I’ve been having such amazing visits with a baby grand in North Chattanooga lately… Such a different experience from playing a 100-year-old upright, and it brings out totally different music from me. Most people around here don’t even associate me with a piano–Heck! I certainly don’t talk about myself as a pianist. Never totally developed that identity, I suppose. But still, it’s one of my happiest places, to be sitting at a piano with unlimited time to explore all the sounds and patterns of chords and notes. Although the dulcimer is my true love, the piano is the thread of continuity that ties me back to my 4-year-old self. How mysterious the keyboard must’ve seemed to me at that time, and how wonderful that I still find mystery in it today. But most of all, as always, I find joy.
Here’s a video of the Esbjorn Svensson Trio, who make me feel like there could (or should!) someday be a jazz trio in my future. File this one under “inspiration.”
Well here’s me skipping a month of blogging, all for starting a folk music school…building local connections stronger, deeper, and more intricately woven than before. It’s been an amazing month since returning from Belgium. For one thing, I hit the ground running with the promotion of the Mountain Music Folk School fall schedule. I’ve been the mad music messenger of Chattanooga, riding around everywhere with my posters and schedules to hand out. Matt’s been right there with me, and so has our business consultant, Mike Harrell. We’re a few more meetings away from having a completed business plan, but we couldn’t wait for that– we decided to jump on this wave of momentum and kick off our first “semester” of group classes. We’re throwing ourselves into this with all our energy, all just to find out the answer to this question: Will the people of Chattanooga support a folk music school, student by student, class by class? It would be too soon to speak now, but let’s just say, so far so good.
I’ve decided that my current job title should be “Community Gatherer”, as I’ve been pulling together first all the teachers to teach our classes and workshops, and now the really fun part of pulling in all the people who might be willing to sign up for a class–or at least sign up on our mailing list. All the lists are growing and growing. Since Casey’s article hit the Times Free Press last Monday, the phone’s been ringing steadily, and all our “gathering” efforts are starting to materialize with real human beings actually stepping up to say, “why yes, I would like to learn to play the banjo!”… and so forth. But also in all our gathering this month, we’ve managed to pull some amazing musicians into our folk school orbit. If our mission is to help these people live musically fulfilling lives, share their knowledge and talent, and help them help others get on board with playing an instrument, heck yeah! We’ll take it! It’s been SO worthwhile so far. I love knowing that a few dozen Chattanoogans (and Chickamaugans, and Ringgolddiggers, and Hixsonians, and RedBankistanis, etc.) are going to spend one hour a week for the next 8 weeks in the presence of patient and passionate musicians like these….
Lon Eldridge. Biologically, he’s 23 years old. Spiritually, he’s 108. When this guy plays and sings, it makes you wonder what kind of soul-swapping took place to stuff the weathered old bluesman into Lon’s body. Lon’s teaching some classes with us this fall, and he’s been such a good sport, coming out with us to all of our wild promotional stunts, like the gig we did at Riverbend last June. Here’s a video clip from that:
Obuobi Ashong. I call him the African gypsy, because he’s been wandering the planet following his musical whims. It is so nice to spend time with someone who cares about nothing more than to play music… and you gotta love the permanent smile look. I think it’s quite the fashion statement. Obuobi will teach a guitar class with us this fall, specifically on this style he plays called “palmwine” music or “highlife.”
Thank you, Chattanooga, for bringing my musical path to a point of intersection with these and other musicians. I’m not taking this for granted!
There’s some pretty incredible stuff going on with the folk music scene in Belgium. I was just teaching at a week-long festival in Gooik, a small village that gets completely overrun with folk musicians… All day long there are classes for all the different instruments: fiddle, bagpipe, accordion, guitar, hammered dulcimer (that’s me!), percussion, hurdy gurdy. And then at night, after the evening concert, everyone fills the dance hall and dances into the morning. On the last night of the festival, the youth take over, and keep it going literally until breakfast. I loved how the kids mimicked their teachers, as the two boys in this clip are playing the role of ensemble leader, just like the ensemble class they had been in all week. I also love how these young musicians are thinking about arrangement and changes in energy to keep the dancing going. The melodies are simple and fun, but how much fun is determined by the group. I think it’s safe to say they’re generating an ample amount of fun here!
