Contratopia 2.0

Two Days to Northfield!

2012-02-15T22:28:00.000-06:00

We'll be convening in Northfield on Friday night, along with our good friend Robin Nelson, to play for the Winter Stomp! dance at the Armory downtown.

According to Facebook, admission will be free for both Carleton and St. Olaf students so we are expecting a strong turnout. We've been having a great winter so far, first in Decorah, then at Tapestry, so we have every reason to expect this dance to be wonderful too.

Hope you can make it.

Notes from the Farm / Erik & John

2012-01-15T17:44:00.000-06:00

Erik and John had a busy December recording their first duo CD, Notes from the Farm. Recorded in three afternoons in Erik's living room and mixed in John's dining room it's a homegrown 15 track, 24 tune collection of fiddle and guitar or mandolin duets. Along with a number of new, and old, original tunes the duo decided to record a few traditional numbers as well, some very common and some more obscure.

Here's a list of the tunes on the CD:

1. Sheehan’s (trad.) / Cold Market Morning (Goodin) (3:00)
2. The Rights of Man / Coleraine / Grace Hay’s Delight (trad.) (3:07)
3. Coleman’s March (trad.) (2:27)
4. Grape-vine Twist (trad.) (1:40)
5. Kitchen Waltz (Goodin) (2:19)
6. Ain’t Broke / Two Days to Maine (Goodin) (2:16)
7. The Junquill: Air Moderato (James Oswald) (1:40)
8. The Junquill: Giga Vivace (James Oswald) (0:52)
9. The New Henrietta (Goodin) / Kohlrabi Stomp (Sessions) (2:10)
10. Aubrey & Andrew’s Wedding (Goodin) (2:41)
11. Young Terence MacDonough / Planxty Irwin (Turlough O’Carolan) (2:56)
12. Splinters on the Banister / Revelry Reel (Sessions) (2:21)
13. Chief O’Neill’s Favorite (trad.) / Carolan’s Draught (Turlough O’Carolan) (3:07)
14. The Road to Lisdoonvarna / Irishman’s Heart to the Ladies (trad.) (2:07)
15. King’s Landing (Goodin) (2:12)

Pat and Patrice are driving down to Decorah next Sat., the 21st, to help Erik and John celebrate by playing a short concert, followed by a full contra dance with Robin Nelson calling. The event is being held at the Elks in Decorah and the concert starts at 7:00 with the dance beginning at 8:00.

In addition to having Notes from the Farm for sale all three Contratopia CDs will be available along with John's recently released Mandolin Tunes CD. There will probably be a few copies of the Contratopia Tunebook for sale as well.

After making a splash in Decorah on the 21st the whole band will reconvene at Tapestry Folkdance Center in Minneapolis for a contra dance on Jan. 28, where we will reconnect with our touring buddy Ted Hodapp. This promises to be a special night of fun and frolic, not to be missed if you are near the Twin Cities!

Three weeks after that the fun will continue, this time at the Armory in Northfield where the band will once again play for the annual Winter Stomp! More news to follow...

Harvest Stomp 2011

2011-10-19T20:12:00.001-05:00

That's right, the band will kick-off our new season in just a couple of days at the Armory in downtown Northfield, MN. We expect another big turnout for the always high-energy Harvest Stomp. The four of us haven't played together since last May so there will be a lot of good energy coming from Contratopia. We'll be joined by caller Robin Nelson so you can count on some fun dances too.

If you can't make it to Northfield on Friday, make a point of coming to Tapestry in Minneapolis on Sat. November 12 instead. It looks like our buddy Beau Farmer will be calling with us that night which always means lots of fun.

On a related note (pun intended) I recently released my first ever solo CD titled, imaginatively, Mandolin Tunes. As the title suggests it's a collection of twenty-three mandolin and guitar recordings taken from the nearly 100 tunes I've recorded for my So Many Tunes blog since 2007. They were all recorded at home through the miracle of multi-track recording with me playing all the parts. I'll have a few copies with me on Friday in Northfield and you can also order a copy from CD Baby. It should also be available at iTunes, Rhapsody, and other fine digital vendors soon.

Hope to see lots of you folks on Friday.

Gone and Back Again

2011-07-07T23:50:00.001-05:00

Well here it is July, midway between the end of our 2010-2011 season and the start of our 2011-2012 round of dances. Usually we at least acknowledge the end of the old season but there was a lot going on in May and that didn't happen. We did have a lot of fun playing for a wedding reception at the Wildberry Winery just outside of Decorah at our last gathering. Since the gig wasn't exactly a contra dance we had the chance to play a wider than usual range of music in various styles, including a couple of tunes from the Contratopia Tunebook that are rarely performed.

