Back from Springfield & a video

We (the rest of the Mound City Slickers and I) made it back from our road trip to Springfield, MO in the heart of the Ozarks, where we played a dance last night. Had a real good time having Chinese food for dinner and playing for a small, but enthusiastic crowd. Of course, having Debi Harp call the figures for us was a treat! Debi's called for us a couple of times before and we always enjoy working with her.

With as much good fiddling as they have in that part of the state, I can't imagine that the Slickers would be anything special. But they all seemed to enjoy the tunes and the playing. One of the nicest parts of the evening was that they asked for a polka. We don't get a chance to play polkas often at dances, but love to do. So, we gave them "John Short's"

Can't wait to go back in October to play for them again.

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The band has a regular practice on Thursday evenings. Though, to be honest it's never as formal as a "practice" and usually winds up being more like an open session where friends stop by to play a few tunes and have a beer or two. This last Thursday, Jessie Evans and his wife Connie stopped by with Connie's new toy; a little digital flip camera and shot the footage I'm including below. It turned out pretty well, I think.

The players are Lindell Blackford, Mike Banvard, and Bill Stewart on fiddles, Bob Clark on banjo, me on the banjo uke, Roy Farwell on guitar, and Jessie Evans on button accordian. The tunes are an odd version of "Little Sadie" that Lindell got from the late, great Steve Mote, and "Setauket", which we think is an East coast tune that folks around here learned from either Mark Rennard or Mike Banvard. Hope you enjoy!

Slickers @ Childgrove This Sunday Evening

The Mound City Slickers old time string band, Bill Stewart and Lindell Blackford on fiddles, Roy Farwell on guitar, Dan Higgins on banjo, and Sean Ruprecht-Belt on banjo uke will be playing for the weekly Childgrove dance this Sunday 4/19. 327 Maple in Webster Groves. Open to the public and all are welcome, especially beginners! A workshop to teach beginners the steps starts at 6:30 PM and the band starts to play around 7:00.

We love playing for these guys and they seem to like having us play for them. Should be a real big time.

More info here: www.childgrove.org .

Great Weekend!

Wow! What a great weekend for my ongoing romance with old time music! I played so much this weekend that my calluses have calluses and my hand seems locked in a position that looks like grabbing a mandolin/ukulele/fiddle neck.

Things started well with a jam session Saturday afternoon at the Folk School of St. Louis, where we played a ton of tunes that don’t normally get played there. But the students were game and most of them, even the real new kids, did their best to pick up the new tunes and hang in with the dance tempos that were being played. It was definitely one of the best sessions I’ve been to at the school in months.

Then it was a quick 100 mile jaunt down to play a dance in Cape Girardeau with the Mound City Slickers. We stopped and had dinner together – loading up on pasta and salad to make sure we had plenty of energy to play those long dance tunes! The band played great! The small, but enthusiastic crowd of dancers seemed to love the music and have a real big time. I can’t wait to get down there again. Someone had a video camera and someone else was taking still photos of the band. If I can get hold of any of that, I'll post them here.

Another quick 100 mile drive back to St. Louis and we were able to stop by a party at our friend Michael B.’s where we jammed into the early morning with a fresh set of old time pickers.

Then I finished it all off on Sunday morning with the Hot Baloney Boys, playing our regular set at the Hartford Coffee Co. I don’t know if it was getting some new tunes into our set or what, but we seemed to play extra well, had fun, and got all coffee’d up into the bargain.

Though exhausting, it couldn’t have been a better weekend.

Coffee and Dance This Weekend

In addition to this being the last chance for people to see the play that I've directed for West End Players, I'm also playing a dance on Sunday night with the Mound City Slickers for The Childgrove Dancers. Details on time, place and cost can be found at their website via the blue clicky letters in the previous sentence. Come on out and getin on the contra dancing fun. The Slickers always have a blast when we play for Childgrove, and this promises to be no different.

I should also mention that my other band, The Hot Baloney Boys will be playing this Sunday morning at The Hartford Coffee Company at the corner of Hartford and Roger St. Louis' south side. Colleen, Dan, and I will be playing old-time tunes and singing some songs while folks open their eyes with cups of joe and breakfast.

And then I'm on vacation!

Fall Weather / Contra Weekend

Well, it was a real dance filled weekend. The Childgrove Dancers here in St. Louis and their dance-caller-in-training program teamed up with the Mound City Slickers to hold contra dances at St. Louis Gateway Arch and over in the Grand Center Arts District on Saturday. It kept me and the rest of the band busy running from one place to another to play tunes for the dancers, but was a lot of fun. The weather couldn’t have been more beautiful and it’s always a blast playing with these guys for dancers.

Then Sunday night, there was a reunion of Slickers fiddler, Bill’s old band, The Road Kill Ramblers for Childgrove’s regular weekly dance out in Webster Groves. I headed on out there from stately R-B Manor to listen to the music and watch the dancers (I’m on the injured reserve list for dancing until this shoulder of mine gets stronger). What a good band! They haven’t played together for 20 years and they still sound great.

At a point somewhere in the middle of the evening, I was sitting just outside the contra line with a big grin on my face, tapping my foot and really enjoying the music and the energy and the swirling round of the dancers. One of the women dancing leaned out, smiling, right into my face and shouted, “It doesn’t get better than this!” I couldn’t agree more.

