September and time to get playing again!

I just have a quick comment first about the nuts and bolts of our little collective blog.  Lucy, it's your baby so please chime in here.  Should we limit our individual posts to just one entry per month?

You can keep on adding and adding as much as you like, by going into  the same initial entry from the beginning of the month.  I only suggest this because now that we have a few members I get really confused as to who is doing the posting on each blog since we don't have a profile pic or anything like that to immediately distinguish one pots / member from another.  I know we have our names at the bottom of each post, but I get confused anyway.  Does that sound reasonable?

OK, so after our gig at Kirkstall Abbey my manager went on vacation and I had to work almost 3 weeks with only Sundays off and I had stuff I had to do each Sunday.  I was exhausted!  Finally things are back to normal and Mike and I have another gig coming up in a couple of weeks playing at the Saltaire Festival.  Gotta get practicing!  We're listed under Sunday 22nd (Eist), but our friend Brian (the other half of Mike's duo Craig & Wylie) will be joining us.

http://www.saltairefestival.co.uk/event/roberts-park-bandstand/

So Pam, you asked me to list what we played at our last gig and I haven't put the list up yet because I was a little fed up with myself for not playing some of the harder pieces on the list and falling back on stuff I've played last year.  I know I am very hard on myself...  Anyway, here's what we played (minus Mike's songs), but not in this order:

Lament for Limerick
Mist Covered Mountain / Cliffs of Moher
Foggy Dew / Rights of Man
Black is the Colour / Nellie Your Favour I'm Afraid I'll Not Gain
Princess Royale / Castle Kelly
The Morning Star / Temperance Reel
Come West Along the Road / The Mountain Road
Downfall of Paris
The Faery Fort / The New Broom
Father O'Flynn / MacAllistrum's March
She Moved Through the Faire / Cooley's / Tailor's Twist
The Home Ruler / Kitty's Wedding
The Musical Priest / The Gravel Walk
A Fig For a Kiss / The Butterfly
I Buried My Wife / Andy DeJarlis
The Glass of Beer / Humours of Tulla
The Rakes of Clonmel / The Three Drummers
The Atholl Highlander

Ones I missed (plus a couple of slow airs but the mood wasn't right and probably won't be at our next gig either):
The Miser's Purse
George White's / Kitty's Gone-a-Milking
Flying to the Fleadh
Nova Scotia Reel / Egan's Polka (they don't really work together as a set)


So  I've added a couple more sets to the above and figuring out what I'll do on Sunday at the Saltaire Festival.  Been practicing an hour-ish after dinner.  I sometimes think little bursts like that on a regular basis are better than big chunks less often.

Anyway, the weather's looking good for Sunday, warm and sunny so fingers crossed....

The weather was aMAZEing!  Yay!  Sunny and about 70 degrees, you can't ask for more than that in the north of England in September.

It went really smoothly.  I just love playing these kinds of gigs!

September Gigs

This should be titled "Lose that Stage Fright" because it's what I intend to do this month. Hopefully I'll have progress to report after each posting! And I will be asking questions that I hope you can answer, ladies!

Gig 1 - A wedding at the top of a local ski area, our first gig out that involved what I call real money. 2 hours, maybe 100 people. Outside, no electricity so no amplification. The bride requested the song All Your Life by The Band Perry, as her processional, so we worked up an arrangement for harp and mandolin. (A song we don't really like, and so we can't stop singing/humming/lalala-ing it, of course...) Our song list: Wild Mountain Thyme, My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose, Trip to Sligo, Swan Lk 243, The Grenadier and the Lady, Squire Wood's Lamentation, Baptist Johnson, Var Det Du, Ashokan Farewell, George Brabazon #1, Fanny Poer, Planxty Drew, Boys of Ballisodare, Carolan's Concerto, Sheebeg Sheemore, Kean O'Hara #3, O'Carolan's Welcome, Scarborough Fair, Over the Rainbow, Skye Boat Song, Fhear a Bhata, and a few improvised pieces by JP. (We will pick and choose from this list for our next 3 gigs...) Anxiety report: not nervous the day of or on the way over. No shaking hands at the strings like the last time I played at the Dunbarton Coffeehouse, but playing as background music is way less intimidating than an actual performance, right? Should have brought a board to lay down on the uneven grass surface - there was no position I could find that made the harp perfectly level, and I ended up leaning in way more than I usually do. When you play outside, ladies, how do you handle an uneven surface? I am planning on bringing a sheet of plywood next time and covering it with a small rug unless I hear something better from you! Made some good connections with the Justice of the Peace and the Banquet Manager at the facility, so perhaps more wedding gigs in the future? But here's the thing - not one person, (guest or wedding party member) said one thing to us the entire time. I guess I was raised that, even if you don't think so, you go over and say something complimentary. JP says this is the way things go when you play out. Ugh! All that work and not one moment of kindness? I am not sure I am made for this. But concerts? Isn't that more nerve-wracking? Would love to hear your comments! Thanks for reading.

