Christmas Shopping. Eeek!

So, here it is December 20 and I still have tons of Christmas presents to buy. Usually, I have everything in hand and most of it wrapped by now. But this time around was different. My day job (stinkin’ work) has been unusually busy the last few months; I waaaay overcommitted my spare time for music gigs and directing a play for a local theater company; a lung infection slowed me down for two months; and the Folk School, where I do some work and am on their Board of Directors, has been in the process of moving to a new space with all of the attendant lunacy and headaches. Not that I’m complaining or making excuses!! Most of the stuff I’ve been involved in (well, except for the lung thing and stinkin’ work) has been a lot of fun. And it has had some terrific side effects and benefits. But it has gotten in the way of my taking part in the crazy seasonal consumerism. Which, now that I look at it, may actually be another one of the benefits.

Now time is short and I’m stumped. Presents for wife Amy and daughter China are pretty easy to decide on. I know their likes and needs pretty well. My brothers and sister and I don’t much exchange gifts anymore. We just get together to celebrate the day – Mom’s birthday is also December 25 – so there’s a lot to celebrate.

But then there’s the stumper: What to get for my musician friends? A new fiddle or guitar is a little out of my price range. Flat picks, even the hand carved specialty numbers, seem like they’d be too chintzy. Instructional books or DVDs might send the wrong message. I don’t know what CDs they already have on their shelves.

So I guess a trip to my local music shop is in order. Maybe I can even sneak over there on my lunch hour today. I just hope I don’t come home with more goodies for me than presents for others!

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.

Five Rules for Happiness

I have a printed card stuck in the mirror in the room where I meditate in the morning. The mirror is over the shelf onto which I dump everything out of my pockets at the end of the day. So, even mornings when I don't find the time to meditate (which seems like every morning lately -- must do something about that), I see the card and read what's printed on it. I also that I think about what's on the card frequently even when I'm not looking at it. Maybe it's become kind of a mantra for me. Certainly it's become a touchstone.

I can't take credit for this. The card was given to me by John Grimaud, who helped me a lot in getting through a very rough patch a while back. He said something like "Follow these rules and you'll always be happy." I'm was pretty skeptical at the time, but on reflection, it has seemed to work pretty well for me. See what you think.

Grimaud's Five Rules for Happiness:
1. Don't sweat the small stuff.
2. It's all small stuff.
3. You can't always get what you want. (Jagger's theorem)
4. Nothing lasts forever.
5. Nothing is as bad as it seems. (Dad's Rule)

Thoughts The Weekend Brought With It

A couple of days ago, I was exchanging emails with a good friend. During the course of the conversation, she mentioned that she had always wanted to put together a cabaret act and perform it here in town, but that other commitments like raising two kids and a husband, having a day job, and the rest of life have got in the way of doing the work on the act. Now, she's a terrific actress and singer. And a cabaret act would seem like a natural thing for her to do.

I wrote back saying so and offered to help out with putting it together or filling a director's role when it was ready for that, or whatever. I even suggested that a group I work with has been talking about a fundraiser and maybe this would be a good opportunity for her to perform an evening of cabaret to raise money for them. Mostly, as soon as I read that she'd been wanting to do it, I wanted to hear it. Suddenly, though, with the prospect of actually having a place to do the act and some help pulling it together -- as vague as the deadline(sometime) and the offer of help (whatever) were -- this possibility became frightening. And I can see what she means. This is something important to her that she's been nurturing the idea of for a long time.

When you're acting, there's that sort of invisible fourth wall that the playwright builds between you and the audience. No matter how raw or exposed you may seem to be on the stage, there's always that thin, invisible barrier to hide behind. But in a cabaret act, you're right there with the audience mere feet away. And you have to relate directly to them. And what if they don't like you or the songs aren't any good, or the voice isn't as good as you thought it was, or... or... or...

Yesterday afternoon, I went to hear Ellis Paul at a club here in St. Louis. Bear with me, here. I'm actually going to make a point soon.

