*Our rental property preparation-and-maintenance duties at last completed, LW in particular greatly knackered from her marathon painting session, we shoved ourselves into the car and made for Old Songs. This year, thanks to Me Mum, we had an already-paid-for hotel room awaiting us in Albany, less than 30 minutes from the festival site. This proved to be a very fortunate thing for many reasons. Friday night we reacquainted ourselves with the lay of the Old Songs land, getting a quick look at the various booths and vendors, before settling in to catch the likes of Little Johnny England, Fourtold (a new folk "supergroup" consisting of songwriters Michael Smith, Anne Hills, Steve Gillette and Cindy Mangsen), a gospel trio-cum-duo Sisters in Harmony and long-time favorite John McCutcheon, relevant, funny and sincere as always. Saturday it was time to go to work, for all of us: LW and I took turns helping man the performer check-in/hospitality table, while the daughters did their stint at the Children's Area. As a result, we barely laid eyes on one another for most of the day, although given the kids' proclivity (not to mention ours) for wandering it's hard to say how much we'd have seen each other anyway.
This was my second year "working the table," and no, it's not especially glamorous even if you do get to see the famously folk up close and personal as you hand out meal passes and festival info. Understandably, a lot of them have their minds focused elsewhere, and well, it is their livelihood after all, thus the exchanges tend to be short and perfunctory. And, every so often you get a curve thrown your way -- the performer who wants to discuss compensation for travel expenses or seeks a couple of comp tickets for a late-arriving friend or family member.
But there are those who find the time or wherewithal to be a little sociable, and others who have interesting questions: One asked me, "Do you know anything about these other people I'm giving the workshop with? I'm just curious as to what kinds of music we're all presenting."
Fortunately, I had a chance to watch Footworks, an innovative dance troupe from the Baltimore area that interpolates Appalachian clogging with other folk and contemporary dance styles:
Then came Saturday night. Warning: Rather extreme self-indulgence ahead.
As it turned out, we were ensconced at the same hotel as none other than Fairport Convention. So the question came down from the performer hospitality management team, Would we possibly have the room, and the interest, in giving some of the guys a ride back after the evening concert? Ordinarily, LW and I would be inclined to roam the festival grounds until the wee hours in search of sessions and singarounds, but for a variety of reasons this opportunity to chauffeur seemed to make all the sense in the world. So it was, after LW and I managed to get in a bit of jamming at the all-but-deserted hospitality area, we invited into the Ford Taurus three Fairporters: Chris Leslie, Ric Sanders and Gerry Conway.
As it turned out, Chris is an old buddy of a morris dance acquaintance of mine, so that more than helped break the ice. Actually, he and Ric were quite engaging and in good spirits, happily chatting away with each other and with us as well (Gerry, being rather tired, mainly sat and ate some leftover donuts LW had alertly acquired). Each time we passed a Dunkin Donuts, the two would remark, "Drive-through?" and imitate the sound of squealing brakes. No, we didn't get free passes to the Cropredy Festival; it was entertaining enough to spend 30 minutes traversing the upstate New York farm country with them. Thank goodness the car had a tune-up before we left. Sunday, and the adults were done with their volunteer commitments, hurrah. So I happily indulged in some pick-up morris:
Also dropped in on a French Canadian jam session co-directed by Le Vent du Nord:
�whose members include Benoit Borque, a bear of a man who takes great and obvious delight in swapping off accordian and bones, often while dancing:
Other favorites included The Arrogant Worms, a Canadian trio with infectious and spontaneous humor:
Of course, I just had to take in one last glimpse of Fairport, doing an "acoustic set" that also functioned as a meet-the-performer affair:
I got to hear them do "Meet On the Ledge," and that was as appropriate a coda as any for an event such as this. About an hour or so later, we put our dusty selves into our equally dusty car and made our way home. Until next year�
Vacation, pt. 1: Blood, Sweat, Toil, yadda yadda
*The task at hand: Get the downstairs apartment cleaned out, painted and ready for habitation by new tenants by the very day we were scheduled to leave for Old Songs. At the same time, we needed to stow whatever gear we could in our side of the basement, in the still-to-be-renovated kids' room or in our newly-acquired storage unit. So, the days and evenings were largely one of grunting, lifting, packing, transporting and searching for open space. And in 90ish-degree temperatures and lovely humidity to boot.
