14th Annual Monroe Mandolin Camp

FIND YOUR LONESOME

When Voices Find Their Harmony

Registration Opens Soon (November!)

August 18–22, 2027 | Abingdon, Virginia
Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center

Mandolin • Fiddle • Banjo • Guitar • Upright Bass • Voice

Traditional Bluegrass.  Rooted in Monroe. Made to Be Played.

Monroe Mandolin Camp was founded to fill a void: a place where musicians could study the traditional musical language created by Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys in depth—not simply learn a collection of tunes and licks. More than eighty years after Monroe began forging this music, that purpose remains at the heart of MMC.At Monroe Mandolin Camp, bluegrass is treated as a living musical language.

Find Your Lonesome: When Voices Find Their Harmony

This year, we’re diving into the High Lonesome Sound—not only through vocal harmony, but through the way voices and instruments speak, answer, weave, and harmonize with one another.

You know it when you hear it. That lift. That drive. The tension in a harmony. A tenor riding above the lead. A fiddle wrapping around a voice. A mandolin finding the edge of a melody and pushing against the beat. Banjo rolling through the spaces. Guitar holding the rhythm together. Bass underneath it all, grounding the pulse and harmony.

Voices become instruments. Instruments become voices.

A fiddle and mandolin can find harmony with one another. A banjo line can move beneath a vocal phrase. Instruments can answer, double, contrast, or weave around the human voice. Vocal parts can lock together like an instrumental arrangement. And underneath it all, rhythm, phrasing, timing, drive, tension, and space hold the conversation together. That is where the High Lonesome Sound lives.

Great bluegrass is not a group of musicians simply playing their individual parts at the same time. It is a conversation. Melody and rhythm. Voices and instruments. Solos and backup. Lead and harmony. Drive and space. Tension and release. One musician stepping forward while another knows when to support, answer, weave around the melody—or simply listen.

This year, we will explore the High Lonesome Sound in its fullest sense: not as one vocal style, one instrument, one lick, or one harmony, but as the sound that emerges when all those individual musical voices begin working together.

Hear the Whole Sound.

At the center of the week is one deceptively simple question: What makes all of these individual voices sound like bluegrass together?

For every musician, that means listening beyond your own part. Where is the pulse? Who has the melody? What is supporting it? What is answering it? Where does the tension come from? Where does the music need space? When should you lead, when should you support, and when should you simply listen?

Because the High Lonesome Sound is not created by any one voice. It emerges from the relationships between them. And somewhere inside that conversation, you begin to find your own place in the music.

More Than a Music Camp

MMC is built around serious study–we don’t just learn the music—we dig into where it came from, how it was passed down, and why it still matters. The history matters. The stories matter. The people who carried this music forward matter.

MMC is also about finding your people—musicians who are curious, generous, encouraging, and happy to keep learning no matter how long they’ve been playing. Our students leave with more than new material to work on. They leave with a deeper connection to the music, new musical relationships, and a stronger sense of where they fit inside the tradition.

At the heart of Monroe Mandolin Camp is a simple belief: To build the future of bluegrass, we have to know its roots.

Learn the language.
Understand the lineage.
Then play it forward.

Days are filled with focused classes, questions, breakthroughs, and plenty of musical rabbit holes. But the learning does not stop when class ends. It carries into the hallways, over shared meals, through late-night jams, stories, laughter, and those spontaneous moments when someone plays or sings something that makes everyone hear the music a little differently. That is how traditional music has always been passed on—person to person, player to player, voice to voice.

And that may be one of the best parts of camp. Person to person. Player to player. Voice to voice.

At MMC, the history, the stories, the musical language, and the people who carried it forward are all part of the learning. We are here not simply to preserve Monroe’s music, but to understand it deeply enough to keep it alive—played, sung, shared, and passed on.

Find Your Lonesome.  Come spend a week with people who want to know not only what makes bluegrass work—but why it sounds the way it does. Come find your place inside the sound.

When you sign-up, you get full access to the following…

  • World Class Instructors who understand the music, culture, folkloric stories, and the traditions that make up original, traditional Bluegrass music.
  • 100-Plus Classes for Mandolin, Fiddle, Banjo, Harmony Singing, Guitar, Upright Bass. You may take classes on any and all instruments—you are not tied down to just one track. If your car is big enough, bring them all! (Fiddle and Banjo classes are structured for the intermediate player level and above.)
  • Special Guests, Presentations, and Activities:
  • Electives: String Changing 101, Student Showcase
  • Daily Instructor-Led Jams: Jams are organized into all levels, including novice/beginner, slow, intermediate, fast, and old-time.
  • 2026 MonManCamp Manual Support materials/handouts for every class are bound and pre-printed into a custom bespoke camp manual book. This resource book contains all music tablature, notation, links to instructor tutorial videos, and additional resource materials presented during camp, and includes class schedules, class descriptions, venue maps, etc. (available for purchase)
  • A Night of Monroe’s Bluegrass Classics Instructor Concert
  • Hot catered meals and onsite lodging.  Your the two biggest decisions are which classes to choose, and how much sleep you need!
  • Scholarship money available
  • Member’s Only Group: Once registered you’ll be invited to join a group for members only. It offers additional community support, and learning opportunities, including monthly zoom gatherings,  and special events with guest artists, discussing various music-related topics.
  • A community of like-minded musicians who are supportive, encouraging, and have a great time together!