Looking ahead to our upcoming season we have some exciting prospects. First, we have nearly agreed to produce a new CD of Contratopia music. We have begun circulating lists of tunes that we might record (we probably have enough unrecorded original tunes to fill 2 or 3 CDs) and we have a possible target timeline. We'll keep you posted on our progress, or not.

We also have a number of fun gigs tentatively lined up. You can check the "dances" page on our website to see the current list. We are very pleased that we are likely to return as a featured band for Tapestry's 2nd Call of the Loon weekend in April 2012. We have also planned (thanks to Ted Hodapp's hard work) to return to the mid-Atlantic tour region in March 2012. Along with contras at Glenside and Glen Echo we will play a Saturday night dance in Frederick, Maryland. I'm pretty sure that this will be only the 2nd time we have played there.

This tour will be unique because we will bring our great friend Linda Breitag along to play fiddle as a sub for Erik Sessions, who is pretty busy these days helping to raise a houseful of wonderful kids. Linda has played with us many times in recent years but this will be her first chance to travel with the band. I think the folks who usually come to hear us play in Philly and D.C. will really enjoy Linda's approach to our repertoire.

Right now it looks as though our season kick-off might be at the Oct. 21 Harvest Stomp in Northfield, MN but it's only July and we might end up playing somewhere else before that. If so, we will announce it here.

Looney Memories

2011-04-25T10:00:00.000-05:00

(photo by Pat O'Loughlin)

It's hard to believe that's it's been two weeks since the Loon called us to Tapestry to play for the 1st Annual Call of the Loon Dance Weekend. We had a great time playing for dances and workshops and it was wonderful getting to spend time with our old friend Carol Ormand, who kept everyone in fine spirits with her great dances and positive energy.

The band had a lot of fun and we enjoyed being visited by some special guests. David Edminster played tenor sax with us for a few dances on Saturday night and brought the house down with his work on Pat's tune "Cement Donkey". He also contributed mightily to one of the best versions ever of our "Palisades/Christmas Past/Fairbanks" set.

Patrice couldn't be with us on Sunday because she was busy playing "serious" music (oboe for the Mahler first symphony with the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra). We were lucky enough to be joined by the great Adam Granger on guitar for the final couple of hours and Pat, Erik and I had a lot of fun re-inventing some of our familiar sets with the former Powdermilk Biscuit Band member. I particularly enjoyed the free lesson in how to play guitar for contra dances. We also had the pleasure of having our buddy Linda Breitag play fiddle with us on Sunday for a short while and I really enjoyed the Erik and Linda combo fiddle sound.

The Call of the Loon weekend was a big success in our book and we certainly encourage Tapestry to do it again next year. Maybe we'll even get invited back again someday.

Speaking of Linda Breitag, this coming Friday, April 29, she will be joining us in Northfield, MN for a slightly belated Earth Day contra dance. Erik will be at home working his own garden so we won't get to hear twin fiddles but Linda has played this dance with us several times in the past. The dance will be in a new venue for us, the Northfield Ballroom, just a little north of town on Highway 3. It looks like a lovely hall and we hope to see a bunch of you there. Beau Farmer will be our caller and the dance runs from 7:30-10:30 with a dance lesson at 7:00.

Northfield Winter Stomp! - Video proof

2011-02-24T19:53:00.000-06:00

We had another great time in Northfield last Friday night and here are two short videos to give you a sense of what it was like. (Sorry about the loud drum rolls. They are out of our control.) A Big Thank You to Corey Butler Jr. for filming & editing and to Suzie Nakasian for sharing them with us.

The first video features a couple of scary closeups of Pat and myself, but they only last for a few seconds. After that the focus is (rightly) on how much fun the dancers are having. Musically you can hear us playing snatches of our version of "Liza Jane" and a bit of our take on Daniel Steinberg's (Hillbillies From Mars) great tune "Rockabye Baby."

The second video spares you the closeups. Musically, if you put your ear up to your speakers, you can just make out the band playing two more recent tunes of mine: "Why Not Here, Why Not Now" and "Share the Road."

It's great to have these video memories. We hope they can give you a sense of the high energy, multi-generational Stomp! experience. Next stop, the Call of the Loon weekend in April. Hope to see you there.

The Call of the Loon

2011-01-29T12:04:00.000-06:00

Contratopia is delighted, and honored, to be chosen as the band for the 1st annual Call of the Loon Weekend to be held at Tapestry Folkdance Center in Minneapolis, MN on April 8-10, 2011. We are especially pleased to be working with the extraordinary caller, and our old friend, Carol Ormand at this event.