Anyway, I went to hear Ellis Paul at a club here in St. Louis. Now I'm not much of a fan of singer-songwriters, preferring my folk music to be played on fiddles and banjos and to be a hundred or so years old. But Ellis is one of those few singer-songwriters that I really enjoy. I do my best to catch him whenever he plays here in St. Louis. His songs are generally uplifting, even when they're about loss or sorrow. I go to his live shows and always come away feeling better. There's just such an exuberance and energy that fills the stage when Ellis is up there. For me, anyway, one of his concerts is a way for me to get my reserves of happiness and hopefulness refilled.

So, I'm sitting there watching this guy up on the stage smiling and singing at the top of his voice, strumming the guitar like this may be his last chance to do it and he wants to enjoy every chord. And a light bulb clicked on in my head for me. If people walked around with thought ballons over ther heads like in the comics, right then, mine would have had a light bulb in it with wiggly lines radiating from it to show how bright it was. I mean, this was one of those real "light bulb: moments you hear about. I thought,
"This is what it's about. This guy is standing up on a stage and singing about such personal stuff with such a positive attitiude. He's in front of a whole crowd of people he doesn't know, doing something that could be hugely embarrassing. But he's fearless. He's having the time of his life."

And you know what? So were all the people in the audience.

And I knew at that moment that there really aren't any excuses. We're all meant to be having a good time and doing what we love; trying things we usually only think about. Sure, stuff gets in the way. Yeah, we might not be good at it the first time out. We probably will have to put some sweat and time into it. But when you get there.... when it finally happens for you... Wow.

Doesn't matter if it's learning the fiddle in middle age, or playing in a really good old-time dance band. Or acting, or writing poetry or that novel you know you have in you. If it's painting still lifes or pictures of tree tops and clouds in the sky, starting a garden in the back yard, losing weight, making new friends, learning to tap dance or to do magic tricks. And keeping at it until it feels right and you know you're good at it.

Or putting that cabaret act together, rehearsing it, and taking it out in front of people.

Whatever it is that you know you need to do to let you be the happiest person in the room, it's time right now to do it. As one of Ellis Paul's songs goes,

"You gotta get going,

Hey, the world ain't slowin' down

For no one."

Fine Times At Bob’s House

I had the great pleasure of spending Tuesday evening at friend and fellow Mound City Slicker, Bob’s house rehearsing with the rest of the Slickers as well as Baloney Boy Uncle Dan H. Really, it was just the bunch of us playing tunes, telling stories, having a few beers, and laughing a lot. But, we’re supposed to be getting ready to play for a couple of dances coming up in the next few weeks, so we call it a rehearsal.

Some of the tunes we played were:
"Angeline the Baker"
"Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss"
"Jump in the Well My Pretty Little Miss" (She gets around, huh?)
"Old Dubuque"
"Kitchen Girl"
"Cold Frosty Morning"
"Upper Lehigh"
Valiant attempts at "The Jenny Lind Polka" and "Lowery’s Quadrille"

"Sara Armstrong's Tune"
"Nancy Rowland" (which I hadn’t even thought of in a good ten years)
"Needle Case"
"Stay All Night"
And a bunch of others I was having too good a time to remember playing.

I’ve said it many times before, but I just have to repeat it: Getting together with friends to play old-time music is about the best time I have every week.

The Mound City Slickers playing for Childgrove Dancers earlier this year

Mark your calendars now for upcoming Mound City Slickers dates:
December 31, 2007 – First Night St. Louis. We’ll be playing for a contra and square dance from 6:30 to 8:00 PM in the Grand Hall, upstairs at the Grandel Theater. Mac McKeever calling the dances. This event is extremely family friendly and kids of all ages are encouraged to come by and dance.

January 27, 2008 – Childgrove Dancers Weekly Contra Dance at the Monday Club in Webster Groves, MO. 7:00 to 10:00 PM. No idea who’s calling that one yet.

True Story Story Swear To God *

No really.

