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Sunday, May 16th, 2010
Trying to do something with the violin by itself -- no voice, no guitar. Here's what I came up with:
It almost works, I think -- there are places where it is a little hard to follow the melody without lyrics but they are short in duration, the song comes back quickly.
posted afternoon of May 16th, 2010: 2 responses
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Thursday, May 13th, 2010
Here is a song John and I recorded last night, a medley of "Drowsy Maggie" and "Dancing Barefoot" -- we've been working on this for a few weeks and played it last week at the Menzel Violins open mic. I'm pretty happy with the way we've integrated the vocal melody with the fiddle melody.
 Oh and here is another song I recorded recently that I'm pretty happy with:
This is a Leadbelly song also performed by Hazel Dickens (and many other artists), but the version I learned it from and which I always think of when I hear it, is my friends' band Other People's Children, Liam and Malcolm.
posted evening of May 13th, 2010: Respond
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Tuesday, May 4th, 2010
 For the first time in a little while, I've found a new fiddle tune I want to learn. Here is the Ether Frolic Mob (featuring Peter Stampfel, Craig Judelman, Stacey Samuels, Eli Smith, Jeffrey Lewis) playing "Billy in the Lowground":
 A few other versions:
Also, turns out "Billy in the Lowlands", which is what I thought this song was called, is a movie.
posted evening of May 4th, 2010: 1 response
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Monday, April 26th, 2010
Alexandra Birnbaum of Maplewood Patch published a very nice photo of The Lost Souls from when we were playing in Maplewood's Open Market on Saturday (except she cropped Eric out of the picture, to the right). I think this must be from when we were playing "Old Joe Clark" at the beginning of the second set:
posted evening of April 26th, 2010: Respond
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Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
 My copy of Propellor Time was in the mail today! Oh boy oh boy... Here's our man playing his harmonica in the back of a black cab:
posted evening of March 31st, 2010: 2 responses
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Sunday, March 28th, 2010
John came over for a little while this afternoon; we started playing and with practically no warm-up time we were sounding really good -- earlier today I had been listening to Justin Townes Earle's version of If the River Was Whiskey -- it is very different from any other version I've heard, and easier to imagine myself singing -- so we tried that out, and came up with a fun blues tune. No new songs today -- the degree of comfort we both felt with the tunes in our songbook took me a bit by surprise, in almost every case we could just launch directly into the tune instead of noodling around trying to figure out how to begin it... Other highlights of the set list:
- The Old Home (Bill Monroe)
- Meet Me in the Morning (Dylan)
- One of These Days (Neil Young)
- Drowsy Maggie (traditional) -- We're slowing this way down. It's starting to sound like something that could actually have lyrics...
- Man of Constant Sorrow (Stanley Bros.) -- raised the key from Dm to Em (actually I think it's a modal key, but approximately "minor"), John is able to sing it a lot more clearly there and the transposition on fiddle was only a little bit tricky.
- Jockey Full of Bourbon (Tom Waits) -- we have not played this one in several weeks, it came together a lot more solidly than ever in the past.
We are going to play the (April Fools' Day) open mic at Menzel Violins on Thursday (Mo put my photo on the flier!), we're planning to play "Meet Me in the Morning" and "The Old Home".
posted afternoon of March 28th, 2010: Respond
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Saturday, March 6th, 2010
Here are some tapes from today's practice -- I'm trying to really hold my focus in the song and pay attention to what I'm doing, and I think it's coming through a bit. At the end of "Bill Cheetham" I lose it. "The Road to Lisdoonvarna" I think is currently my very favorite song.
posted afternoon of March 6th, 2010: 2 responses
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Mo Menzel snapped a great photo of me while I was playing "The Irish Washerwoman" last night. Thanks, Mo! 
I've been hunching over lately when I'm playing violin -- not sure why but this posture seems to make it easier to keep my focus inside the song. (Also I am going back and forth between holding the bow nearer the frog, and choking up on it like this -- and between holding my pinkie against the wood -- which I tend to think I ought to do -- and out in the air like this, which seems to happen pretty regularly when I don't pay attention to the finger.)
posted afternoon of March 6th, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, March 4th, 2010
Mixed results at the open mic today -- I played two songs, first one was very successful, the second was a mess. I felt pretty upset and brought down about the second one and as I was mulling it over I came to realize that having a solid bowing pattern is a really important part of knowing a song... The successful song, my "Road to Lisdoonvarna"/"Drowsy Maggie" medley, when I was practicing it this afternoon I hit on a bowing pattern that I could stick with and that really drives the song along -- the rhythmic motion of my arm complements the tapping of my foot. I have always had a pretty clear sense of where I'm going with this song but the bowing just wrapped everything up very nicely. With the other song contrariwise, "Irish Washerwoman"/"The Swallowtail Jig", while I know the song very well, I can never seem to decide just what I should be doing with my bow. And it shows -- sometimes I will practice the song and have it sound great, other times not so much. While I was mulling I got a little distracted from listening to people's performances, and my eyes were wandering among the shop's wares -- I was really taken by the minor variations in shape between every pair of violins on the shelf there -- in length, width, depth of body, proportion of the length given over to the "C" in the middle of the body, how concave the "C" is and how prominently its top and bottom jut out... One violin there has completely smooth sides, an hourglass figure, which I've never seen before. I fantasized about playing some of the more unusual specimens, and my attention slowly came back to the music.
posted evening of March 4th, 2010: Respond
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Tuesday, March second, 2010
So as long as I'm thinking about music videos, I've been seeing a lot of links to this one over the last few days; finally checked it out and boy, was it worth my while:
Not sure, frankly, how much the song does for me as a song; but the video is a stroke of genius. (Also kind of nice timing, since OK Go first came to my attention a few weeks ago, and one of the first things I found out about them was what great videos they make.)
 Update: from Kulash and MTV News, a look at the making of the Marble Run.
posted evening of March second, 2010: 1 response
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