I haven’t known a Thanksgiving with the Burns family that didn’t include music played on water glasses. This time we coerced Steve into playing “Alleycat”. And yes, it was noted by several siblings that Ben Franklin had invented the glass armonica (or glassharmonica), an instrument I’d love to get my hands on someday.
Here’s my brother-in-law, Steve Patient, playing “Alleycat”, Thanksgiving, 2008.
I had the pleasure of meeting Ekim Beau in the strange little place called Helen, Georgia. I was there at the Unicoi State Park for the NGFDA dulcimer festival, and managed to slip away from all the dulcimer madness with my friend Lynn. Ekim Beau plays a wild “Cross Beau Zither”– an instrument he invented himself decades ago. He appeared to me like the quintessential American gypsy. His street performing setup was perfect, his attitude was perfectly confident and laid back.
I found it fascinating to watch how he plucks a note or series of notes with one hand, and then follows right behind with his other hand, damping the notes he just played. It’s a technique somewhat like the gamelan players use in Indonesia; they play a pattern of notes with one hand, and move through the same pattern with the other hand, damping, exactly one step behind the first hand. And actually, now that I think about it, Belorussian tsimbaly players use a similar technique.
Anyway, it’s great to see something different, and to meet such kind and interesting characters along the way.
This is an exciting day! I am announcing the opening of the Mountain Music Folk School, co-founded by myself, Matt Evans, and Steve Daugherty. And in the spirit of all things nifty and new, I’ve changed the look of my own blog–And yes, I will continue to post clips from my musical adventures on this blog, but keep an eye on the Mountain Music Folk School blog as well, because there’s going to be a lot of activity there! All of the teachers are blog contributors, so there will be a variety of stories, videos, and photos coming soon.
There’s a great video there now of Casey, Matt, and myself playing “Cockeyed Hen”, an original by Casey Phillips.
I’m very happy with the music Lisa Ferguson and I have been making lately. We conquered a whole slew of Christmas tunes for the upcoming season, and we’ve been polishing the tunes we already have in the repetoire. This one, Steffaleken from Norway, is one of our favorites. We haven’t reached the perfect arrangement with it yet, but we always have fun when we play it. Lisa and I will be playing in St. Elmo on Saturday, November 29th at 11am, and we’re looking for some more Christmas gigs– so get in touch if you can use some beautiful dulcimer music for your event!