In the end, it came down to Friday morning, with moving vans supposedly on the way any minute, and LW -- who had pulled an all-nighter -- hurriedly but more than competently applied paint in the rooms while I rolled up tarps, newspapers and cleaned away. We won, moving vans lost. Ha.
*Book completed: "The Leto Bundle," by Marina Warner -- A points-for-trying retelling of the Leto myth, with Leto cast as the (literally) eternal refugee in several incarnations down through the centuries. The latter-day episode folds the tale back onto itself, with various sub-plots involving a young social activist who may or may not have blood ties to the contemporary Leto, an Ani DiFrancoesque rock star and a museum curator who belatedly comes to grasp the sociopolitical implications of the exhibit she is organizing. For all the divergences and flashbacks, Warner does manage to keep the story moving along, and the observations on how history, politics and archeology may converge in unlikely, and sometimes discomfiting, ways are often compelling.
June 16-19
*Ah, Gaelic Roots.
It's apparently the last one, at least for a while, or under its present arrangement, thanks mainly to post-9/11 visa restrictions that require (for example) a guest performer living off the coast of Scotland to travel into London for a face-to-face meeting at the American consulate before getting his/her papers. So there's a wistfulness, barely detectable but there, in the atmosphere this time 'round. Not that it's dimmed the enjoyment of, say, taking a bodhran class from Mel Mercier -- whose father's performance on an old Chieftans' record may well have planted the bodhran seed in me many years ago -- and learning his special percussive language for down- and upstrokes, taka, takita, jonah, takadimi. Or listening to South Armagh's John Campbell tell stories, "80 percent of which might be true." Or watching Bob McQuillen, a giant of a man now somewhat reduced in age, but still spirited and enthusiastic about being alive in the music. Or exchanging small talk on playing, singing or family life with heretofore complete strangers from close by or clear across the country. Or seeing scads of elementary, middle and high school-age step-dancers, taking time out from their regimen of stretching, capering and tapping to listen to their portable CD players, play their video games, or simply chase each other around like, well, kids.
*Viewing: "Rope" -- Seen today, this terrific Hitchcock adaptation of playwright Patrick Hamilton's reworking of the Leopold-Loeb "thrill murder" case poses the question: Which is worse, those who kill out of nihilism and boredom, or those who kill as a tribute to Nietzsche, like the film's fine young protagonists (arrogant John Dall, shaken Farley Granger), who seem tailor-made for the Best and Brightest Generation. James Stewart, as their former college professor and alleged mentor, gives a spot-on layered performance: Even as he uncovers the duo's ghastly crime, he becomes aware that he, in some way, might have played a role in it.
*More recent musical acquisitions:
==Dar Williams, "The Beauty of the Rain" -- The full flowering of a promising singer-songwriter is often a joy to behold, and this is one such time. Williams' writing is intelligent -- with intriguing twists of phrase like "push and pull collateral" or "mercy of the fallen" -- and can run deep below the surface: the gentle fatalism in "The One Who Knows," for instance, or the hint of desperation behind the bucolic lyrics of "Fishing in the Morning." "Your Fire, Your Soul," meanwhile, shows the off-beat sense of humor from her earlier stuff, like "When I Was a Boy" or "The Baby-Sitter's Here."
==John Kirkpatrick, "Blue Balloon" -- England's accordion and concertina maestro showcases his songwriting instead of his instrumental ability. Certainly no slouch in the writing or the arrangements: Witness his Swingle Singers-like setting for the title track, or his whimsically zydecoesque "Dog's Gone Wild." Or his sly updating of the boy-meets-unattainable-girl traditional song motif in "Laundroloverette." His serious stuff is not without merit, either, like "A Length of Yarn," which chronicles the shared yet distancing grief between the mother and wife of a dead man. But shoving his squeezeboxery into the background is a little like asking Manny Ramirez to hit for average.
==Varttina, "Seleniko" -- From 1993, around the time when the group had pretty much grown out of its youth folk ensemble dynamic, with tracks such as the tender "Kyla Vuotti," a spirited "Sulhassi" and the exciting rhythms (especially those provided by accordionist Riitta Potinoja) in "Matalii Ja Mustii."