Tapestry is making an effort to put on a weekend that will draw dance gypsies from all corners of the contra dance world and we would love to see you there. Minneapolis is an easy city to fly in and out of and Tapestry is only a couple of blocks away from a light rail station on the line that runs between the airport and downtown. The dance floor and the facility are great and the Twin Cities dance community is home to some of the friendliest and finest dancers in the country. Put the Call of the Loon on your spring dance calendar now!

We had a great time and a great turnout last weekend in Decorah for our concert/dance combo. David Kirchner kept things fun and interesting and no one seemed to mind that it was below zero outside. We definitely heated up the hall. There's even been some talk of making it an annual event.

Next up for the band is a return to Northfield for another (the 5th Annual) Winter Stomp! on February 18th at the Armory downtown. The caller will be the wonderful Robin Nelson. Teaching is at 7:00 and the dance runs from 7:30-10:30. We hope many of you can make it to that dance as well.

Finally, our emails accounts have been flooded with memos back and forth about future touring plans. There's a pretty good chance that we will be visiting the mid-Atlantic region (they haven't barred us yet :)) in March of 2012 and we are exploring some possibilities for Fall 2011 as well. We'll keep you posted.

Contratopia coming to Decorah, Jan. 22, 2011

2011-01-15T09:59:00.000-06:00

Well actually half of Contratopia is always in Decorah. But next weekend we've succeeded in enticing our Better Half to make the winter journey down for a dance and a rare concert performance. These events will take place at the Elks Lodge in downtown Decorah with the short concert beginning at 7:00. This will be followed by a teaching session and a full-blown contra dance with caller David Kirchner at 8:00. The ending time is a little open-ended at this point, probably sometime between 10:30-11:00.

It turns out that our appearance in Decorah coincides with the 2nd annual Oneota Film Festival that will be taking place next weekend at Luther College. While the concert and dance will cost you $7 to get in, the film festival is free (donations are encouraged). You will want to go to the festival web site and register if you want to learn more.

Long time Contratopia watchers will know that it is extremely rare for the band to perform in a concert setting. Sometimes if we are featured at a music weekend we will play a short concert set and there have been two or three other instances where we played have performed in a quiet room without dancers, but not very often. So this afternoon we will be having a rehearsal before our dance in Minneapolis to come up with an interesting program of music that we don't normally get to play. It should be a lot of fun.

Erik and I (and maybe more?) will be playing live and talking with Jeni and Tim on the KDEC Artist Direct radio show next Friday morning at 8:15 to advertise this event. We did this once last summer for a different local event and had a great time. If you're not in Decorah you can listen online at the KDEC website. Hopefully I will be able to keep my foot out of my mouth during the interview portion of the show.

Before anything happens in Decorah next weekend we first get to play a dance at Tapestry in Minneapolis tonight. And have a reunion with Ted Hodapp as well. I hope we'll see you at one of these events.

Tapestry, Ted, Tunes

2011-01-08T10:02:00.000-06:00

Ted, Tunes, Tapestry? Tunes, Tapestry, Ted?

In any event, in whatever combination, we are all delighted to be just a week away from seeing our buddy Ted Hodapp next week at Tapestry. We've had a lot of winter weather since the band's last time together and we are all ready to play some Contratopia tunes. It's been nearly a year since we've had the pleasure of working with Ted and that was out in D.C. I'm not sure how long it's been since we played a dance at Tapestry with our Phavorite Physicist but it's been too long by any standard.

Here in Iowa and Minnesota we are having the cold weather this weekend so next weekend should be balmy. Mark your calendars now for Jan. 15 and bring your dry, indoor dancing shoes to the Tapestry Folkdance Center. I guarantee you that the band and the caller will be there having a great time.

Dancing on Thin Ice

2010-11-23T19:49:00.000-06:00

Well, it was a kind of dance that Patrice, Erik and I were involved in early on Sunday morning. Following a wonderful contra dance at Tapestry we discovered everything outdoors was covered with a thin but dangerous coating of ice.

We had expected some freezing rain around midnight and Erik and I had arranged to stay over at Patrice and Al's place, but the storm came through a little earlier than planned. To make a very long story short, it took us over an hour and a half to travel from Tapestry to Apple Valley. We were extremely lucky that we decided not to try and cross the Mendota bridge. We have heard that traffic was at a standstill there for hours.

We hope that all of the dancers who came out to hear us on Saturday made it home safe and sound. We promise not to let one winter weather event deter us from making the trip back again in January on the 15th.

We are especially looking forward to working with our good buddy Ted Hodapp. This will be the first time in many years that the Hodapp/Contratopia combination will be together for a dance in Minneapolis and we are confident that it will be a special night.

In the meantime, enjoy the holidays.