What a gift, to be set up on a musical “blind date” like this. I’ve been paired with Maarten Decombel to perform at the Friday night concert in Gooik. Maarten and I hadn’t really met before yesterday, but we did exchange a few mp3s of some good tune candidates. This one, “Dodecamedita,” is one that he wrote and sent to me. It’s been my happy tune for several weeks now, as I’ve been looking forward to Belgium. Yesterday, Maarten and I treated ourselves to a full rehearsal day, and we put together arrangements for a full set of music. It’s so wonderful to meet and work with someone who has such compatible musical sensibility. Right from the very beginning, we were thinking very similarly about what to do with all these tunes, a very natural flow. I think it’s going to be a respectable performance on Friday, if not downright enjoyable!
Here’s Maarten and I practicing his tune, “Dodecamedita”– although it cuts off near the end, right in the middle of his improv section… camera malfunction.
Thanks to Jan and An for hosting our rehearsal in their paradise of a garden!
I was never going to forget these five musical minutes of my life anyway, but I’m super glad that Laurie McCarriar captured it all on video. Maddie MacNeil, Tom White, Ken Lovelett and myself were all on stage together for the teachers’ concert at the Northeast Dulcimer Symposium, and our setlist consisted of things that each of us had brought to the table to share and be played on by everyone. So this was my contribution, my arrangement of Amazing Grace that I’ve been living with and working on for a year now (or more, if you count back to when I first started playing around with it back in Ireland). I think we’ve reached an all-new level of perfection with it now. What could ever be more beautiful than Maddie’s voice? And the rest of the band made us sound like we were some Irish super-band, like Altan or something. Love it.
Truly one of my favorite places in the world, the Corner House in Cork City. And here are some fine fiddlers (one of them is my friend Edel, who I miss terribly!!) with rising star Brian Hanlon.
There is a gathering of musicians that takes place every summer in the Adirondacks– every summer for the past 28 years. So it was quite an honor for me to be invited as the hammered dulcimer instructor for the Northeast Dulcimer Symposium this year. I had wonderful class, very opened minded willing-to-try-anything students! Two unusual instruments made an appearance at the week: Laurie McCarriar’s hammered mbira and Ken Lovelett’s orthagonal lap drum. Here they are, one clip from the sound check (with Tom White walking in and out of the frame as he set up the stage), and one clip from the performance, which was done in complete darkness while Laurie played with her light-up hammers. Oh man, that was cool!
Ken Lovelett and Laurie McCarriar at the Northeast Dulcimer Symposium, June 2009:
Here’s a little gospely number I wrote in the shower the other day. Seems like something that could’ve come out of the Unitarian hymn book, and no surprise there. This song has some of my favorite things in it– playing the piano, lots of fifth intervals, and invented words (“feelya”, “walkya”, “growya”, and “giveya”). I’m not that crazy about the quality of the recording… Still on a search for a good digital recorder, I suppose. This one makes the piano sound muffled, my voice sound unreasonably clear, and is overall too quiet or something. It could just be that I need a good microphone.
Anyway, all technological critiques aside, I’m pretty happy with the song… It sounds to me like a conversation between a person (ok, me) and the universe. Just some happy thoughts passed back and forth, you know, a little small talk, me and the universe.
“Working Hands” recorded at 524 East 18th St., Chattanooga, June 8, 2009:
I’m including two different links to the mp3 because the WordPress audio player doesn’t seem to be working well. I mean, my recorder wasn’t doing a stellar job, but it wasn’t THIS bad! Does anyone else hear that crackling and distortion on the WordPress player version of this file? The link above will get you to a clean one.
