It's the start of the week leading up to St. Patrick's Day.  Terry Weir, who leads my weekly Wednesday session, has arranged for us to impersonate a pub band for the holiday. Last night we played St. Brigid's parish "Irish Night" corned beef dinner.

Next Saturday, we do the afternoon "quiet shift" at Harrington's Pub in Wakefield. There's a loud ( Read more... )

Next Saturday (Jan 7) I'll be playing at Boston Celtic Music Festival (BCMFest), which is a bunch of local Irish/Scottish/etc musicians performing in 3 different venues on the same block down in Cambridge.

I'm actually playing twice during the day, once at the church venue (parlor stage) with Corvus, and once with my good friend and neighbor ( Read more... )

It never ceases to amaze me that people actually watch my YouTube stuff. I mean, sure, my mom was all over it, but that’s to be expected. But I’ve been at music weekends and met people who say “really, that’s you?” when I mention it.  I’ve been introduced as “she made those hornpipe videos you’ve been watching”, and I’ve even had someone say “OMG, ( Read more... )

Fascinating conversation at the cafeteria lunch table yesterday.
My coworker Jo has perfect pitch, meaning that when he wants an A, he hums an A=440, and there it is. He first noticed this when he was in college, and he’d tune a guitar to itself, just whatever sounded “good” and it would turn out to be in tune with (a) every other guitar he tuned, ( Read more... )

The bathroom remodel is going well, and I've been loving having the 4-day weekend home. It's rare that the benefit of another pair of hands outweighs the hassle of fitting 3 people into the bathroom, so I've been helping, but also doing all sorts of non-renovation work.

Thanksgiving dinner: (turkey roulade with shitake-hazelnut stuffing, delicata ( Read more... )

This is the tune I was supposed to have posted last weekend, and didn't.  I recorded it, but it sounded kind of shaky; especially the tempos kind of came and went... basically just sounded too high-strung and jittery.  And I was out of time for working on it, and told myself I'd fix it on Tuesday and post it then.  So, it yesterday was Tuesday, it' ( Read more... )

Week # 22 - Kitty's Wedding.
I don't know who Kitty was, but she's been married for quite a while now.  This was in O'Neill's in 1903.  It's a grand tune in D, often played after the Home Ruler.  I hear it frequently on Noel Hill & Tony Linnane's album, so this is inevitably pretty similar to that version.  I did actually post this on YouTube on ( Read more... )

Here are two tunes that are near-twins (the way you can tell they're two tunes and not just variations on one is because they have different names), and close cousins of last week's installment, The Cuckoo's Nest.  There's also a song called the Cuckoo's Nest, that is at least as similar to this melody as to the other.

Jackie Tar is one of those ( Read more... )

I am such a dork!!!
I seem to have forgotten to upload this back when I recorded it last weekend!

The problem is, it's a multi-step process.  First, I play the tune a couple of times, turn on the camera, play it , swear a bit, play it again... get something I satisfied with.  Then I go into Picasa and trim off the beginning and the end (the fumbling ( Read more... )

This is a nice flowy hornpipe in G - it's fairly well-known as a session tune, and usually played pretty simply and on the slower end of the spectrum.  My challenge with this was to add some chords without busting up the flow too much.  There's a few nice opportunities for some octave-doubling but, unlike the Castleton, it doesn't extend across the ( Read more... )