Here’s Butch and me playing at the Chattanooga Area Contradance last weekend… Fun as ever. The first tune is “A Roof for the Rain” by our friend, Ken Kolodner. Then we take it into Bill Cheatham, which didn’t work out to be the slickest transition ever, but we didn’t end up with a pile of dancers on the floor either, so I guess it wasn’t too bad. The caller is Vicki Herndon–she’s quite a gal! I dig her energy, and she says if Butch and I behave ourselves, she’ll consider taking us out on the road with her sometime. I think we could be talked into that! Thanks, Philip Luckey, for making this video for us.
Today was another perfect Sunday. Silvia is visiting from Slovakia, so we got to take her out on the town. First, brunch and bloody marys at the Northshore, and then a ride on the Coolidge Park carousel. What simple joys in life! I’ve been on the carousel many times now, but this was the first time I’ve been on it with the calliope working. I don’t know who in Chattanooga cares enough about these things to see to it that the calliope gets fixed… I can see how they’d be content to just play a cd of carousel music. But no, today we got the real thing. I was riding on a real flying horse, and the music was coming directly out of those stalks of pipes and mechanical drums. Now one of Chattanooga’s special treats (the carousel) is officially one of Chattanooga’s special musical treats. So totally worth the buck for a ride.
Well the time has finally come for Butch and I to play for the Chattanooga contradance. I’m excited about this because although we’ve played for contradances before, it’s always been with a group, and this time it’s just us as a duo. That means that we get to pull out all kinds of tunes we’ve collected together over the years and throw them together in fun ways. And I’m excited about playing for the dancers, because that adds a whole new rhythmic element to our music, which could lead to a whole new groove altogether.
Here are two clips from our rehearsal tonight. They’re not perfect, but it’s the sound of us working out some ideas. It’ll be rockin’ on Saturday, I’m fairly sure. If any of you blogateers are within a stone’s throw of Chattanooga (or Ringgold, actually), I’d say you should come on out and dance a little.
Butch and Christie’s contradance rehearsal: Blackberry Blossom into Miserlou, into June Apple:
And another, Fearghal O’Gara’s into Mississippi Sawyer into Nail That Catfish to the Tree:
Another record we listened to at my Victrola party was Arkansas Traveler (as a fox trot)! It’s been one of my favorite old time tunes ever since I heard Rayna Gellert’s rendition. Most people think of Looney Toons or “Picking up my baby bumble bee” when they hear this tune, but I think it can be pretty edgy if you do it right, or just pretty.
So here’s the version recorded from the Victrola machine:
Rayna Gellert’s version:
And my version on solo dulcimer, just quickly recorded in my living room for the heck of it:
It’s something I’ve only heard about in oral history interviews about the 1930s. But golly, with luck like mine, I landed myself at my very own Victrola party tonight, where I got to pick out all the records and listen to them on an authentic RCA Victrola. I spent an hour or more going through stacks and stacks of 78s, looking at song titles, recognizing a few of the recording artists, but mostly just feeling like I’d encountered music from another planet. And really, it basically is music from another planet. A completely different time and place from where we currently live… This machine with no plug and no lights, you wind it up, set the record in motion, place the needle down in the outer groove, and then you get to hear one song. One. And it’s louder than a bomb. That is, if the cabinet doors are open. Want less volume? Close the cabinet doors. Wild.
It’s kinda similar to how I listen to music in my own house, with the iTunes going from the laptop in the bedroom, and if it’s too loud, I shut the door a little. Only, instead of having to get up and change the record after each song, I can listen to 2019 songs, and wouldn’t have to get up off my chair for approximately 5.4 days.
Anyway, I chose this record tonight because I recognized the title from a funny song my friend Tom has been known to sing. “Huggin’ and A’Chalkin,” written by Clancy Hayes and Kermit Goell, performed by Herbie Fields and his orchestra, 1946.