By any other name....

2010-10-08T20:17:00.000-05:00

Barn Dance Minnesota is a new venture from our own Pat O'Loughlin and his friends including, sometimes, other members of Contratopia. If we aren't all available for a particular event Pat can pick from the cream of the Twin Cities musician crop to "provide traditional live music and calling for your barn dance, square dance, contra dance, or Irish ceilidh." The Barn Dance Minnesota site can serve as a good way to see how to reach Pat and arrange for your event to be something that will be remembered as an especially good time by everyone involved.

Our geographical distance (Contratopia North: Pat and Patrice, Contratopia South: Erik and John) often makes it difficult for the four of us to play together for special events. Erik and I also have our own website aimed at answering some of the questions we frequently get about playing for local weddings and special events. If you are looking for music in the Decorah area don't hesitate to contact us.

The whole band, however, will be present at the Armory in downtown Northfield, MN two weeks from tonight to play at another great Harvest Stomp dance. It will be our first time back together since last April (although Pat, Patrice and I reunited with our favorite alter-Erik, Linda Breitag, last week in St. Paul) and we will definitely have a great time. Hope to see you there.

Falling into the New Season

2010-09-05T20:40:00.003-05:00

I just got around to updating our dance calendar over at the Contratopia website to include the dates we have booked so far for the upcoming 2010-2011 Season. It's true that a certain pattern has emerged in recent years, thanks to our friends at Tapestry and in Northfield, but I can assure you that this doesn't mean that we are bored with our play. It's amazing to me that we are able to manage to get together as often as we do given our various families and jobs.

One thing missing in this year's calendar is significant travel. We had to turn down a couple of really attractive offers (plus we're still trying to pay off the hotel damages from our last end-of-tour party) but I'm sure that we will be out on the road again before I turn 65.

We will probably add a date or two in the spring to the calendar as well. Hopefully we will see many of you at one or more of these dances.

If you are a tune monger, in addition to a dancer, you might be interested in the new jig I posted today over on my So Many Tunes website. I'll see if I can't get the band to give it a go sometime this season.

Huffington Post / Maria Rodale

2010-07-26T10:03:00.003-05:00

While not exactly full Contratopia news I figure that friends of the band might find this interesting:

For the last several years Erik and I have been the nucleus of the band that plays for the barn dance on the Saturday night of the annual Seed Saver's summer gathering just outside of Decorah. Seed Saver's Exchange is a great organization doing vital work and their conference attracts people from all over the country. (I think that all friends of Contratopia should at least consider joining SSE, check them out and see what you think.)

This year's keynote speech was shared between Diane Ott Whealey and Maria Rodale. As you can read on her blog, Maria Rodale is CEO and Chairman of Rodale Inc., "the largest independent publisher left in America."

Her blog is also featured on the Huffington Post and today's Huffington Post features a story from Ms. Rodale's blog about her visit to the conference. In her blogpost you can read all about how much fun she, her husband and youngest child had at the barn dance and you can see a nice picture of me and Erik, along with our friends Bill Deutsch (caller and banjo man) and Rob Hervey (bass). The first paragraph appears at Huffington and the rest of the story (and picture) are at her own blogsite.

I promise that Erik and I won't let our international notoriety go to our heads. Contratopia is busy arranging its fall/winter/spring schedule as I write. I hope to have news to share about dates and places soon.

Minnesota Spring weekend

2010-04-21T23:16:00.002-05:00

Time, as ever, flies. Suddenly our 2009-2010 season is days away from its ending.

Join us, if you can, on either Friday (at the Armory in Northfield, MN) or Saturday (at the Tapestry Folkdance Center in Minneapolis) for our final public dances until next fall.

If we don't get a chance to see you this weekend we will look forward to seeing you sometime during the 2010-2011 season!

Tapestry Tomorrow!

2010-03-26T13:33:00.013-05:00

(Contratopia at Antietam)

Tomorrow night we'll have our tour homecoming dance at the Tapestry Folkdance Center in Minneapolis. We hope you can drop by and see what we have in store.

Below are a few photos from our tour out east. Thanks to Pat and Margie for the great shots!

(Glen Echo on Friday Night)

(Glen Echo on Friday from the stage)

(Ted and Lynn in conversation)

(Shepherdstown, Saturday Night)

(The Spotlight Dance)

(Pat takes a camera break)

(w/Jamie Platt, Ted & Lynn as we bid farewell to the
Spanish Ballroom after the Sunday dances.)

