Gary Brosch, a West Meadows retiree who runs the No Fret Guitar Camp, was at a music conference in Nashville when he first met guitarist and harp guitarist Muriel Anderson.
They became friends. He asked her for a plug on her Facebook page and has followed her career ever since.
He was still surprised, however, when Anderson called recently to tell him she was going on tour and would be in Florida. And, she was offering something even better than a social media plug — “She wanted to do a fund raiser for us,” Brosch says. “It was a very pleasant surprise.”
Brosch’s last, and only, fund raiser for his guitar camps was in 2019, before Covid got in the way. “I hadn’t really even thought of this year’s fund raiser yet,” he says, but now, just a month after her phone call, it is scheduled.
On Tuesday, February 15, at 7 p.m., Anderson will headline a free concert at St. James United Methodist Church to benefit the No Fret Guitar Camp, Brosch’s nonprofit that gives underserved teens free guitars and free lessons.
The concert also will feature Skip Frye, Sr., who played at the first No Fret fund raiser in 2019 and was a big hit. The Hall of Fame blues artist also has been an instructor at two of the No Fret camps.
While Frye played his own songs as well as hits by other artists that were familiar to the audience at the first fund raiser, Anderson’s performance is likely to offer a unique sound, touching on genres like folk, bluegrass, classical and pop, played on a unique instrument — a harp guitar (photo), which combines your typical guitar strings with open, harp-like strings that allow for plucking.
Her show is a multimedia spectacle, with a backdrop of visuals projected onto a screen behind her.
Anderson is the first woman to win the National Fingerpicking Guitar Championship, and her 2013 CD, Nightlight Daylight, was chosen as one of the top-10 CDs of the decade by Guitar Player magazine.
The fund raiser also will feature a silent auction and the event’s proceeds will benefit the No Fret Guitar camp, which has provided more than $320,000 of free guitars and lessons in five years for 800 students. Any church or organization can contact Brosch about hosting one of the camps, which are limited to six students each. No Fret students each receive a guitar and two-hour lessons for five days, with the focus on teaching basic chords and playing songs, rather than reading music.
While Covid may have forced some changes and wiped out his fund raisers the past two years, it also helped Brosch realize the impact the camps have had on many former students. He says he has heard from a number of parents that while their children were confined inside at various times during the pandemic, they were able to turn to their guitars instead of their computers, which also helped with anxiety and depression.
“That’s really been exciting for us,” Brosch says. “We really have a life-changing impact, and music can do that.”
St. James United Methodist Church is located at 16202 Bruce B. Downs Blvd. in Tampa Palms. To reserve a free VIP table, call or text Gary Brosch at (813) 597-1925.
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