Lucy is surprised that suddenly It's September!

How did it get to be September so fast???

Before the month closes, I'm going to plaster my response to Andee's query here and elsewhere.  She asks if we're to contain ourselves in one post-per-month (plus any comments, of course) and the answer is YES, that is the idea, to keep it neat. You can edit, add and subtract etc. your once-a-month blog as long as you are signed in.  There should be a pencil symbol at the bottom of it.  Click on that and when you're done hit 'Update'.  I date my entries normally (not this one, of course).  It will automatically roll over into a new month because I've set it up to do that.  

I'm mostly practicing the tunes for this gig on September 20, but of course, I find myself getting easily distracted...   I am finding I am missing Michael Rooney these days - I LOVE every tune I have ever learned from him in a workshop and I find that, at last, some of the ones I learned years ago are finally beginning to sink in, none of them are all that easy.  He has such a special sound.  I hope he and June can come over sometime before too long, or that I can get over to Ireland.  That would be dreamy.

The harp tunes for the gig are:
The Piper's Picnic/Leslie's March
Fanny Power (probably start this alone)
Joe Bane's (slow reel) (start this alone)
Accompaniment:
Three hornpipes:  Mrs Crotty's/Humours of Tullycrine/Cronin's
I may do another accompaniment, not sure......

All the other tunes, and there are many, I'll be playing on the concertina.

Right after the concert the Irish music class taught by Hilari Farrington and Benedict Koehler starts up again for six weeks.  Again we'll be focussing on a region, last time it was Clare, not sure what it will be this time.

I don't have a musical photo to post right at this moment (although I will - we took a photo of ourselves for the gig)  We're calling ourselves The Flies in the Porter - which is slightly gross but the lads all liked it.  Anyhow here is a photo of a fawn raiding our blueberry bushes!

20 September

I've been a bad bad bad blog admin person, I admit, but I've been wildly busy with both music and my RL - school starting, things coming to a head with a big writing project, and preparing for this concert in the 'bandshell' in Richmond this afternoon.  My biggest worry was the weather, but we are getting handed the most beautiful early autumn day imaginable - it should be lovely and the harp will be happy with temps in the mid-seventies and not humid.  So all that is good!  I've got my checklist handy and am about to go wash my hair and figure out just the right casual but slightly special outfit..... not my strong suit!  Ha ha.  

I am playing the tunes listed above, plus a boatload of concertina - really mostly that - I love my posse and am counting on their support and warmth to get me through the harp tunes (only one solo - the first round of Joe Bane's) and the brief concertina solo as I start "The New Custom House" one of my favorite reels.  For some reason though, I have almost no problem playing the concertina publicly.  It feels like a dear little pet in my lap, not this big imposing thing.  People get so excited by the harp, their eyes light up and they go 'Awwww, a harp!" and I am afraid of disappointing them!  No one feels that way about a concertina.  The cats howl and want to go outside or else they come and try and make me stop!  I am an expert at playing c'tina quietly, in fact.  

So I'm nervous.  Yep.  I'll get Knox (spousal unit) to take a photo of us, maybe even a little clip would be cool, and I promise to post it here as soon as I am recovered. 

23 September

So far the spousal unit has hogged any media on his smartphone....  In the meantime, the concert went very well, it was actually fun!  I must be maturing or something.   We didn't get to play anywhere near all of our tunes and I'm thinking of taking the harp to the Thursday session which I never do..... but I think I have to.  

Meanwhile, the Harper's Escape is coming up - I am going although I dread the long drive.  It's an hour less for Somerset, and I appreciate that!  I have my CD somewhere although I can't remember what I did with it, which is kind of bad of me, eh?  Looks like fun. 

29 September 

Don't know if I mentioned that I was 'trying out' for a regular gig in the lobby of our local (Burlington, VT) hospital (Fletcher-Allen).  I 'got it' and I start this Thursday afternoon.  Then the next day I head south on the long trek to Harper's Escape in New Brunswick.  I wish it wasn't so far away!  I ALWAYS get stuck somewhere in some ghastly traffic jam (one time it was right in NB within a mile of my destination).  I had to take a crazy cross-country route.  For once I would like to arrive not frazzled. 

My non-harp Irish music class has started up again - Regional Styles this time, Leitrim this week.  Fun!

I'm tackling Limestone Rock on the harp because one of my flute friends is dying for me to learn it to play with her.  We do Miss Johnson's, then George White's and she wants to add Limestone Rock which she usually plays after GW.... that should be quite the set!