Glenside, Glen Echo, Shepherdstown 2010

2010-03-14T11:37:00.003-05:00

Right about now one week ago Erik, Patrice, Ted, Lynn and I were all piled into Ted's car leaving Mt. Vernon, Virginia. We had enjoyed a short visit to the Washington farm and were headed back to Takoma Park where we would gather our instruments, meet up with Pat, and head over to Glen Echo to play at the afternoon Waltz Time dance and the evening contra.

The night before we had played for a very high energy group of dancers in historic Shepherdstown, WV, after a visit to the Antietam battlefield. I'll spare everyone the step by step description of our tour but I can honestly say that it was as much fun this time as it was the first time we played in the region over ten years ago.

This was the first tour that we were joined by Very Significant Others and, from my perspective, this made the whole thing even more fun. Of course Lynn and Margie didn't accompany us up to Glenside, or to Shepherdstown, so they were spared an episode by episode recounting of the intricate plot developments of a certain cable TV series. These tales provided us with the actual title of the 2010 Tour but, in the interest of not being sued by HBO, that title remains a band secret.

Musically we had a great time. Everyone was playing with lots of invention and energy and we enjoyed a little nostalgia by playing some of our older, tried and true sets more often than usual. We enjoyed great sound at every stop, especially at Glen Echo where the phenomenal Jamie Platt once again made us sound great, despite our constant experiments. Ted Hodapp called night after night of great dances and had the crowds enthralled with his physics jokes. He also played some first rate hambos with Erik and taught us all a great new schottische.

Thanks to everyone who came out to the dances and made them so fun for us. Special thanks to Ted and Lynn for sharing their home. Lynn even revealed to me the existence of a nearby fast food hamburger joint that Ted had neglected to mention over the years. Thanks also to the good folks at the House of Musical Traditions for all of their help. Rumor has it that we may be able to head east again in the winter/spring of 2012. We'll keep you posted.

(P.S. While there were several excellent, even professional, photographers snapping photos on this trip none of them have delivered any pictures to me so far. So the photo above is taken off of my cell phone from a week ago Friday while we were visiting the Mall.)

Touring into Spring

2010-02-24T20:01:00.003-06:00

(Park Sparrows, D.C., photo by Cene Ketcham)

In about a week we will all be converging on Ted and Lynn's place in Takoma Park for our first visit to the D.C. area in nearly 2 years. We have been making these trips, responding to the siren call of the Spanish Ballroom at Glen Echo Park, for nearly a decade. This has prompted a little nostalgia on my part.

In November-December, 2000 Contratopia took a chance and recorded our Hands Four CD with the expert assistance of Matthew Zimmerman at his Wild Sound studio in Minneapolis. Most readers of this blog probably have a copy of this CD somewhere in their collection. However, before we recorded that CD we recorded a trial version of some of our tunes at our friend Jody Koenig's basement studio in Decorah. I think this was probably sometime in the summer of 2000, although I'm not sure exactly when. I seem to remember it was a Saturday afternoon and maybe we were playing a dance that night.

Anyway, I recently came across a CD of the mixes from that demo session and I have permission from the band to share them here. To my ears they sound like we had a lot of energy that day and I think that Jody did a great job of capturing that. One negative aspect is that Patrice had to use her electric keyboard instead of a real piano. So while her playing is great, as usual, her sound isn't quite what any of us would prefer. You can compare a couple of these versions to the ones that appear on Hands Four and see what I mean.

So here are the tracks we recorded that day at Jody's:

1. Revelry Reel / French Sneakers / Maggie in the Rain (mp3)
2. The National Road (mp3)
3. Sandy River Belles / Liza Jane (mp3)
4. Sweet Music / Christmas Past / Fairbanks (mp3)

I'll also post these on our Contratopia free downloads page for future reference.

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A week from tomorrow we'll be playing the Thursday Night Contra in Glenside, PA; one of our favorite places to play. The last time we visited there I was very excited to buy a copy of the SPUDS tunebook, Tuneadelphia. It's a great book full of good tunes and I highly recommend it.

I remember having a nice chat with Sarah Gowan, the editor, and she suggested that some of our Contratopia tunes might have been an influence on some of her own compositions. So I thought it would be fun if we would learn a Gowan tune and play it next week.

Last Friday at the great Winter Stomp in Northfield we tried out a new set that begins with Sarah's tune "Nancy in a Shirttail" followed by a recent tune of mine called "Lawn Chair Night" and closing with an old favorite of Erik's, "Splinters on the Bannister." Erik's tune had fallen off of our setlist so this is a great way to bring it back. If you are at the dance in Philly next week be on the lookout for this new set.

We hope to see many of you in Glenside (March 4), Shepherdstown (March 6th) or at Glen Echo on either Friday night (5th) or Sunday afternoon and/or evening (7th). It's our only big trip this season so we are really looking forward to getting to play several nights in a row. Hope to see you there.

