Ivan Rosenberg – photo © Mike Melnyk
This article is another recurring contribution from Bluegrass Canada, the quarterly magazine of the Bluegrass Music Association of Canada. Editor Mike Higgins has promised to send us updates from the scene up north. This one was written by Karen DeCoste.
Dobro pickin’ from California to New Brunswick
A professional musician who lives with his family in Moncton, NB, Ivan and his wife, and fellow musician Kristin Cavoukian and their daughter Lucie moved to Moncton in 2021. Their new band, The Hound Dog Ramblers, has just been announced, and we are still looking forward to seeing them perform. Now I need to back up a bit and share some history of the man behind the dobro.
Ivan grew up in Greenbrae, California. He had early music exposure from his father, Len Rosenberg, who played in rock and country & western bands. His mother Sandra played piano and guitar at home. Ivan took special notice of his father’s Chet Atkins and Merle Travis-style guitar playing. There was an extensive record collection to listen to at home, and while exploring Doc Watson, this led to Norman Blake, and eventually to Tony Rice. Ivan started playing guitar as a teenager and his interest in bluegrass music grew.
Ivan’s favorite instrument to play is the resonator guitar. He is an accomplished clawhammer banjo and fingerstyle guitar player as well. Ivan’s first exposure to live bluegrass music was seeing The Compost Mountain Boys in Arcata, CA in 1990. He first saw Jerry Douglas play the dobro when the Masters of the Steel String Guitar tour stopped by Humboldt State University. He went out the next morning to Wildwood Music and purchased his first Dobro.
Ivan started playing in bluegrass bands in the early 1990s in Missoula, Montana. He then took a bit of a detour when he went to grad school in California to get his Masters in Rhetoric, after which he taught writing at Sonoma State University. His teaching background set him up well for his career in teaching the resonator guitar that he is well known for today. By the early 2000s Ivan had gone professional as a bluegrass player, and carved a niche out for himself.
His music camp teaching career started in BC when his band, Chris Stuart & Back Country, was hired to teach at the British Columbia Bluegrass Workshop.
“At the time there were just a handful of Dobro players putting out albums of original music or instructional material, and just a few Dobro teachers who knew how to put together a week’s worth of organized instruction. So just by virtue of having a couple of tablature books and some music camp experience, it wasn’t long before I was getting hired at most of the prominent bluegrass music workshops.”
Ivan has taught at music camps in Canada, the US, and the UK approximately 100 times. He was the BC Bluegrass Workshop Program Director for five years, and later Program Director of Walker Creek Music Camp in California and Old School Bluegrass Camp in Elphin, Ontario.
During the pandemic, virtual teaching camps had become popular. Ivan mentioned that these online camps are successful as the student has time to attend a lesson and then take some time to practice before attending the next session. In person camps are more fun but limited to how much someone can take in and learn in a shorter period of time. They both have their own unique teaching and learning advantages. Ivan is currently teaching a series of ZOOM workshops for IBMA-winning Nashville Acoustic Camps.
With eight solo CDs to his name, and many other collaborative recordings, Ivan’s first solo release in 2001 led to his music being in the background of television programs such as The Daily Show and Oprah. County Bluegrass Festival in Fort Fairfield, Maine later this year.
Ivan also won an IBMA award for co-writing the 2009 Song of the Year, Don’t Throw Mama’s Flowers Away (performed by Danny Paisley), and he played on the Jerry Douglas-produced CD, Southern Filibuster: A Tribute to Tut Taylor.
Ivan has his own studio where he recorded most of his own albums, and he has mixed and mastered two Juno-nominated albums: John Reischman’s New Time & Old Acoustic and Frank Evans & Ben Plotnick’s “Madison Archives.”
Ivan has had the chance to play with some of his favorite musicians. He has worked a lot with Chris Coole over his career and says, “Chris is an incredible clawhammer banjo player and songwriter. We have a similar approach to acoustic duos, leaving lots of space, giving an arc to each arrangement, and focusing on the lyrical and emotional content of each song.” Ivan has also performed several times with Chris Jones.
While learning the Dobro, Ivan had spent a lot of time listening to Jones’s CDs with a focus on Rob Ickes’s playing. So Ivan already knew many of the songs when he and Chris had the opportunity to perform, both as a duo, and when Ivan filled in with Chris Jones & The Night Drivers. Ivan and Chris will be performing at the County Bluegrass Festival in Fort Fairfield, Maine later this year. Ivan says, “As you can tell, I’ll play with anyone named Chris. I’ve performed with Chris Stuart, Chris Jones, Chris Coole, Chris Glass, Chris Stevens, and probably more. So if you’re a bluegrass musician named Chris, give me a call.”
Ivan and Kristin met in Ontario where she was playing with the band Houndstooth. Kristin is from Ontario. Ivan enjoyed the Ontario music scene saying, “It is a very healthy, friendly, and non-competitive acoustic music community.”
During the pandemic Ivan, Kristin, and Lucie found themselves locked down in an apartment with both working from home, and Lucie attending school online. They had to get out. They had some exposure from prior visits to the Maritimes and chose Moncton as their new home. Ivan met Shane Douthwright at the Nova Scotia Bluegrass & Oldtime Music Festival in 2022, and played many shows and festivals with Shane last year. Ivan comments on the talent in the Maritimes as being comparable to the major bluegrass music regions in the southeast US with generally more of a traditional bluegrass aesthetic like you may hear at SPBGMA.
Before moving to New Brunswick, Ivan was unaware of most of the exceptionally high-quality vocalists and incredible pickers from this region. As we were talking about some of the musicians in the area, Ivan mentioned Emile Robichaud, and after hearing him the first time thinking, he is the “Canadian Larry Sparks.” Ivan has been spreading the word about bluegrass in Atlantic Canada to his contacts in Ontario, Alberta, and BC, and has recommended many bands to festival promoters in central and western Canada.
Once Ivan and Kristin met Kyle Legere, Ron Girouard and Joe Potter, they decided to start a new band called The Hound Dog Ramblers. Their first events are coming up early this spring. You can also see them this summer at the 37th Annual PEI Bluegrass & Oldtime Music Festival, the 51st Annual NS Bluegrass & Oldtime Music Festival, and the Rogersville Bluegrass Festival. We also hear Lucie is taking fiddle lessons from Matt Hayes, and perhaps we will be hearing some great fiddle playing from her over the summer.
(the editor’s notes of interest) Kristin Cavoukian was a valued contributor to Bluegrass Canada magazine. Her July 2018 article, Bluegrass In The Big Smoke, pulls back the curtain on Toronto Bluegrass. There has always been plenty of high lonesome music around the city.
From Chris Coole’s web site: “I met Ivan Rosenberg at The BC Bluegrass Workshops in around 2005. We hit if off right away both musically and socially. Ivan is one of the modern masters of the dobro; his tone and taste are second to none. We started touring together in 2009, and we’re fond of saying that we’re “the only clawhammer and dobro duet in the known universe.” We recorded our first album, Farewell Trion, in 2011, and released the follow up, Return to Trion, in 2014. We continue to tour and are playing several festivals this summer. For more info, and to check out our music, visit our website.
