls on you to take a solo, a shake of your head is a perfectly legitimate response.
- “I can’t keep up.” Maybe so, maybe not. If you can’t, you can still play the chords or notes that sound OK to you as the music passes by.
The fact is that just like that cold water, it’s sometimes a bit scary to jump in the first time, but once you’re used to it, you’re telling everyone that they should jump in; what a bunch of weenies! Please, give the jams a try which may include: Swing Jams, Slow Jams, Bluegrass Jams, Acapella Jams, Honkey Tonk Jams or Old Time Jams.
Registration Fees
Online registration opens one year prior to the retreat.
Camp Staff
Cosy Sheridan, Co-Director
Cosy Sheridan has been called “one of the era’s finest and most thoughtful singer-songwriters.” She first caught the attention of national folk audiences in 1992 when she won both the Kerrville Folk Festival’s NewFolk Award and The Telluride Bluegrass Festival Troubadour Contest, then released her critically-acclaimed debut CD Quietly Led on Waterbug Records. She has released nine CDs, her music is featured in the Robert Fulghum multi-media novel The Third Wish and she tours consistently throughout the US. Her concerts are wide-ranging explorations of modern mythology (meet Hades the Biker), love songs for adults, contemporary philosophy for the thoughtfully-minded and her signature parody on aging and women. Throughout this journey, her lyrical dexterity is backed by her distinctive, percussive bluesy-gospel guitar style. A guitar student of instrumental luminaries such as Guy Van Duser and Eric Schoenberg and a voice student at The Berklee School of Music, she brings a depth of experience to her craft. For the past 18 years, she has taught classes in songwriting, performance and guitar at workshops and adult music camps across the country including The Puget Sound Guitar Workshop and The Swannanoa Gathering. In 2008 she co-founded The Moab Folk Camp.
Dave Firestine, Co-Director
Dave pulls out the “take no prisoners” style of playing at every dance – bringing the tunes to their full potential and beyond. He is a tune-meister and music jams are super fun when he is in the driver’s seat.
Originally a drummer, his strong sense of rhythm and syncopation is the foundation of his playing and tune writing, and truthfully he is never happier than when he gets to pull out the laptop drum kit to back swing and honky tonk tunes. Don’t worry, he can access his sensitive side when playing waltzes and beautiful melodies.
Dave is a music vagrant retiree now, but before that, he was Senior Gyzmologist building lightning detection systems. He is currently playing with the dance bands STEAM! (www.dancetosteam.com) and The Privy Tippers.
Charlie Hall, Founder
After earning a bachelor’s degree in Music Education with emphasis in French horn, Charlie Hall started out as a member of the 6th US Army Band in San Francisco. When real life reared its ugly head, he found he needed a day job, which he found in computers from 1983 to 2003. From 2003 to his retirement in 2017, he was a full-time guitar, mandolin and bass teacher. He’s taught high school band as well as classes in beginning guitar, fingerpicking, bluegrass guitar, music theory and jamming. Charlie was a founder and driving force of the Black Rose Acoustic Society in Colorado Springs, a favorite destination for roots musicians and roots music fans. He performed for ten years with the popular folk/bluegrass band Black Rose, was a finalist in the 2000 National Fingerpicking Championship and was nominated Bluegrass Guitarist of the Year in 1996 by the Colorado Bluegrass Music Society. With his wife Marianne Danehy, Charlie was creator & co-director of the Colorado Roots Music Camp from 2006-2017. He and Marianne are thrilled to hand off management of the Roots Camp to the folks at the Rocky Mountain Mennonite Camp as well as Cosy Sheridan and Raul Reynoso.
December 11, 2018, we said goodby to Charlie who passed away after a valiant battle with brain cancer. He leaves behind a large legacy of music and education and those who knew him are better for it. May we all carry on his legacy of life, love and life-long music!
Marianne Danehy, Founder
Marianne Danehy discovered “her people” around 2002; that is, those who played roots music. From 2005 to 2014, she taught violin and fiddling in Colorado Springs, and is a registered instructor with the Suzuki Association of the Americas. Undaunted by two degrees and a former life in Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics, she’s the mother of two nearly-grown kids, William and Anna. Marianne is an excellent teacher and an expert at getting folks started both on violin and fiddle styles. From 2006-2017, along with her husband Charlie Hall, she was co-director of the Colorado Roots Music Camp.
Alumni Staff
Colorado Roots Music Camp has enjoyed wonderful and talented instructors over the years since its beginnings in 2006. Our thanks to them for thier part of the rich legacy and music community created each week.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where can I learn more about my stay at RMMC (i.e. accommodations, altitude, creation care).
Please visit the “Reservation Guide” page of the Rocky Mountain website for “YOUR STAY WITH US”, “MOUNTAIN LIVING” & “CREATION CARE” information.
What foodservice is offered? Can you accommodate dietary restrictions?
Camp is pleased to offer a great selection of food choices (View Food Service) which include a main dish option, vegetarian option, salad (lunch & supper), and dessert (lunch & supper) Cold beverages (water, orange, apple, grape, crabapple) and hot beverages (coffee, tea, hot chocolate) are also provided.
As much as possible, the camp will accommodate dietary restrictions. An option will be given to list all of your dietary restrictions during registration. We cannot accommodate dietary preferences.
RMMC is not a peanut/nut free location since we serve a variety of campers and guest groups utilizing their own kitchen facilities.
If flying in from Colorado Springs (COS) or Denver (DIA), how can I get to camp?
Transportation to camp can be done via Uber or other hired transportaition OR if someone you already know is coming can offer you a ride. Frequently, after a week of good music and fellowship, folks have found a ride to Colorado Springs or Denver from people already heading that way.
If flying, it’s hard to beat the Colorado Springs airport (COS) as the closest airport to camp. Of course, ticket prices are what they are and you might find a better rate into Denver International Airport (DIA). Groome Transportation offers shuttle service between Denver and Colorado Springs for around $55 each way).
Can visitors be invited to Roots Music Camp during my stay?
Only campers and their paid companions are permitted during the camp session. However, guest tickets (5 or so) are available on a first come/first serve basis for someone you’ld like to bring to an evening concert ($15/person). Be a good friend to Roots Music by inquiring about availability with the Roots office staff the day BEFORE your visitor might come.
What is the Charlie Hall Scholarship Fund?
- How to give: Donors can support the next generation of musicians by writing a check to Roots Music Camp earmarked “Charlie Hall Scholarship Fund” and sending to: Roots Music Camp, 709 County Rd 62, Divide CO, 80814. Donations accepted by credit card as well by calling the camp office (719-687-9506).
- Who my apply: College age and younger (age 25), preference to first time campers.
- How to apply: Contact the Colorado Roots Camp Office by email at ([email protected]) for application details.
- Scholarship amount: Full Registration for Chalet, Rustic Cabin or Campground accommodations. Commuters too!
- Number of scholarships: As funds allow for student interest, our goal is for 1-2 scholarships per camp session. Unfortunately, if there are no donors, there is no scholarship. GO DONORS!
- Awarded Scholarships: Applications will be reviewed (Colorado Roots Music Camp Leadership Team) and scholarships awarded after April 1st or until available spots are filled.
What should I NOT bring to camp?
- Pets of all sizes (Note: if you have a disability, please contact camp about your service animal)
- Firearms
- Alcohol
- Tobacco
- Illicit drugs
- Marijuana
- Dirt bikes
- Firework
- Four Wheelers
- Drones
Do you have to be Mennonite to attend camp?
While teachings during the retreat are Bible-based and from a Mennonite perspective, campers of all faiths are respected and welcome to attend.