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When I posted this entry late last night I had no idea that Philadelphia was going to see another 8-12 inches of snow today. I see that this week's dance has been canceled. I fully expect that spring will be in bloom next Thursday when we arrive and that folks will be ready to dance.

(Just to put the weather in some perspective, it was 5 below zero here last night and we have had a foot or more of snow on the ground since mid-December.)

Northfield! Winter Stomp!

2010-02-15T20:30:00.003-06:00

In just a few days, Friday the 19th, we will convene with Robin Nelson and all of our Northfield friends for our 4th (or is it 5th?) Winter Stomp! dance at the downtown Armory. The above slideshow (with music, "Mason's Apron" and "Maggie in the Snow", by Contratopia) gives a pretty accurate picture of what to expect. Lots of energy, lots of fun.

Here's a short video from the 2008 Stomp with the same message:

It sounds to me like we are playing "Ross' Reel" in the first half of the video and a tune of mine called "Ain't Broke" in the second half.

Hope to see you in Northfield on Friday night. It's going to be fun.

Snow Elsewhere

2010-02-06T13:17:00.006-06:00

The members of Contratopia are no strangers to snow. Here in Decorah we have had a good foot or so of snow on the ground since early in December of this winter. We have not, however, had a significant snowfall for many weeks. We are also well equipped with snow shovels, plows, icemelt and the other necessities of winter life. It is a little unnerving to realize that we intend to be gathering in Takoma Park, MD in exactly one month when I see what is going on in the mid-Atlantic region today.

We are scheduled to play the Friday Night Dance at Glen Echo Park in four weeks but tonight's contra there has been canceled. The fate of this weekend's Sunday Waltz Time and evening contra dance is undecided. We are booked to play those dances in a month as well. Hopefully this will all be a fond memory by then and large crowds of happy dancers will flock to the park on the first weekend in March.

When we head east this time we will be bringing a new "product" with us. We now have digital download cards from CD Baby available for sale. For a modest price you will be able to purchase a wallet size card that will be printed with a code that will allow you to go to the CD Baby site and download an mp3 version of our first CD, Hands Four. It will be interesting to see how many people are interested in this way of buying our music.

Winter snows always lead to thoughts of summer. Summer, for many, is the wedding season. Contratopia rarely gets to play at a wedding as a group because of our hectic schedules and geographical challenges but all the members are active as wedding musicians from time to time. Pat and Margie O'Loughlin also serve the needs of brides and grooms with their Sandhill Photography business. They have recently launched the Sandhill Photography blog and I highly recommend subscribing to their posts.

Erik Sessions and I always play a handful of weddings every summer in Winneshiek County and we have now taken the sensible step of creating an Erik & John website (with the expert help of Karen Goodin) to hopefully simplify the process of finding us and figuring out what we can do. Give us a holler if you are planning on getting married in the Decorah area and are looking for some lovely and lively acoustic music for either the ceremony or the dinner/reception. We are also pleased to be associated with the new Welcome in Decorah website that is promoting Decorah as a great place to hold your wedding.

Apart from winter storms and summer weddings we also want to remind everyone that in two weeks, Friday, Feb. 19, Contratopia will meet in Northfield, MN to play at another wonderful Winter Stomp! contra dance, held downtown at the city armory.

We hope to see you there!

New Year, New Dates

2009-12-29T12:03:00.002-06:00

As we bring 2009 to an end I am pleased to announce that several dates have been added to our calendar. Contratopia will be providing the music for dances at Tapestry Folkdance Center on January 9, 2010 (guided by the calling of our friend, David Kirchner), March 27 (mystery caller) and April 24 (with Robin Nelson). We will also be playing for the annual Northfield Winter Stomp! dance on Feb. 19 (again with Robin).

These new dances will combine with our March 4-7 return to Philadelphia, Glen Echo and Shepherdstown, WV to make for a fairly busy spring in Contratopia terms. I just checked our history page and April, 2008 was our last visit to our friends in the mid-Atlantic region. This may be our longest absence since the band was formed, so we're really looking forward to seeing familiar faces and halls.

If you are still unsure about what to do on New Year's Eve (48 hours from now) it's not too late to travel to the Twin Cities where Pat O'Loughlin and Friends will be playing for the dancers at the Tapestry party. Pat has a lot of talented friends so there's no telling what you might hear that night. Say hi from me if you make it to the dance.

Mid-term Review

2009-11-15T20:53:00.002-06:00

Well, we've had a flurry of activity and now our season is going into the holiday break. We had another great time in Northfield on Oct. 23 (looking forward to returning there on Feb. 19, 2010) and a tremendous time last night at Tapestry. Beau Farmer called a great selection of dances and encouraged us to play whatever we wanted. It turns out that we had some good music in us last night and I believe we played a couple of tune sets as well as we've ever played them.

