RIP John McGann

tacosandbeer

:-(
http://bluegrasstoday.com/40095/john-mcgann-passes/

Michael Bauer

This is really bad news. John was not just a great musician, but a great guy as well. One of my favorite people ever at Django in June. What a loss on so many levels...

MichaelHorowitz

I took guitar lessons from John when I lived in Boston over twenty years ago. Have been friends with him ever since......so sad to hear this.

Bob Holo

Thought I recognized him from DjiJ a few years ago. Very nice man and a great player. I believe he played with JP Watremez, Dennis Chang, Simon Planting, and a few other gents that year.

Some of you out there must have a recording of a tune or two to post. That was the year the Zune H2 was launched and the stage was littered with them. ;-)

RIP sir.

Lango-Django

Damn, and I was looking forward to taking his workshops at DiJ--- and I don't even play the mandolin.

John was what musicians call "the real deal".... I believe he could play just about any tune in any key in any style he wanted...

At DiJ 2008 I heard him do a funny rant about trying to learn to play the clarinet... struggling with it for hours a day until one day he heard his young daughter, who was taking clarinet at school, and she could get a nicer tone than he could! So he gave it up.

I remember him saying something like, "I felt real bad about it, until I found out from my jazz saxophone buddies that although they all owned clarinets, they tended to just leave them in the case, and only opened the case from time to time to throw a little raw meat in."

John was not only a great musician but a wonderful teacher and just a great guy to be around.

I don't know about you, but those are most of the things I would consider to be worth striving for in this life.

Craig Bumgarner

Here is one from Django in June 2008, Thursday night, a jam under a tree outside the dorm around 10:00pm. John McGann was playing his mando-cello along with Zaiti (Adrien, Mathieu & Jeremie), Gonzalo, Josh Hegg, Matt Glaser and Jason Anick as best I can remember. Gonzalo and Zaiti were sort of rehearsing for their Saturday night concert and it just grew from there. It was one of those magical moments.

Impressions: John's solo starts around 2:57 and ends at 4:18 with a quirky take on the changes to which everyone laughs in appreciation.


John McCann quote from his workshop: "if you work really hard & practice, you too can make hundreds of dollars a year at this" .

I didn't know him well, but I sense we have lost someone very special.

CB