I was in a book store the other day and had my fiddle case on my shoulder, because I never leave it in the car. It’s usually a conversation point for folks and this was no exception. The very young girl (19 or 20?) behind the counter asked what it was and…

ME: It’s a fiddle.
HER: What do you play?
ME: Old-Time music, mostly.
HER: What, like the Beatles?
ME: A dumbfounded sort of stare.
HER: What?… They’re pretty old.

I laughed pretty hard.






* I copped the title of this installment from the title of my current favorite comic book, True Story Swear To God . It’s funny, romantic, and involving. Independent and black and white. No superheroes at all. It's about the relationship of Tom Beland, the artist and writer of the book with Lily, his now wife, from the time of their meeting. Not only is it a great read, Tom is one of the nicest guys in the world. A year or two ago when I started reading the book, I sent him an email telling him how much I liked it. A couple of weeks later, the phone rings at home and who should be on the other end, but Tom Beland calling from his home in Puerto Rico to thank me for the email and have a conversation about the book and comics in general. What a surprise!

So, go click on the the blue clicky linky thing above and check out his website. Then go over to Star Clipper Comics on Delmar (where they let Dan and me busk in front of their store and actually seem to like it!) and pick up a copy of the comic. I think you’ll like it.

You know, it’s just occurred to me that the explanation of the title is longer than the original post. Weird.

Zen and the art of performance art

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the similarities between acting and playing music. One of the things I’ve noticed is that for either of these to be any good, the person doing the playing (in both senses) has to be both open and in the moment. The more they can be, the better the result.

Being open starts with stopping one’s mind from spinning about other things. That Buddhist “monkey mind”. One has to not be aware of “where do I put my fingers next” or “what’s my next line”. Those things only get between you and the enjoyment of what’s happening around you. If we can focus on what our acting partner is doing right now, or what’s happening in the music right now, and notice that these things are simply and unselfconsciously just happening, it becomes an invitation to relax, breathe, slow down your perceptions and give your full attention to enjoying the moment. Pause, relax, breathe. It doesn’t matter if the moment is being engaged fully with another actor on the stage or with the sounds surrounding you. It’s time to take a deep, unhurried breath and go with the flow.

Once you’ve done that, you can really start playing. Time becomes irrelevant because there’s only right now! And you’ll find that the scene is over before you realize it or that you’ve been playing the fiddle for half an hour when it seems like only a couple of minutes.

This has only happened to me a couple of times on stage. Though it happens more frequently (still not as much as I’d like) when playing tunes. But it’s pretty much the best thing there is.

Not Much Fiddle or Dulcimer Content Here Today...

...But I do want to plug Skylight, the play I've just directed for West End Players Guild. The play opened last Friday night and I couldn't be happier with it. A powerful script, beautifully acted, it's something I'm really proud of. Here are a few photos taken at a dress rehearsal.

Ain't she gorgeous, folks!

So, come on out and see it if youre in the St. Louis area. Friday and Saturday 11/16 & 17 at 8:00 and Sunday the 18th at 2:00. West End Players in the theater space at Union Avenue Church, 733 North Union (1 block from Delmar).

Obligatory fiddle/dulcimer content: You know, I think Kitchen Girl sounds good on either instrument and is equally fun to play.

Other Players, Other Sounds

It's amazing to me how different people can take the same set of notes and the same instruments and make a tune sound so different. I was reminded of this the last few days while playing with different sets of musicians.

The first was last Saturday evening. I got hired to play fiddle for a barn dance in The Middle Of Nowhere, Illinois with a band I've never played with before. Their regular fiddler couldn't make it and their mandolin player is a friend of mine. It was a fun time! The band is a little more bluegrass-y than I usually play with and their approach to the tunes is different. I think we sounded fine, and the people at the dance (both those who danced and those who sat by the bonfire outside) seemed to like the music just fine. But some tunes I've played for years came out sounding pretty interesting with this combination of players. One of the things that struck me was the guitar playing. This guitarist wasn't really familiar with most of the tunes and is much more used to playing flatpick leads and solos based on scales and chord patterns than he is with just chunking the rhythm behind a fiddle for square and contra dancers. Still, his playing was rhytmically solid though pretty much unornamented.