Another one from the archives. I spent a glorious week at Balkan Camp in Mendocino, up on the green green coast of Northern California during the summer of 2001, where my two best friends were my minidisc recorder and my gaida (Bulgarian bagpipe). I had joined the dishwashing crew in order to attend at a discounted price, and found it to be like a very strange picture of heaven that week, doing nothing but playing, dancing, singing, drinking ouzo, meeting folks, and washing dishes. I was introduced firsthand to the wide world of American aficionados of Balkan music and dance, and was surprised to meet so many people my age there. This continues to give me hope for my generation, that we’d all find something to get into passionately and call it our own. Weird instruments, handmade dresses, singing in foreign tongues, using our two feet to dance to a beat of seven. That’s good livin’ right there. I’d really like to get back to Balkan Camp one of these days.
This was one of many performances in the kafana that week. It was a lodge-type room with tables and benches, as I recall, and bands or ensemble classes would book themselves for an hour or so, do a little show for whomever was sitting around drinking at the time. The brass band left a permanent impression in my ear (almost literally) for its volume, but also for its spunk. Gotta have that spunk.
This photo is actually from the Lark Camp website, but it gets the idea across. Brass bands are big, loud, and really fun.
Tonight was pretty cool. It wasn’t the ultimate best party I’ve ever been to at Terry Cannon’s place, but I do have to admit that it’s mighty cool to be able to walk approximately 56 yards to the hippest most happenin’ place in my neighborhood. I really really dig that there’s live music within earshot (if it weren’t for the walls and all the other noise out there) of my house… Tonight’s band impressed me for its sense of tradition, but also its grip on the under-28 age group. And then I also got to wondering if maybe this band had a certain “in” with the Covenant College crowd, which might explain the enthusiasm all around. Nobody ever gets this excited about Valentine’s Day. Do they?
I wrote a round in the shower last week. Or at least I was pretty sure it was a round. Couldn’t be 100% sure until I tried it out with some friends, which I finally did last night at Carla’s house in Memphis. So this is me, Adrian, Carla, and Butch all giving it a go. You’ve gotta appreciate a round with a little good advice in it. When tripping up the stairs, always use your hands so you won’t scrape your chin on the floor. Now you know what kind of wacky stuff goes through my head while I’m standing in the shower.
Going a bit out of chronological order here, and stepping back to Saturday night, 2/9/2008. This was one of the hot numbers in the No Strings Attached set, where they invited up Guy George, Karen Mueller, and Butch Ross for a little “Lady Be Good.” That’s Wes Chappell on mandolin, Randy Marchany on hammered dulcimer, and Bob Thomas on bass. These guys have been rockin’ the dulcimer world since before I was born.
I’m feeling like a doofus tonight for forgetting to set up my recorder at our house concert in Memphis. It’s not that I necessarily wanted to capture me and Butch, but we did something very special at the end with our Australian friend, Adrian Kosky. He had played a few of his own songs at the beginning of the concert, and then we brought him up for the closing number, where we played a super groovy version of “Arkansas Traveler” (there were actually two people there who had traveled from Arkansas to come to our concert!) and then Adrian took it straight into a super soulful rendition of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” That’s a bit of a sentimental one for me, since that’s how we used to end our concerts back in the days of Trailerpark McShank (more on that later). Anyway…. I’m a doof because I failed to record the magic– the whole room was singing along together. We had dulcimer, dulcimer, guitar, and some of the sweetest harmony I’ve heard in a while. Ah! The best musical moments seem to occur when there’s no microphone on.
Well as a consolation prize, I’ve decided to re-share this video Philip made of Adrian last summer on the mound behind our house. So just imagine this very same guy, but instead of a mountain dulcimer he’s playing a guitar, and instead of sitting on a dirt mound in Chattanooga he’s standing in a living room in Memphis, and instead of having the pixie-like Jasmine floating around behind him he’s playing to about a dozen sweet folks who all came out for our house concert tonight and sang along like it was their job.
