{"id":1947542,"date":"2025-08-07T20:22:18","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T20:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=1947542"},"modified":"2025-08-07T20:22:18","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T20:22:18","slug":"folk-music-and-songwriting-camp-in-new-hampshire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/folk-music-and-songwriting-camp-in-new-hampshire\/","title":{"rendered":"Folk Music and Songwriting Camp in New Hampshire"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A jam session takes place in what campers call the fireside room.\n<\/p>\n

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By Erin Clark<\/a><\/span>, Globe Staff<\/p>\n

Published August 7, 2025<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

T<\/mark>he 12-minute motorboat ride from Meredith, New Hampshire, across Lake Winnipesaukee transports them to another world. Cellphones disappear into cabin drawers while the sounds of fiddles, banjos, and guitars drift through the pine trees of Three Mile Island. Since 2011, novices and professionals alike have made the pilgrimage to Miles of Music Island Camp. Some come for their first time, others for their 14th.<\/p>\n

For most of the summer, the Appalachian Mountain Club, a nonprofit that bills itself as the nation\u2019s oldest conservation and recreation group, operates a rustic camp on this 43-acre, private, wooded isle in the northwestern corner of Winnipesaukee. But for one week in June, nature-seekers are replaced by musicians, gathering to explore the marriage of folk music and modern songwriting.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s creativity camp for grown-ups,\u201d says cofounder and director Kristin Andreassen.<\/p>\n

Days begin with coffee at the camp store before pancakes in the dining hall. Then there are classes in songwriting, Cajun fiddle playing, and much more \u2014 all taught by ear. Afternoons find people sprawled on the dock, with some braving the high jump into the cold lake water. Others disappear into instrument-specific lessons. Family-style dinners lead to nightly events: one night it\u2019s karaoke backed by a full band, another it\u2019s a talent show, and on another campers gather around a bonfire, singing into the early hours.<\/p>\n

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Campers in canoes during an afternoon break at Miles of Music Island Camp on Lake Winnipesaukee.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\nLeona Barshay, 4, and her father, Richie Barshay, perform a song that Leona wrote.\n<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Threading through it all is Dinty Child. At nearly 70, he\u2019s the first up each morning for yoga, jumps in the lake daily regardless of weather, leaps off his guitar amp at karaoke\u2019s close, and leads a musical midnight boat trip under the moon. As a full-time employee of the Appalachian Mountain Club, Child manages the island in the offseason. As a founding member of the Boston roots collective Session Americana, he is \u201cthe link between the island and the music,\u201d Andreassen says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere would be no Miles of Music without Dinty,\u201d she says. Their friendship began in the Boston music scene of the early 2000s, when Andreassen, who now lives in Nashville, regularly performed with Child and Laura Cortese, the other cofounder of the camp, in a collective called Sub Rosa. In 2010, Dinty brought Sub Rosa to the island for a retreat and Andreassen instantly pictured a camp taking shape. \u201cThe location invited it,\u201d she says. Looking at the rec hall, with its glass doors opening out onto the lake, \u201cI could just envision a square dance happening there.\u201d<\/p>\n

A year later, the camp launched, with touring professionals sleeping in the same rustic, no-electricity cabins as total beginners.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about helping all the things that go too quickly in life to slow down,\u201d Andreassen says, \u201cso that we can move more quickly in the things that matter most, like friendships and art.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Jane Minasian (center) photographed through a window during a guitar class.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n