Catching up
The Fool is engrossed in KnitML, so it's fallen to me to tell you about MoonFest near Gold Hill, Colo., where we played with Edward a couple weeks ago.
It's a great contra dance weekend that occurs twice a year, at the planter's moon and the harvest moon. Spring is the planter's moon. The three of us met up with our friend Spider and played Saturday night as the Cosmic Possums (That's what we call ourselves when the Cosmic Otters play only old-time tunes with the help of a banjo player.)
We ended up taking what is, for us, a rather traditional approach to contra dance music. We didn't spend time constructing medleys, we just took one tune and played it for 15 minutes at a shot until we wore holes in it. That takes a little more effort - you have to think up 15 minutes of stuff to say with a tune rather than just playing it the same way over and over - and there were a few really great moments, including one where Edward, who is normally a rather restrained player with a gentle sound, found a blue note and just - for lack of a better word - honked on it.
Wonderful stuff.
Seth Houston, the pianist from Lift Ticket, sat in with us for a couple tunes too, and I don't know what it is about dance pianists, but they all look like Muppets from behind. The Fool does it, and Spider and I kept making jokes about Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem after watching Seth. It was terrific fun.
Surrounding that, there was jamming - lots of jamming, with players we'd never met and tunes we'd never heard, including some great new ones - hanging around on the porch, eating and trying not to die as we made feeble attempts to adjust to the altitude. (Word to the wise: Pregnancy plus 8,200 feet? Much harder than I thought it would be.)
Here's a few photos from the weekend.
The Cosmic Possums "rehearse." Spider and the Fool discussing tunes, Edward actually looking at a real set list that we actually used in performance. Oh, the horror!
Dancers hamming it up at the head of the line.
"I can't use that picture, it looks like Spider's picking her nose."
Oh, much better. Thanks.
OK. Off to childbirth class with my container of carrot cookies. It's our turn to bring snack tonight and the theme was "orange vegetables." Everyone's been so dang healthy lately, I thought, what the heck, let's bake something.
As cookies go, these are not bad nutritionally, and as they are from the genius Nancy Baggett's "All American Cookie Book," they are delicious.
It's a great contra dance weekend that occurs twice a year, at the planter's moon and the harvest moon. Spring is the planter's moon. The three of us met up with our friend Spider and played Saturday night as the Cosmic Possums (That's what we call ourselves when the Cosmic Otters play only old-time tunes with the help of a banjo player.)
We ended up taking what is, for us, a rather traditional approach to contra dance music. We didn't spend time constructing medleys, we just took one tune and played it for 15 minutes at a shot until we wore holes in it. That takes a little more effort - you have to think up 15 minutes of stuff to say with a tune rather than just playing it the same way over and over - and there were a few really great moments, including one where Edward, who is normally a rather restrained player with a gentle sound, found a blue note and just - for lack of a better word - honked on it.
Wonderful stuff.
Seth Houston, the pianist from Lift Ticket, sat in with us for a couple tunes too, and I don't know what it is about dance pianists, but they all look like Muppets from behind. The Fool does it, and Spider and I kept making jokes about Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem after watching Seth. It was terrific fun.
Surrounding that, there was jamming - lots of jamming, with players we'd never met and tunes we'd never heard, including some great new ones - hanging around on the porch, eating and trying not to die as we made feeble attempts to adjust to the altitude. (Word to the wise: Pregnancy plus 8,200 feet? Much harder than I thought it would be.)
Here's a few photos from the weekend.
The Cosmic Possums "rehearse." Spider and the Fool discussing tunes, Edward actually looking at a real set list that we actually used in performance. Oh, the horror!
Dancers hamming it up at the head of the line.
"I can't use that picture, it looks like Spider's picking her nose."
Oh, much better. Thanks.
OK. Off to childbirth class with my container of carrot cookies. It's our turn to bring snack tonight and the theme was "orange vegetables." Everyone's been so dang healthy lately, I thought, what the heck, let's bake something.
As cookies go, these are not bad nutritionally, and as they are from the genius Nancy Baggett's "All American Cookie Book," they are delicious.
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