Upcoming Dates:

You can catch me playing with the Mound City Slickers here:

• 9/27/08 @ 10:00 AM - Parkapalooza at the St. Louis Gateway Arch
• 9/27/08 @ 1:00PM - Dancing in the Street at Grand Center in St. Louis (we'll be playing for an all ages contra dance at the Grandel stage in front of the Grandel Theater)
• 10/11/08 @ 4:00 PM - Hanley House in Clayton, MO for a Civil War historical event
• 10/8/08 10:00AM 'til 1:00 PM - Gateway Greening Fall Harvest Pot Luck - This is a great bunch of people and a good time. The food is great, too!
• 10/25/08 - Private party
• 11/23/2008 @ 7:00 PM - Childgrove Contra Dance in Webster Groves, MO

I'll be holding down the mandolin spot with (and maybe a little fiddle) with the Hot Baloney Boys every other Sunday morning from 10 until noon at the Hartford Coffee Company, corner of Roger & Hartford. Upcoming dates are:

• 9/28
• 10/12
• 10/26
• 11/2 and
• 11/16

Hope to see some of you at one of these dates/locations. They'll all be a lot of fun!

First Night Four Days Later

Had a real good time playing for First Night in St. Louis New Year's Eve. We had a big crowd and a whole lot of dancers. The band (Mound City Slickers) sounded great and Mac did yeoman's work calling the contras for a bunch of folks who'd never danced before.

If you're wondering what you missed, we'll be playing for another dance on Sunday evening, January 27 for Childgrove Dancers at the Monday Club in Webster Groves, MO. For more info, click on the Childgrove link in the previous sentence.

Christmas Winds and a House Party

Friday night was music start to finish. I can't think of a better way to spend it.

I started out going to a concert by the St. Louis Wind Symphony at St. Anthony of Padua church on the south side of town. A friend plays flute with the symphony and I always enjoy supporting her. The church is beautiful. Huge, high ceilings. A very impressive altar area. Lots of statues of religious figures, paintings of Bible scenes on the walls and ceilings. It’s a great place to hear music. Though the acoustics aren’t the best.

The concert started out with a few vocal numbers by the Carondolet Sisters. They’re all nuns from the nunnery that adjoins the church, though for tonight they were all dressed in holiday style with red sweaters and jackets. All singing their hearts out.

Then the wind symphony took over and played a dozen or so pieces of holiday themed music. Nice big sounding stuff. And my friend Andrea had some good moments to show off her piccolo playing.

After the concert, Andrea’s husband Bob and I headed over to a moving out house party given by my friend and fellow fiddler, Megan. She’s moving to another state to be with her fella. Good for her! Seeing as she had moved all of her furniture already, she invited friends and acquaintances in for a final party at the house. It was pretty great! A hot session going in the dining room and square dancing in the adjoining living room. I played a lot of tunes (some of which I’d even played before!) for hours. Some of the highlights of the session were playing tunes with a Japanese fella, Aki (sp?) who’s visiting St. Louis for a while. He’s a fine fiddler and plays a lot of squirrelly, crooked tunes. Which, of course, I can never get enough of. As well as Aki, some of the best old-time players in town were there. What a pleasure to play with those folks.

Good-natured ribbing was the order of the evening, too. In honor of Aki’s nationality, we changed the names of tunes to “Whale [Ham] Beats All Meat” and “Whale [Squirrel] Hunters”.

Later on a cute young lady sat down next to me with her cello and played for an hour or so. The sound of a cello in an old-time string band setting is a beautiful thing. It did cause me to wonder why at any old-time music gathering, there always seems to be an over-abundance of good looking women and funny-looking men. Just the way of the world, I suppose.

When my fingers wore out around 1:00 AM, I managed to wander around the other rooms of the house and run into many friends and acquaintances; catch up with their news and have some laughs (as well as some beer, whiskey, and a truly historic egg nog! All in moderation, of course.). By the end of it, as I was driving home and the snow was starting to flurry, I had really gotten the old Christmas spirit. It doesn’t get much better.

I've got to start taking my camera with me more often so I can share pictures of this stuff with all of you.

Big Fun at the Dance

The contra dance band that I play with, The Mound City Slickers, played for the Childgrove Country Dancers last night. I can’t tell you how much fun it was. This was the first dance we’ve played for with our current lineup of two fiddles, banjo, guitar, and ukulele, and with all due modesty, I want to say we were hot. I think we impressed the callers, too, since we took requests and didn’t have any trouble changing up the set list to accommodate the dances that the callers wanted to call.

It was interesting (and fun) that there was a different caller for each dance last night; something that I’ve not run into before. Each caller had a different level of experience and a different style. But we got through them all without a train wreck and had a blast doing it. I think mixing up the callers kept us interested as well as the dancers because of all the differences.

Other excitement for the evening was that there was a casting crew at the dance for some reality show called The Farmer’s Wife or something like that. Apparently, they’re going to film this TV program in or around St. Louis (a hotbed of farming and rural life…. Yeah. Right.) where ten women from L.A. try to get a farm boy to pick them to marry and win a lot of money. One of the “tasks” that they’ll have the women do to prove they’re worthy is go to a square dance. Likely, the point will be to show how goofy and humorous folks who square dance are. Anyway, we had a group of heavily tattooed, very hip young women from Hollywood running around with cameras filming the dance and getting people to sign up to possibly be dancers when they film the actual dance for the show. Which I understand they’re going to film under the Gateway Arch. Yes, it makes no sense to me either. But we all had a good time watching them film the band and the dancers and the five of us agreed that if they asked us to play for the dance on TV and gave us a lot of money, we’d be more than happy to do it.

Of course, as always, the big fun of the evening was getting to play tunes and watch the dancers having so much fun moving around the floor. It’s what the music is all about. It just doesn’t get any better than playing good music with friends for a bunch of appreciative dancers. I don’t know how long I’ll keep smiling about last night. Probably a long time.