June 13-15
*Nothing like the accumulated, shared stress of school-year's end to liven up the place. A rather uneasy peace prevails over the weekend.
*Soppy Spring 2003 continues. There's an overall sensation of dampness and mildew hanging over seemingly everything. Please do not water emergency me any water emergencies this summer -- assuming that ever arrives.
*Recent musical acquisitions:
==Eliza Carthy and Nancy Kerr -- Spare, low-key and absolutely gorgeous, both in the instrumentals and the vocals. There is a hint of Scandinavia in some of the fiddle duets (and I don't just mean the "Swedish Wedding March" on track 7), which lends a subtle exoticness to the likes of "Alistair's" and "The March of the Kings of Laiose" in particular. The fiddle-vocal combination also breathes new life into overly familiar songs like "An Old Man Came Courting" and "Whittingham Fair."
==The House Band, "Stonetown" � More evidence that this is, sorry, was, an unjustly over-looked ensemble, at least on these shores. Again, imaginative mix of traditions, calling on tunes from the British Isles to Denmark to Brittany and, in particular, the thrilling Macedonian horo at the end, with Chris Parkinson's surging melodeon and John Skelton's piercingly beautiful bombarde playing.
June 9-12
*Had an opportunity to meet some visiting scholars and academics from mainly Muslim educational institutions or programs in Europe, Africa and Asia, most of them Muslim themselves. (But one, who is Catholic, was terrorized along with his family a couple of years ago by Filipino separatists.) Spoke with a lovely young Pakistani woman, attired with head scarf, about her interest in coming here to the US. She was eager to come, and after some difficulty in securing a visa she was given the all-clear; when she looked at the list of participants and saw their ages, she said, "I thought maybe I should not come after all!"
Among the information I had in hand was a short primer for the visitors on norms in American dress and behavior, with notes on things like personal space during conversation. At the end of my interview with Sadia, I stuck out my paw without giving it a thought. She smiled a little wanly, lowered her eyes slightly and said, "I'm sorry. I do not shake hands."
We laughed, rather self-consciously, and wished each other well.
*Stupid Dream Recounted: William "Call me Bill" Shatner shows up at a small dinner party I am attending. He talks about the ordeal of his current theatrical work, a starring role in either "The Andersonville Trial" or "Death of a Salesman," until he pauses, on the verge of being ferklempt. Surely, someone says, his mother might help resolve whatever it is that's causing him such torment?
"Oh, wouldn't that be wonderful!" he says, a palpable bitterness in his voice. "The guy who played Captain Kirk...needing his mother to straighten things out!"
On a cheerier note, Shatner enthusiastically discusses the upcoming release of the second sequel to "The Rhythm Detectives," his comedy-adventure movie a few years back. He speaks glowingly of his co-star, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and "the kids," all of who are apparently early elementary-school aged.
As we subsequently learn, he is now wont to greet Ms. Hewitt and the youthful thespians by exchanging fart noises.
Yes, I woke up before he began singing.
*Viewings:
=="Rabbit-Proof Fence" -- True story of a trio of girls who are "rescued" by the government from their families as part of an attempt to gradually eradicate Australia's half-caste Aborigine population, but escape from their indentured servitude and resolve to travel the long distance home. There may be some valid criticism to the film's stacking the emotional deck, but what's ironic is how much support the girls -- supposedly doomed to be the outcasts in their own land -- receive from strangers they encounter, of all races, while Kenneth Branagh, as the administrator and self-annointed father-protector for the half-castes, comes to seem isolated even within his own bureaucracy. However much sentimentality accrues during the film, it must be said, is tempered by the epilogue. And the three young actresses playing the girls do very well.
=="Chasing Amy" -- Comedy of manners and sex, especially the latter, as two adult comic-book producers grapple with the entrance into their lives of a (supposed) lesbian artist. Writer-director Kevin Smith tackles the mysteries, and discomfort, of sexuality in a straightforward and often very funny way: Witness the conversation on oral sex between Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams, who really should keep her voice down, lest she sound like an anime character), as the girl in question, and Banky (Jason Lee), whose friend Holden (a superbly perplexed Ben Affleck) becomes the object of her ambiguous affections.