The night before last, Patrice, Pat and I were joined by wonder-fiddler Mary DuShane for a dance at a St. Paul grade school. Pat handled the calling chores (for a large crowd of excited youngsters and their sometimes reluctant parents) and Mary, Patrice and I had fun playing a variety of standard fiddle tunes. Following the gig Pat and I went out on the town briefly, first dining on some delicacies at a Lake St. White Castle and then crossing the street to hear some tunes at an Irish session in Merlin's Rest. Saturday morning we (Pat and I again) spent a couple of hours at a great old-time jam at a coffeehouse in St. Paul and then visited Hoffman Guitars. All in all a good weekend of music for me in the Twin Cities.

We are hoping to nail down some dance dates at Tapestry during the second half of our season (Jan.-April) and we have our east coast weekend dates all confirmed now. Also, Erik and I will be playing some with the Western Home String Band at our local Decorah contra dance next Sat., Nov. 21. Stop by if you're in town.

It All Comes Round Again

2009-09-12T20:35:00.003-05:00

An eventful summer leads into another Contratopia season. We've spent a decade together as a band and we can honestly say (well, at least I can) that we are better friends than ever and we still get excited at the prospect of playing some music together.

Just a week ago we were all in the same dance hall celebrating the wedding of our beloved Patrice to the most excellent Alton Accola. Pat, Erik and I had the pleasure of playing a few tunes (with the stellar support of Sherry Ladig on keyboard) while Patrice and Al cut a rug with the wedding guests. Patrice nearly jumped in for a bit but she had a few other things on her mind.

In another month Patrice, Erik and I will be supplying the tunes for the dancers at the Midwest celebration of the wedding of our own Ted Hodapp and the legendary (because some of us had never met her until last week) Lynn Baumeister.

Pat O. will sadly be otherwise engaged that evening so the actual Contratopia machine won't get cranked up until Oct. 23rd in Northfield, MN for the annual Harvest Stomp! dance. After we kick out some jams (what's that next word?) in Northfield we will be ready for our seasonal debut in Minneapolis at the Tapestry Folkdance Center on Nov. 14.

Hopefully something fun will come up for us to do in January and February 2010 before we head back to the DC area in early March. We'll be playing in Glenside, PA on March 4 and Glen Echo on the 5th and 7th. On Saturday March 6th we'll return to Shepherdstown, WV for the third or fourth time. Finally there are rumors of a possible return to lovely Highlandville, IA in May for another Derby Day dance at the schoolhouse.

When's that new CD going to be ready you ask? Well I wouldn't start holding my breath if I were you but the topic does come up from time to time. We're all still in reasonably good physical condition and we've got two or three CDs worth of material waiting (if you count the dozens of waltzes that we've played over the last 6 or 7 years) but it's pretty hard to find the time to record stuff. Maybe someday?

In any event keep an eye out for us and come and say hello if you get the chance. You can usually find out where we'll be by checking our "dances" page on the Contratopia website. Hope to see you soon.

Loose Ends

2009-06-03T09:35:00.003-05:00

"Oh my friends it's springtime again, buds are swelling on every limb"

- from Dillon Bustin's "Gardening"

Well, another Contratopia season has come to a satisfying conclusion. The farmers among us are farming and contra dance music takes a bit of a back seat for a while. We did close the season with a bang by playing a cool wedding dance at the Wabasha Street Caves in St. Paul which included an expanded band for the last couple of sets.

In April, shortly after the previous post, we had the great pleasure of being joined by our friend Ken Steffenson on fiddle (on very short notice) to play both a mostly-waltz afternoon session and the evening contra dance at Tapestry after Erik called in sick with "the plague". Ken did a great job and we really had fun playing with him.

Linda Breitag finished out the season with us by playing the always-fun Earth Day contra at Carleton College and the above-mentioned wedding. We really enjoyed getting to play with Linda more often this past season, and we look forward to more gigs with her in the future.

Even though it's only June it's not too soon to begin looking ahead to next season. In September and October we have two Major Wedding Events in the Contratopia family. More on these to come. Next March, thanks to Ted Hodapp's highly organized booking efforts, we will be making another visit to our favorite DC area dance spots: Glen Echo, Glenside and Shepherdstown. Beyond that we have some openings.

So, if you are looking for a really good contra dance band next winter or spring give us a holler and we might be able to work something out.

Why Ted Flies

2009-04-14T23:36:00.009-05:00

Why indeed? If you'd really like to know, you can stop by Tapestry on Saturday night and ask him yourself.

