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lessons anywhere

Can’t find any good teachers in your area? No problem! With the help of video chat services like Skype, we’ve taught all over the world from Canada to Australia and beyond.

Learn What You Want

Tired of teachers putting you in a ‘program’? we use individualized lesson plans, exercises and custom transcriptions for each student. Tell us what you want to learn, we’ll listen.

All Levels Accepted

Don’t let advanced content scare you, we teach lots of pickers who are new to bluegrass. Every player can benefit from a teacher, get help with what you need today.

Meet The LWM Instructors!

Marcel, Mickey, Hayes, and Andy

Marcel Ardans

Big Bad Billy Goat

Marcel Ardans is a guitarist, teacher and YouTuber active in the Raleigh music scene. His time in the bluegrass scene began in the Pacific Northwest, where he wood-shedded and gigged extensively with local and regional acts. Rightfully earning the nickname “The Biggest Baddest Billy Goat In The Barnyard”. 150 shows a year led to opening for national artists such as Kyle Gass (of Tenacious D), the late Jeff Austin, Jacob Jolliff, Missy Raines, and festival favorites such as, Special Consensus, The Purple Hulls, and Chris Jones & The Night Drivers.

In 2015, he started the online business Lessons With Marcel. The goal was to bring flatpicking and bluegrass guitar to those who wanted instruction but lacked local resources, essentially trying to make bluegrass more accessible, to grow the community.

Since then Marcel has hosted local events, taught guitar workshops, and had the opportunity to interview some of the best contemporary bluegrass guitarists on YouTube, like Trey Hensley, Zeb Snyder, Andy Hatfield, and Jon Stickley. Billy Strings once said of a LWM YouTube video, “Whoa. . . this guy just taught me how I play”.

In 2017, Marcel moved to Raleigh, NC. By partnering with supportive and commendable brands like Straight Up Strings, Strum Machine, and Guitar Pro, his schedule is now filled with LWM Skype students and shooting videos for the Lessons With Marcel YouTube Channel.

mickey

Mickey Abraham

The Rabbi

Mickey Abraham is a Suncoast Emmy award-winning performer and instructor. Mickey has been involved in bluegrass and new-acoustic music in his home state of Florida and on the national scene for nearly twenty years. He teaches both mandolin and guitar lessons, and his approach to playing has been featured in Bluegrass Unlimited and Flatpicking Guitar Magazine.

Joe Craven, acoustic maestro says, “Mickey’s enthusiasm for music inspires his students, that’s the hallmark of a great teacher”. His influence as an educator extends to the Tallahassee Youth Orchestra’s Acoustic Ensembles. 

Mickey performs alongside Kathryn Belle in their band Belle and the Band. In 2018, their song “Tallahassee”, was named Best Florida Song by the Will Mclean Foundation. And in 2019, Mickey and Kathryn met their fundraising goal through Kickstarter to start producing their new concept album, Voices: A Folk Opera. Their new project combines elements of Broadway with folk music to bring characters, locations, and a story to life. 

Mickey spends his days recording, teaching lessons, and creating arrangements for Lessons With Marcel. Perhaps Flatpicking Guitar Magazine’s founder and editor Dan Miller sums up Mickey best by saying, “I predict that in the future you will not only hear a lot of great music from Mickey, but you will hear other talented players who will say ‘I learned from Mickey Abraham’”.

hayes griffin

Hayes Griffin

Space Cowboy

Hayes Griffin is a musician, teacher, and YouTuber from central Ohio. After earning a degree in music from Denison University, Hayes received his Master’s in Contemporary Improvisation at New England Conservatory in Boston. He quickly became an active member of the local bluegrass community, studying with the great John McGann and recording the Trimountain Sessions EP with bluegrass phenoms Maddie Witler, Gabe Hirshfeld, John Mailander, and Josh Dayton. 

After school, Hayes spent over a decade touring internationally with acts like Canadian fiddler April Verch and progressive bluegrass band Newtown. Featuring Hayes on guitar, Newtown’s 2016 album Harlan Road debuted at #8 on the Billboard Bluegrass Charts. In 2020, he released his first solo project, Midwestern Swing, dedicated to the sounds of American country and Western Swing music from the 1930’s, 40s, and 50s. The album snagged the
#1 spot on the Local Spins Hot Top 5 for 2020, charting in the Top 5 for 3 months straight. 

In 2020 Hayes began a weekly YouTube series on the playing of electric mandolinist Tiny Moore. Since then, Hayes’ channel has evolved to include weekly videos on bluegrass guitar, Western Swing, music theory, and mindfulness.

These days, Hayes spends his time teaching lessons, recording YouTube videos, and serving his growing community of online students in his
Guitar Club. Hayes is proud to endorse GHS Strings and Belmuse Electric Mandolin

Andy

Andy Hatfield

mandohat

Andy Hatfield is a creative musician and teacher who loves to help students of all levels learn to play music. He has taught music full-time since 2003, and specializes in mandolin and guitar.

Andy is known for winning three National Championships: The 2011 and the 2017 National Flatpicking Championship, and the 2013 National Mandolin Championship. He is one of only four people (and the second from Peoria, IL) to win both mandolin and guitar in the 45+ year history of the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas.

Born into a musical family, Andy started out by playing upright bass when his parents would leave the house. “We had a lot of instruments around, and nobody ever said you couldn’t touch them, but I assumed I’d get in trouble for playing that bass. Instead, once Dad knew what I was up to, he gave me a few pointers, announced that I would be the bass player that weekend, and we went off to the festival to jam. From that point, I was hooked.”

Later learning to play mandolin, guitar, and banjo, Andy spent his teens immersed in Illinois’s rich bluegrass scene.
Andy has taught for several years at Steve Kaufman’s Kamp in Maryville, TN. He is a 2001 graduate of Bradley University, earning a Bachelor’s of Science in Music. In 2018, he was the featured instructor at Roberto Dalla Vecchia’s Acoustic Guitar Camp in Vicenza, Italy.

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