Then last night, Dan and I played with our friend Brandt; running through some of the more oddball tunes that we play together. The Hot Baloney Boys have been asked to be the opening act for a band playing at Pop's Blue Moon next Saturday evening (Nov. 10) and Colleen, our regular guitar player can't make it for the gig. So, Brandt has volunteered to sit in with us.

When playing with Brandt, he changes the whole tone of the Baloney Boys. Good rhythm, of course, because he understands the function of the guitar in old-time music. But with Brandt, there's a whole different chordal sensibility than what Colleen brings or what I would play in his place. Definitely not bad, but different. He'll hang on a chord a half a beat or a beat longer than I would expect or he'll try a G-chord where I'd use an E or an E-minor. And his bass runs often go to unexpected places. What's really surprising is how much Dan and my playing changed adapting to the different sounds we were hearing.

Two different guitarists (three if you count Colleen) and each brings a different sort of underpinning to the tunes. How cool is that?

Go See This Play!

When I'm not exercising my creative muscles with music, I do some work with local theater companies. The latest is directing David Hare's Skylight for West End Players. We're a little less than two weeks from opening and, so far, I have to say it's the best thing I've worked on. The script is one I really care about, the actors (Renee Sevier0Monsey, Robert Ashton, & Jared Nell) are doing some of the best work I've ever seen from them. I think we're headed in the right direction with this piece, and I couldn't be happier with the production overall.

The play is funny, sad, romantic, sexy, and disturbing all at the same time.

Directing this, I've seen it a couple of dozen times now and haven't been bored yet! What more could you want?

I really hope that all of my friends and those of you who read this and are in the St. Louis area will come out and see this.

BTW: Thanks to Marjorie Williamson for the great graphic above.

You Need This!

I was lucky enough to run into Jim Nelson while listening to Jim and Kim Lansford at Sqwires a couple of Sundays ago and found out about the recently released Bear Family CD focusing on Cousin Emmy that he was instrumental (along with Mike Seeger) in getting put together and released.

Some of you know Jim as a teacher and board member of the Folk School of St. Louis. Others know him as one of the best old-time guitarists in the country and a member of the Ill-Mo Boys string band or for his contributions to the Old-Time Herald magazine. And, of course, Jim's just a heckuva nice guy.

But he’s also a well respected folklorist and music historian. In this case, Jim contributed to the excellent and extensive liner notes in this package as well as having unearthed some of the radio recordings that make up a good portion of this CD.

There’s some information on Cousin Emmy here that I’d known before. My granddad was a country fiddler and guitarist in the St. Louis and Southern Illinois areas and had introduced me to Emmy’s music many years ago. There’s also a St. Louis connection since Emmy was based in the St. Louis area for a number of years and had a daily radio program on KMOX before it went to an all talk format. Even so, much of the biographical information on her contained in Jim’s fine essay was brand new to me.

The music here is great stuff. Thirty-eight tracks in all with Emmy on banjo (she taught Grandpa Jones to play claw-hammer), guitar, fiddle, and harmonica with vocals. Tracks include “Bowling Green”, “Johnny Booker”, “Chilly Scenes of Winter”, “Ruby”, “Milk Cow Blues”, “Free Little Bird”, “Groundhog” and many others. The sound has been remastered from the older recordings and radio acetates and is clear and remarkably free of extraneous noise.

Altogether, this is an impressive package and I can’t recommend it highly enough for fans of old-time music, early country, or Cousin Emmy.

I understand that Jim has a few copies for sale. Ask him about it next time you see him.

Current Tunes

Here's a short list of the tunes I've been working on getting into my fingers the last week or so.