*A few additions to the Repertoire (at the very end).
June 6-8
Another weekend with a mostly music-and-dance focus, as the school year staggers to a close:
*Friday, OD and friend vaguely entertain notions of going to see the Wayward Youths tour -- an ad hoc collection of college-age morris dancers representing various teams -- but once I arrive to pick them up at another friend's house we (wisely) end up scuttling the plans. Instead, the three of them glance through a bridal magazine, laughing uproariously and making all manner of aesthetic, sociological or just-plain-sarcastic observations. Rather than picking my would-be passengers up by the scruff of the neck and hauling them off, I recognize that it's a lovely Friday afternoon. Let them pause. Let them laugh.
*Before taking OD and friend to the evening's contra dance event, LW -- in the midst of offering a dulcimer tutorial -- and I subject the two to a brief concert ("Barrack Street" and "Pride of Glencoe"). Worthy of recording? Well, not exactly, but after months of not having played together it felt reassuring and delightful to have our collective fingers moving among fretted strings in collaboration. The aforementioned contra dance also is a pleasure: OD is in one of her more affectionate moods, insisting we steal a few extra swings between our respective contra lines, later proffering a hug and a tenderly-rendered "Dad, you're such a dork!" and then joining me in a Bampton caper extravaganza. At one point, we join several of her friends and another morris/contra dance parent out on the steps, and talk of the summer.
*Saturday, I drop off YD at friend's house just as the next round of rain begins. Fellow Red Herring teammate George and I drive off to our gig at a tea social held in a North Shore church. Forced inside by the deluge, down somewhat in numbers, we actually have a pretty damn good time performing for a rather small crowd of mainly middle-aged to elderly ladies. Favorite part: Teammate Linda and I dance "Princess Royal" as a duet, of sorts, although our versions are significantly different; we agree later that we should work out some choreography to make it more effective.
George and I take the long -- very long -- way home through the saturated Greater Boston transportation infrastructure.
*Sunday, OD and I schlep out to the country for the Great Meadows year-end potluck and party. The weather improves to the point where most of us end up outside, and watch the Exuberance of Youth manifested in Frisbee and volleyball circles and soccer kick-rounds, with many unexpected interruptions. And there are furtive, earnest whispered conversations taking place just out of sight and earshot, occasionally punctuated by hugs and laughter.
Dinner is over, formal appreciations and recognitions given, and then we pull back rugs, tables and chairs and have a few dances. I tune up the guitar, and join with concertina and three fiddles to send jigs and reels wafting out into the Sudbury Valley.
Neither OD nor I particularly want to leave.
June 3-5
*A particularly rough week for the high and/or mighty: Martha Stewart, 'nuff said; The New York Times finds itself a paper of record with some pretty serious scratches and skips; Sammy Sosa, who this season has apparently begun glimpsing mortality in his rear-view mirror, is now confronting a cork-laced challenge to his honor and integrity; and here in Massachusetts, like a morality play scripted by James Ellroy, Mickey Spillane and Brendan Behan, former Senate President William Bulger is facing unprecedented pressure to resign as University of Massachusetts chancellor for his hazy relationship with mobster brother Whitey, nee James.
*Watching "The Producers" for old-time's sake, I am again reminded: Zero Mostel was one funny, funny man.
June 2
*Pictures from the Marlboro Ale [see Memorial Day Weekend entry] now available here.
*June? June. May was so flush with morris dance-related events and less-than-ideal weather I almost didn't notice we have nearly arrived at summer. Feels like we should have had a run of air conditioner-appropriate days already, when in fact there were a few occasions one almost felt tempted to run the furnace some more.
*Viewing: "The Pillow Book" -- Peter Greenaway has fashioned a unique cinematic style in which he utilizes actors more as visual and/or thematic elements, in concert with text and inanimate objects. Some of these tableaux are undeniably compelling -- an overhead shot of a nude woman curled up in a circular bath, for example -- but more than a few people have found it difficult to develop much of an emotional investment in his films. "Pillow Book" is somewhat more successful in this regard: It's built around Vivian Wu's efforts to recapture and build upon the gratification she received as a child, when her father used her skin as a medium for his calligraphy. In this environment, bodies -- whether fat, thin, wrinkled, streamlined -- are less valued for their appearance then for their effectiveness as a canvas.
