Nice Nice Nice

Been posting links to clips of big shows. Fiddlers with long black coats playing wicked fast. Been playing fast, too.
But the playing of these three is "just swell." I'm going to breath a bit more when we play.

Tune of the week

This weekend on Bowen saw the yearly start of day visitors stuck in the cove for an hour or two on Saturday night, when there is no ferry from 6pm-8pm. So people mill around in the nice weather after they get over the shock of not getting on a boat when they expected to. They wander into the Snug and listen some, and sometimes give us brief glances of indignance when they order food that we can't make for them.
Here's the deal. The kind owners of the Snug let us play in their cafe, and we sell prepared food and bevvies from a change bowl on the counter. We don't make the sandwiches that are advertised on the Specials board. The grill is off. The espresso machine is off, but we have really good drip coffee and tea available. When we explain that we don't actually work at the cafe, and that the owners trust us with the keys to their store, well people are just tickled pink and settle in for some locals making music. They catch the next ferry looking visibly more relaxed.
We don't mention that on some nights, more of the musicians are from the mainland.

Colin started this tune up on Saturday: The Lads of Laois.

Here's a video clip from Comhaltas

Straight or Swing?

We have this peculiar "groovy-swing" tempo, particularly with reels, when we play as a small group. Even when we start a tune set square and fast, it will often morph into this almost lazy off-beat West Coast kind of thing. But this tends to change when fiddlers are in the room. I don't know if the groove thing is a flute thing, or if bowing lends itself to that more traditional 4/4 drive.
This past Saturday we hit fiddler critical mass: 11-some musicians, three of them playing fiddle. Wonderful tune sets with that galloping straight ahead tempo.
Whenever our friends from town come over, I look forward to hearing this tune
And speaking of fiddler critical mass, here's the tune played at the end of a set.
This much talent on one stage is like all of the G8 leaders deciding to pile into one plane.

A Bowen Island song

Song for the Cape:



This song is based on an old Irish tune with a chorus thrown in.

One stormy spring day
As I rambled at the Cape
And gazed out to the ocean
Where the seals sport and play.
From the sea foam and spray
There arose a fair maid
As she stepped on the rocky shore
To me she did say:

Oh the old world is dying, and the new is yet to come.
Oh the old world is dying, and the new is yet to come.

Her gaze met my eye
And she began to cry
And her keening stilled the south wind
In the far distant sky
Said she "Sir, you stand
Firmly rooted on this land
I appeal to your true heart
Will you give me your hand?"

For the old world is dying, and the new is yet to come
For the old world is dying, and the new is yet to come

The wind died away
And the sea foam and the spray
Took back the fair maiden
At the end of the day
In a grove of old fir
I felt my heart a-stir
To respond to her calling
And devote my life to her

For the old world is dying, and the new is yet to come
For the old world is dying, and the new is yet to come

Tunes of the week

It's tunes, because one of them is one that we frequently play but tends to go off the rails when new players visit our session.
The variation of "The Frost is All Over" that we play is this one
Apparently this is some cryptic variation generally known only to veterans of the former Irish Heather Session, and to recent players who want to be their friend (like me). The end of the B-part is atypical.

The Old Copperplate is certainly a well known tune, but I can't recall the last time we played it. Most all of us play it, so I'm posting it here as a reminder that we should play it more often.

But speed can be fun

Arty McGlynn plays guitar on so many recordings, but I've never seen video footage of the man himself. I'm a sucker for this tempo, if not lousy at keeping this tempo for a whole set.
I'll buy tea for the person who can name the tunes.
Tune of the week to follow:

The Grand Hotel

Nice session tonight, everybody. Thank you.
...the rest of this entire post is ripped off of Jon Bartlett's entry on Mudcat. You can get the midi entry (tune) from that link, too.

THE GRAND HOTEL

There's a place in Vancouver you all know so well,
It's a place where they keep rot-gut whisky to sell,
They also keep boarders, they keep them like hell,
And the name of that place is the Grand Hotel.

In the Grand Hotel when the loggers come in,
It's amusing to see the proprietor grin,
He knows they've got money, he'll soon have it all,
"Come on, boys, have a drink!", you will hear Tommy call.