• Old Mother Flannigan (a squared up version that can be played for dancers)
• Jump In The Well My Pretty Little Miss
• Bonaparte's March
• Hobart's Transformation
• John Short's Tune
• Jenny Lind Polka

Lately I've been in a polka kind of mood, which accounts for the last two titles. If this keeps up, I imagine it'll be "Red Hills Polka" next.

I've also promised some dulcimer players that I'll write out the tablature for "Bonaparte's March" for them. So, I guess I'd better find time for that in the next little while.

A Day At The Garlic Fair

I had a real nice time this last Saturday playing with some friends at the Gateway Greening
garden headquarters. They had their Garlic Day and Harvest Fair and wanted some Old-Time music for the occasion. We got together a pickup group for the occasion: Bill Stewart and myself on fiddle, Bob Clark and Uncle Dan’l Higgins on banjo, and Alice S. on guitar. The tunes were pretty good, the weather was beautiful and the setting couldn’t have been better.

These are such great folks to play with! When Bill and I get a head of steam up, it’s off to the races, buddy! But Bob, Dan and Alice were pretty good natured about it, even if we did strain their strumming arms a little keeping up with the tempos.

They had us play in a covered pavilion in the middle of their couple of acre big community garden. We were surrounded by raised beds of flowers, broccoli, okra, lettuce, cabbage, Italian sage, and lots of other crops. Greens, blues, purples. Really something to see and smell.

And the mix of folks sitting around listening and enjoying was good, too. I have to admit I felt good to have people of all colors, ages and economic rungs; inner city (where the garden is located) and suburban folks too, all sitting together listening to these old tunes. Maybe we’ll get over this ridiculous polarization that our government seems to foster yet with enough good music and good food to help us get through it.

The gardeners also had a table set up so folks could bottle their own herbed/flavored vinegars, which was great fun. I stuffed some garlic cloves, chili peppers, basil and thyme into a jar and covered it with red wine vinegar. Now, I gather I wait for about a month while the alchemy takes place and start using the vinegar to cook with. My mouth is watering already!

Things finished off with a pot luck barbecue and a pie contest. Unfortunately, I was so intent on playing “Squirrel Hunters” for Alice that I missed out on getting a piece of the prize-winning sweet potato pie. The pulled pork and all of the fresh home-made salads were enough to content me, though.

The day was capped for me (as it often is) by an older woman coming over as we were packing up our instruments to go. She said she had moved to St. Louis years ago from rural Alabama, but that our music took her right back there to where she’d grown up. She hadn’t heard that music in years and so much enjoyed it.

Pretty good day, if I must say so myself.

What I'm Essentially Listening To

Every once in a while someone asks me what the really essential old-time music CDs are. I’m always kind of reluctant to answer, because I haven’t heard all of them, so am certainly leaving some good ones out of any list I might come up with. Besides, any list I might come up with is only my opinion and that’s no better than anyone else’s opinion. Guaranteed.

But, having been pressed to do so again, here’s my latest list of maybe not essential old-time CDs, but ones that I’m listening to a lot lately:

Echoes of the Ozarks, Volumes 1 & 2 from County Records. These really are essential, especially if you’re looking for Missouri and Arkansas tunes.

Lost Indian: Fiddling on the Frontier by Chris Wig and Whitt Mead on the Yodel-Ay-Hee label. Lots of good tunes that I should sit down and learn one of these days.

Fuzzy Mountain String Band on Rounder. This is the gold standard. I never get tired of it.

Bound To Have A Little Fun by the Orpheus Supertones. I think the Mound City Slickers (who I play with) have incorporated almost every tune on this CD into our repertoire. It’s another of those I can listen to any time.

Anything by Tommy Jarrell.

The Humdingers (featuring Brad Leftwich and Linda Higginbotham) on the Chubby Dragon label. This was recorded some years ago and only recently released. Great tunes with high energy and some of the best banjo uke playing you’ll ever hear.

Okay. Go and listen.

Boy Howdy! What A Fine Time

Last night was the regular session at my friend and fellow Mound City Slicker Bob’s house. It reminded me just how great this old-time music stuff can be.