May 30
*For the past four years, I've shared my morning commute pretty regularly with a high school student we've known since he was in our local elementary school (somewhere we have video footage of him singing along to "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" in the school musical production). These have been four to five-minute conversations, most often about basketball or the tedium of schoolwork, until he exited at his stop.
Yesterday was his last official day as a high-schooler, and as a commuter on bus number 556, so we clasped hands and said our farewells.
*Viewings:
=="The Time Machine" -- Diverting modern update of the H.G. Wells classic, in which Guy Pearse's haunted, driven inventor Alexander Hartdegen decides to warp time and space and visit the past to prevent a tragedy -- but faster than you can say, "'Star Trek' did this better," writers David Duncan and John Logan transport the story to 800,000 years in the future. There, Hartdegen is presented with an opportunity, and a challenge, to work for a better tomorrow instead of trying to bring about an altered yesterday. There's a climactic philosophical debate to go along with the action, but an entertaining movie nonetheless. And one could surely find a worse fate than to be marooned in time with Samantha Mumba.
=="Gorilla Bathes at Noon" -- Russian soldier stationed in the formerly Communist East Germany finds himself adrift after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Drawing sustenance from his old uniform, imagined conversations with a strangely androgynous Lenin and -- apparently -- clips from a Stalinist-era film on the conquest of Berlin, he attempts to navigate his way through the changing physical, economic and social landscape. Occasionally humorous, sometimes poignant.
Memorial Day Weekend: Marlboro Mystery Tour
Let's just say that, for someone who was technically going as a chaperone-chauffeur, I definitely got my money's worth from this event, my first proper morris ale in ages.
The weather was almost unremittingly awful, with the exception of most of Sunday: cool, cloudy, raw, with mist and drizzle -- although, thankfully, the actual downpour held off until the morning we packed up to head home. Still, the nasty conditions might have helped contribute to the relative peace among our rambunctious young dancers. (The tent we dug out of the garbage some time ago wound up back in the rubbish heap, having amply demonstrated its shortcomings this weekend.)
But the non-May weather, the lack of sleep (maybe eight or nine hours between Friday night and Monday morning), the after-effects of ebullience�it was all worth it.
*Having set up my tent Friday night, and checking to make sure OD is happily ensconced in hers, I head up to the building where the "pub" is in progress. I squeeze in through the crowd, greet familiar faces, grab an 8-oz. cup of brown ale, and watch informal dancing -- including an absolutely wild version of the Bacca Pipes Jig -- in an impossibly cramped space until, suddenly, I am thrust into a set performing Fieldtown "Banks of the Dee."
*Saturday, having awakened far too early, I seek shelter, warmth and coffee, in no particular order, and am pleased to encounter an old Middlesex Morris colleague who is also a morris dance parent nowadays. We complain about the time and the weather, then coffee is found and somehow the world's not so bad anymore.
*We have the formal introduction of the teams, in an on-again, off-again drizzle, and lunch, and then we settle into morris-tour pace: stop at farmer's market on the outskirts of West Brattleboro; bring the sticks, hankies and swords, set up somewhere; figure out an Order of Things; do the performance (well, not me -- I get to watch and take pictures); back to the cars, next stop, do it again...
*The day's performances are done, and several of us adults are recovering via a Chinese dinner somewhere outside of Brattleboro. We talk of folk music and dance acquaintances, prospects for next year's dance team, and somehow move on to memories of family food preparation.
*Then, I am driving a carload of teenagers back to our campsite, through the fog and chill of a Vermont night, and we're singing along to Kate Rusby on the car CD player. What exhaustion? (This happens again Sunday night, but wait for it)
*A relatively brief stint in the band playing for the pick-up contra dance, then I'm going for a beer, now it's more than an hour later and I'm having an animated conversation about morris dancing and kids and morris dancing. More time passes, and I'm singing with about a dozen or so others, "Shove Around the Grog," "Two Magicians," "Salvation Band," "Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down," and on we go until about 3:30 or 4 in the morning. My vocal cords are quite displeased with me, and yet I almost wish I could continue.
