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Life as lived.
Mar. 23rd, 2014 03:43 pmFriday afternoon I drove down to Atlanta to stay with Alice and Beth so as to be able to attend the Atlanta housefilk at Neil and Felissa's Saturday evening.
Saturday afternoon there was a celtic session (a bunch of people getting together informally to play (mostly Irish and Irish-American) instrumental music; jigs, slip-jigs and reels) at a place called Steve's Live Music in Atlanta. Apparently they do this every Saturday afternoon but I hadn't heard about it until Dave Wegener mentioned it to the Atlanta filkers.
Anyway, Alice and I went to it, and I sat in with my mandolin. I was probably the worst player there, but somewhat to my surprise they were quite willing to play along with me and not try to speed up and leave me behind. (I had been led to believe that less-than-excellent players might not be welcome at celtic sessions generally--nothing about this specific session, mind you, just a general impression.) We had to hunt around a bit for repertoire we had in common--they didn't even know Soldier's Joy, which I thought everyone knew--but we found a few things. Everyone knew Wind That Shakes The Barley, one of them knew Staten Island Ferry, a different person knew Liberty, several of them knew Johnny Dubh, except they call it Beggarman (I'd heard it called Red Haired Boy, but not Beggarman.) They did a bunch of stuff I didn't know and couldn't play with but Gully, the bodran player, loaned me a catspaw so I could play along.
A catspaw is a bit like a pair of spoons, except joined together at the very end of the handle, so you don't have to worry about holding it right, and with solid wood balls instead of the bowls of the spoons, nicely shaped to be smooth and friendly as you slap them on your palm or your thigh. They were fun to use--eventually I passed it along to a young boy with a pennywhistle who was running out of things he could play, because I had a pair of plastic spoons in my bag that I can also play, if not quite as well as the catspaw. This morning I went looking for a catspaw on the internet and I have ordered one; with luck it will be here before Larry's housefilk and I can take it along.
I noticed there were a *lot* of young people there, which made me think of two things.
1) Irish music, at least around Steve's Live Music, has no problem recruiting young people. We had four girls who I would guess were 15 or under, (three of whom I suspect of being sisters because they had the same repertoire and similar coloring and facial shape) plus a boy I would guess was somewhere between 8 and 10 or so, a young man and woman (not together) I would place in early 20s, and then a couple of older men. This was not the old people's music fest.
2) Liquor laws must be very different in Georgia than they were in Oregon when I was getting interested in folk music and was regularly thrown out of pubs (well, politely escorted to the door) despite not drinking or having any intention of drinking.
And 3) maybe we should be recruiting for potential filkers in Irish sessions and at places that offer music lessons. After all, the best results for getting people into filk have apparently been with people who already like to make music but didn't realize someone would listen to songs about Battlestar Galactic and Dr. Who and Cosmos.
I hope my catspaw gets here soon.
Saturday afternoon there was a celtic session (a bunch of people getting together informally to play (mostly Irish and Irish-American) instrumental music; jigs, slip-jigs and reels) at a place called Steve's Live Music in Atlanta. Apparently they do this every Saturday afternoon but I hadn't heard about it until Dave Wegener mentioned it to the Atlanta filkers.
Anyway, Alice and I went to it, and I sat in with my mandolin. I was probably the worst player there, but somewhat to my surprise they were quite willing to play along with me and not try to speed up and leave me behind. (I had been led to believe that less-than-excellent players might not be welcome at celtic sessions generally--nothing about this specific session, mind you, just a general impression.) We had to hunt around a bit for repertoire we had in common--they didn't even know Soldier's Joy, which I thought everyone knew--but we found a few things. Everyone knew Wind That Shakes The Barley, one of them knew Staten Island Ferry, a different person knew Liberty, several of them knew Johnny Dubh, except they call it Beggarman (I'd heard it called Red Haired Boy, but not Beggarman.) They did a bunch of stuff I didn't know and couldn't play with but Gully, the bodran player, loaned me a catspaw so I could play along.
A catspaw is a bit like a pair of spoons, except joined together at the very end of the handle, so you don't have to worry about holding it right, and with solid wood balls instead of the bowls of the spoons, nicely shaped to be smooth and friendly as you slap them on your palm or your thigh. They were fun to use--eventually I passed it along to a young boy with a pennywhistle who was running out of things he could play, because I had a pair of plastic spoons in my bag that I can also play, if not quite as well as the catspaw. This morning I went looking for a catspaw on the internet and I have ordered one; with luck it will be here before Larry's housefilk and I can take it along.
I noticed there were a *lot* of young people there, which made me think of two things.
1) Irish music, at least around Steve's Live Music, has no problem recruiting young people. We had four girls who I would guess were 15 or under, (three of whom I suspect of being sisters because they had the same repertoire and similar coloring and facial shape) plus a boy I would guess was somewhere between 8 and 10 or so, a young man and woman (not together) I would place in early 20s, and then a couple of older men. This was not the old people's music fest.
2) Liquor laws must be very different in Georgia than they were in Oregon when I was getting interested in folk music and was regularly thrown out of pubs (well, politely escorted to the door) despite not drinking or having any intention of drinking.
And 3) maybe we should be recruiting for potential filkers in Irish sessions and at places that offer music lessons. After all, the best results for getting people into filk have apparently been with people who already like to make music but didn't realize someone would listen to songs about Battlestar Galactic and Dr. Who and Cosmos.
I hope my catspaw gets here soon.