It was a smallish session; only the five Slickers could make it. So… two fiddles, guitar, banjo, and myself on banjo uke. Still, we produced a big sound with that old-time pulse that drives the dancers. Probably half of the tunes we played were ones we’d not played as a group before. Lots of them I’d heard but had never played. But what fun! Tearing through “Mississippi Mud”, “Old Time Sally Ann”, “Sail Away Ladies”, and a dozen others. Picking up a note here and a chord there and just about having the tune figured out by the time it was through.

Between the tunes we all talked about other tunes and songs these reminded us about, times we had years ago, and planning to go to festivals together in the future. A couple of bottles of beer were somewhere in the mix along with the laughs and the talk.

In the kitchen, Bob’s wife, Andrea was making tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes they’d grown in their backyard garden, so as we played, we were surrounded by wonderful aromas of tomato, basil, garlic and who knows what else that went into the pot!

Boy howdy! What a fine time.

Gateway Dulcimer Festival 2007 Post Mortem

Boy, I have a good life! What a great (if exhausting!) weekend at the Gateway Dulcimer Festival in Belleville, Illinois.

Thursday night was when all of the early registrants showed up along with the folks presenting workshops and performing at the Friday and Saturday night concerts. There was a pretty good jam session going on and I got to say “Hey!” to many friends that I only see at these festivals; Jack and Mary Giger, Mike Anderson, Aubrey Atwater and Elwood Donnelly, Rick Thumb and lots of other folks. Traveling to the festival must have worn everyone out, though, as the jamming was done by about 10:30.

One of the high points of the evening was getting to meet Shari Wolf, the guitarist for Sweetwater. She’s a real hoot and her guitar playing really helped keep the rhythm going in the big jam! I hope I run into her again soon.

Friday, Dan and I got to the festival around 11:00 in the morning. More “Hi, howyadoin’ ” followed and we shortly sat down to play tunes. We jammed with an ever changing group of people all afternoon, only stopping for dinner and the evening concert.

The concert was top notch. It was great hearing performances by Jack and Mary, autoharpist Alex Usher, the lovely and charming Princess Harris (I think she’s my favorite hammered dulcimer player), beautiful songs by Katie Waldren and Candace Kreitlow, and Atwater/Donnelly to close the show. Probably the highlight of the concert was an eight or nine minute unaccompanied clog dance and story performance piece that Aubrey Atwater did seamlessly slipping between different clogging styles from different parts of the U.S. and Canada and who taught her each. She finished it up by clogging singing a French Canadian song while frailing the banjo all at the same time. The whole thing was sort of like the folk music equivalent of a drum solo. Sort of like the Grateful Dead’s Rhythm Devils in one pair of feet!

After the concert it was back to fiddling for me at another big jam session. Played a ton of tunes until around 12:30 or 1:00 a.m. Friend Neil showed up with his button boxes and added a whole different feeling to the tunes. A fiddle, an accordion, a mandolin, a couple of banjos, a harmonica, a couple of guitars, three or four hammered dulcimers, and maybe twenty mountain dulcimers. What a racket! Beautiful!

Saturday I had the great pleasure of playing guitar to back my good friend, terrific fiddler, and the director of the Folk School of St. Louis, Colleen Heine for the evening concert. Our set was great fun and seemed to go over pretty well. We played about a half hour of old-time fiddle tunes and songs. I hope we get to do more of it.

Others on the bill that evening were Barb Ernst, the aforementioned Sweetwater (who did a great set of funny songs with beautiful vocal from all three of the members), Mike Anderson, and Rick Thum.

After the concert it was back to jamming with the big bunch of dulcimers again. This time it broke up (pr at least I pooped out) around 1:00. By then my fingers had had about enough punishment and I was starting to forget which tunes I was playing. Sure signs that I’d been having far more than my share of fun over the last couple of days.

So, today (Monday), I’m still running on fumes, my hands are less sore, but there’s a smile on my face. Can’t wait ‘til next year!

Dulcimer Playing Weekend!