*After spending most of the day at 16 RPM, I perk up enough to actually enjoy the afternoon tour, including a bus ride of songs sublime, ridiculous and otherwise ("Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" to the tune of "House of the Rising Sun," anyone?).
*Note must be made of the outstanding work of the Marlboro Morris Men fool, Dan. He interacts with the dancers in such a way as to highlight or augment the dance, not disrupt it. He also has a great spur-of-the-moment mind for jokes, pranks and other things, like tying the string of a balloon to the one of the dancers in the middle of the dance, which made the thing keep bouncing off the guy's head; and while Great Meadows was doing Adderbury "Lads A Bunchum," he gradually replaced all their sticks with anything he happened to have or find -- a plastic baseball bat, an American flag, an umbrella. Moreover, his fooling served to inspire the dancers in finding ways of augmenting the dances: In the aforementioned "Lads A Bunchum," the Great Meadows dancer who got handed the umbrella seized on the idea of opening it for the figures and then closing it for the choruses -- a funny little touch that just made the whole thing all the more enjoyable for dancer and onlooker alike. It was the difference, really, between a performance and A Performance.
*Important to mention at this point that The Team has thus far given a damn fine account of itself, in both morris and rapper-sword manifestations. Sunday afternoon comes their crowning moment, when all three rapper sub-groups perform simultaneously, then link up to form one gigantic set and climax with a staggered series of back flips along the 15-person line a la Busby Berkley. The crowd, as they say, goes wild. And OD -- whose rapper ensemble has done better with each of its own performances -- is positively delighted. Hurray. And us parents stand proud.
*In the Wacky-but-Inspired Visiting English Team Department, may I present Great Western Morris, showing themselves to be an excellent group of dancers that knows how to keep having fun after the performance is over -- or to keep the show going on even longer. They capped off the Sunday massed stand by commandeering a police cruiser that was blocking off the performance area, and convinced the police officer to "escort" them, with the siren blaring (and several of the dancers inside the cruiser), for a few hundred yards by the crowd. Even more impressive and meaningful, though, was how they bonded with the Great Meadows kids. They taught them a wild, fun-looking leapfrog dance called "Maid of the Millennium" and helped them to perform it at the Sunday feast. The Great Western folks also enlisted the kids for a few larks, such as the bit where one team crashes the other's introduction, who then make a great show of chasing them off. After the Sunday massed stand, the Great Meadows kids insisted that Great Western ride with them on the tour bus back to Marlboro, and everyone sang and joked together during the ride.
*After a well-catered feast by Our Hosts, Middlesex Morris stages a revival later that night, dancing Ilmington "Saturday Night." A minimum of preparation, a lifetime of memories.
*Tired and sore, I nearly abdicate my duties as chauffeur to the Dawn Dance, but reconsider, especially since to do so evidently would cause much complication. With the understanding that I'm heading back at 2 a.m., period-full-stop, another carload of teens and I trek down the hills. Once arrived, I find myself a place near the stage, lie down, and spend the better part of an hour dozing, the innovative and energetic "avant-folk" stylings of Assembly (nee Popcorn Behavior) wafting through my ears while, inches away from my prone body, dancers swing, aleman left, promenade, roll away, and California twirl.
*Then it's 2:30ish in the morning, and I'm driving one of the Great Meadows graduating seniors back to base camp, and we're talking about college and education and bagpipes and life and stuff, and she laments that she has to fight off her case of senioritis to write a research paper. The topic, she relates, has to do with the folk revival.
"The folk revival? That's one of the most important things to have come along in my life," I enthuse.
"Really?" and she rummages through her bag and produces a small tape recorder. "Do you mind if I interview you?"
And with the campground coming into view, I try to squeeze into 25 words what all this folk stuff has meant to me. Got me to Marlboro, didn't it?
*Finally, the duffel bags have been packed, the tent's been ditched, and I'm sitting inside watching the rain return, playing my under-utilized guitar. Another Great Meadows member approaches, and suddenly we're discussing classic rock'n roll guitar riffs, e.g., "Stairway to Heaven" and "Smoke on the Water."
*Goodbyes, squeeze into car, stop-off at diner, through the raindrops along Route 2.
Home.
Yes, pictures here.