Oh, the bartender laughs as the money rolls in
They drink beer and whisky, champagne, rum and gin
Till they all get so boozy they can't drink no more,
And the loggers lay scattered all over the floor.

In the morning the loggers wake up from their bed,
Their money's all gone and Oh lord! what a head,
They rush to the bar and they call for a drink,
And Tommy gets busy a-slinging the ink.

"Four bits for your bed, though you slept on the floor,
And the breakfast you've missed will be four bits more,
And a four dollar meal ticket, good at the bar,
And a pass back to camp on the old Cassiar."

Repeat verse 1.

note: coll. from Bennett King Lesley, Shaughnessy Hospital by Phil Thomas and in his Songs of the Pacific Northwest. Another version collected by Ed McCurdy is in Fowke. The building still stands. The song predates 1923, when Tommy Roberts, the proprietor, was shot and killed while gambling. With no banks for "stakey" loggers just arrived in town to use, they were prime targets for robbers of every sort, so Roberts would put their rolls in the hotel safe, and "run a slate" for them, first making sure he'd taken out enough money to pay for their trip back up to the remote logging camps on the coast steamer "Cassiar". JB

The Kettle Valley Line

Having decided to sing more BC songs in the interest of keeping them living (and because they're just plain great songs about our own home!), I thought I should post the words here once in a while. The Kettle Valley Line was the railway that used to run approximately where the Coquihalla highway is, now.

I seem to repeat the first verse in the middle and at the end, but I don't think that's usual.

I always ride upon the roof on the Kettle Valley Line
I always ride upon the roof on the Kettle Valley Line
I always ride upon the roof
I could pay the fare but what's the use
So I always ride upon the roof on the Kettle Valley Line

I order my meals through the ventilator on the Kettle Valley Line (2x)
I order my meals through the ventilator
Costs the same but you don't have to tip the waiter
So I order my meals through the ventilator on the Kettle Valley Line

I buy a sandwich from the cook on the Kettle Valley Line (2x)
I buy a sandwich from the cook
and he pockets the money, the dirty crook
But I buy a ...

Those railway bulls are gentlemen on the Kettle Valley Line (2x)
Those railway bulls are gentlemen
We'll never see their likes again
But the railway bulls...

They tip their hats and they call you sir on the Kettle Valley Line (2x)
They tip their hats and they call you sir
Then throw you into the local stir
But they tip their hats and they call you sir on the Kettle Valley Line

Whiskey Before Breakfast

Brenda starts this tune last night, and it's on the third repetition before I realize that it's "Whiskey Before Breakfast". The guys at Bowen's monthly kitchen junket play this one sometimes, and it's a tune I usually associate with the Old-Time-Canadianized-American tradition.
Maybe we ought to play more of this stuff at the Snug (uh-oh). For instance, here's Mike McGoldrick, Sharon Shannon, Bruce Molsky and a bunch of others that I should know if I listened to American Traditional music more often.
This title of the tune should win a contest. "Shove the Pig's Foot a Little Further into the Fire"
Neil, if you'll kindly bring your Tea-chest Bass to the next session please...

One Dark Night at the Snug...

The Star of Munster as a stand-alone set. Fun evening.

Danu's Kerry Tunes set

I really like this set, and as Chris points out, the tunes are simple and have great drive to them. Anyone who plays with us knows that we have a lot of flute players, so I think I'm partial to bands who are "blessed" with multiple flutes.
The bit at the end had me a tad perplexed until recently.

Tune of the Week

This week's tune isn't Irish, it's from Quebec, and I`ve finally found the dots for it. I try to lift tunes by ear but this one always goes by too fast when it`s played.
So, for next time:

http://www.jamielaval.com/Tune_charts/Fleur.pdf

Session on a Sled

More snow this past Saturday night. The phone call comes 30 minutes prior to session start: "I don't know if I'll make it through the snow, and if I do, I won't have a guitar."
Undeterred and optimistic about my comrades' abilities to make it to the cove, I pack a guitar, whistle and flute on the sled, shoulder my fiddle, light the kerosene lamp (period lighting being a whole 'nuther obsession), and trudge down to the cove. I play tunes alone in the Snug for a few minutes, and in walks Mark with a guitar packed in a plastic garbage bag.
Mark lives in the cove and has listened to us play a few times. I think he's a veteran Tex/Mex RockN'Roll musician, and plays classical guitar beautifully. So we try at Irish Traditional, and we cannot find a groove together to save our musical lives. In walk Karen and Pete, out on a date in the Cove, to listen and bear witness to this musical near-non-event. So it's turn-taking and respectful listening to each other's music of choice. I subject the room to a couple of tunes on three month's fiddling experience.
We pack up early and, slightly crestfallen, I start back up the hill with instruments in tow. I see a car struggling up the notorious Government Road Hill and find Lori (one of the Learning Centre Folks) keen to get home were it not for her now-overheated engine. The car rolls back into the cove, where we run into Kathryn and young Sophie (more Learning Centre Folk) out for a walk. She insists that we all go to their house for tea and tunes. Dan is volunteered to drive Lori home later. He doesn't know this yet.
So it's to Kathryn, Dan, and Sophie's for tea, chat, and a few tunes awkwardly played. Kathryn plays a lovely Scottish air on recorder and invites me to play along.
In F major.
It was a lovely time, nothing short of providence as far as I'm concerned.
I walk home tired but feeling like the Evening somehow "happened" after all. When I get home, Angela is starting the movie version of Pride and Prejudice, which has some of my favorite dancing scenes of any movie. There's also a brief scene where a lone fiddler is playing "The Frost Is All Over". Haaah!

More Tunes of the Week

In our effort to bring more groovy reels in, here's the one that we've twice called "that one on the Lunasa CD that the guitar player wrote". And we've only played it in bits and pieces at that. This transcription seems more of an approximation, but here you go:
1st August

And more slip jigs that got played Saturday night:
Hardiman the fiddler
A Fig for a Kiss

And if anyone knows of a video clip of the Lunasa set that includes that Fleur de Mandragore tune, could you please post it?
And some of those neat Breton tunes with them extra beats in 'em

This guy wants to come to the session

He seems keen...

Tunes of the week

Here`s a few that came out nicely:

• Hunter`s House, a classic by Ed Reavy, pobably his most popular tune.
• 6/8 du Petit Sarny by Eric Favreau.
• The Tailor's Thimble which we played a lot in Vancouver at the Heather. I think we got this one from O'Neill's and from a visting concertina player from England called Andrea. There is an old Scottish jig called The Banks of Allen which this is based upon.

Anyone remember some of the better sets that got thrown together?

Thanks everyone for making it over to the dark depths of Adams Road for the session last night - somehow you all made our freezing house toasty for the first time in weeks! Many great tunes were played that I of course didn't write down any of the names of....so if anyone did make some notes, could you put them up here?  Also, someone left a hat here - I think Hugh.  Does anyone know how to get a hold of him?

More Slip Jigs please

Nah, the tune of the week should really be a tune. We don't really play that many slip jigs and so I humbly submit is one for consideration: Ryan's, aka Fisherman's. Most of us probably know it already. It's one of those pretty ones that sounds good fast or slow. Cheers

New musical Friends, Tempo, and Expectations

The Tune of the Week is actually a song, the Log Driver's Waltz.

For the life of me I cannot hear the double-entendre that everyone was giggling about at session when I hear this song! It's a beloved NFB Animation short, not a tune about the nasty. Someone will have to take me aside and explain.

Thanks to Lyn and Emily for this one, and if anyone can suggest great Canadian tunes to Margaret to take home to Ireland, pass them along!

It was great having some folks make the long trip from town to join us this weekend. I really enjoy playing with new people. It's great fun watching players squint and cringe as we adjust intonation, listen to new settings, and settle into a group tempo that might be a bit different than what might have been set initially. And the punters don't seem to notice because they invariably are shocked to hear that we haven't been playing together for years.

So cheers to Margaret, Brenda and Hugh for coming out. I associate Margaret's guitar so strongly with Annie and Jes' fiddle playing that I can almost hear the three of them when only one is present. It's likewise with Keona's playing; I hear Neil's guitar with her even when he's at home.

The portable pub

Perhaps we can chip in and buy The Snug a retrofit.

See you all tomoorw night!