This weekend, I'm spending a lot of time over in Belleville, IL at the Gateway Dulcimer Society's festival. It'll be a weekend of catching up with freinds from all over the country who I only see at this festival, meeting new friends, and playing a [i]lot[/i] of tunes.

I'll let you in on all the details when it's over and I've caught my breath.

What is "Jeopardy", Alex?

Amy and I spent the last couple of days up in Chicago where she was going through the second round in her journey to appear on the Jeopardy TV quiz show. Even though I had to spend most of those days plugged in to the laptop and cell phone (^&*&*%@%$^^*@ day job!), we had a real nice time.

The hotel we stayed in, The Tremont, was an old building in the middle of the Gold Coast neighborhood down town. The room was nothing special, but comfortable. The lobby was small, but beautiful and the hotel staff was friendly and helpful. We got a good rate, too by using Expedia for booking the room.

I wish I'd taken pictures, but as usual, I was kind of a pin head and forgot to pack the camera.

Amy had a blast at the audtions/testing/whatever you want to call it. And she thinks she did pretty well. Took a written test, played a mock game with podiums and clickers to ring in... the whole shooting match. She said it was so much fun, she was sorry when it was over. So, now she's on a waiting list of possible contestants and could be called out to play the game in LA for real at any time.

After she got done with her day of auditions and I got done with my day of meetings and other work, we took a good, long walk down by Lake Michigan. It was hot, but there was a nice breeze from the lake, so it was pleasant. We walked down to Navy Pier and all around it. Neither of us had ever been to the pier before, and I can't see us going back again. It's sort of like a big mall with tons of stuff for tourists to buy, but not much else worth noting.

Still, the lake is beautiful and the walk along it was worth the trip. It was a shame we didn't bring our swim suits, as the water looked so inviting.

Then we hopped on a free trolley back from Navy Pier towards our hotel. Stopped by Pizzaria Uno for dinner. I'm not normally much for pizza, but Amy loves it, so.... Anyway, I can heartily recommend this place. The pizza is about an inch and a half thick with a good crust, plenty of cheese and a tasty tomato sauce. The atmosphere is good, too. Kind of grungy and crowded. A real city place.

Anyway, that's what we did with ourselves the last few days. How about you?

Too much stuff in too small a bag

Wow. Once again, my life seems to have exploded. Way too much to do and not enough waking hours in the day to do it. As a result, my time playing fiddle and dulcimer has gotten slimmer and slimmer and my time thinking of things to post here has gotten non-existent. I mean, I like to be busy... but geez... there’s a limit, y’know.

I think there’s light at the end of the tunnel, though.

Of course, the day job is still pretty hectic and that doesn’t look like letting up any time soon. Not ‘til sometime in 2012 anyway…

But next week looks pretty commitment free outside of work. And I’m determined to start taking a yoga class during that lull. Then the first few days of August will be taken up with a trip to Chicago with Amy for her to audition for Jeopardy, which should be fun. So, maybe that’ll all help me to de-stress and find more time and energy for making music and learning new tunes.

And as I'm reading this, I'm thinking, "That last paragraph sounds pretty action-packed for a guy who's trying to shed commitments and simplify his time." And I've got to shake my head and laugh.

More later...

I. D. Stamper: Ozarks Dulcimer

If you haven't come across it already, let me point you towards the Digital Library of Appalachia. It's a terrific resource providing online access to the archives of about a dozen special collections of Appalachian College libraries relating to southern and central Appalachian culture. Of special interest to me are the collection of mp3 files of I.D. Stamper playing and talking.

Stamper was a dulcimer player who was born in the Ozarks of Arkansas in 1904 and moved with his family to eastern Kentucky when he was young. His dulcimer playing is just terrific with a drive and energy that one hears in the Appalachian styles, but tempered by the (to my ear) less rhytmic and more melodic playing of the Ozarks. I love his playing and can't get enough of it. I hope you enjoy it, too. As well as the rest of the gold mine of music and information in these archives!