It was just a little over a year ago that we last had the pleasure of touring with Ted Hodapp. You can check some of the blog posts from last April to get a sense of what we were up to then. Our last dance together would have been at the Glen Echo Sunday night contra but I suspect we ended the evening by watching a couple of episodes of Shaun the Sheep at Ted's place afterwards.

In any event we're all looking forward to meeting up with Ted again on Saturday and we can promise that a good time will be had by all. We are also playing a mostly waltz dance from 3-5 in the afternoon that should be a lovely way to spend part of an almost-spring afternoon.

This will be our last outing of the season with Erik on fiddle but we will also be playing the following Friday at Carleton College in Northfield with Linda Breitag as part of their Earth Day celebration.

Finally, all of you mandolin players are invited to stop by during any of these dances and take a look at my new Pomeroy flattop mandolin. Don Paine has created a beautiful instrument at an extremely reasonable price and I'm very happy to be one of the first owners of this new model. Here's a link to short recording of me playing the new instrument: (http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=40787&d=1238859035)

Hope to see you soon.

New Additions

2009-03-27T20:58:00.002-05:00

Contratopia has added a couple of additional dances to its current season thanks to our good friend, fiddler Linda Breitag. Linda allowed a "Pat O'Loughlin and friends" gig at Tapestry last Saturday (March 21) to become a Contratopia dance by subbing for Erik Sessions (who was busy with more important matters, see below). She is also going to join us at Carleton College on April 24 as part of their Earth Day celebration and at a private function in May. We are always delighted to have Linda join us and last week's dance was an especially good one. You can ask caller Beau Farmer to confirm that if you want. He'll tell you all about it.

Another addition to the larger Contratopia world has been the publication of my new tunebook "31 Waltzes" (http://www.contratopia.com/mtopia/31waltzes.htm). I'm pleased with how the collection turned out and, if you enjoy playing waltzes, I think there are lots of tunes you might find interesting. You can check out the website if you are curious and order using Paypal, or you can email me.

The most important addition to the Contratopia family, however, is Nina Stella Sessions, Erik and Sara's new baby girl! Born earlier this month, Nina joins her sisters Meg and Mairi as future fiddlers of Contratopia Land and organic farmers in training.

Just about a year ago at this time the band was out East having a great time. Just tonight, from my hotel room here in New Harmony, Indiana, I stumbled across a Flickrstream of photos from the dance we played on April 5, 2008 in Shepherdstown, WV. Here's the link:
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/akaelainesk/sets/72157611792636112/)
Many thanks to akaelainesk for sharing these excellent photos!

Thanks to the wonder of Ted Hodapp we have just recently arranged to return to Shepherdstown during the first weekend of April next year, 2010. We always love playing in that hall and the cool people who dance there. Something to look forward to....

Finally, don't forget that we'll be reuniting with Ted on April 18th at Tapestry for what promises to be a really fun time. Hope to see you there!

Bozeman to Northfield to Minneapolis

2009-02-16T22:54:00.010-06:00

Here are a few photos from our recent time in Bozeman. Thanks to Pat O'Loughlin for sharing his artistry (and the photos too).

The new President had to cancel at the last minute but we honored him with an inaugural ball anyway. Here's Cis Hinkle asking for a few million to support contra dancing in the new economic stimulus bill.

Below is a good shot of our new friends, Fiddlerats, heating up the hall.

Our buddy Rab took several great photos of the band in action, at the risk of his own life and limb. I'm still not sure how he managed the shot of Patrice but it's a great angle on her nimble fingers.

On Friday Erik and I will drive up to Northfield and meet Patrice and Pat for another great Winter dance. Robin Nelson will once again be our caller. We may even have some special guests show up to play a few tunes.

Saturday we will have a reunion with one of our earliest caller pals, Carol Ormand, at Tapestry. My understanding is that there may be some sword dancing and a short hambo lesson during the break that night. This should be a ton of fun and I hope that some of you can attend.

Frosted Hair

2009-01-29T09:27:00.003-06:00

Ditto to all of John's comments. Thank you to Mary the high school oboist from Bozeman who made us sound especially good on John's waltz Last Call at Hawley-Cooke on Saturday night. Such a sweet sound! Good luck at college next year, Mary!

One highlight John neglected to mention (because he sensibly stayed back for some rest and down time) was the trip to Norris Hot Spring on Sunday afternoon for an exciting soak in the outdoors with temps near 0 degrees F. Except for the 3 minutes before and after getting in the hot water, it was a wonderfully toasty experience. No heated changing rooms or toilets made for the quickest changes ever. Whew! I'd never seen "frosted hair" like this. The freezing steam made for cool, crunchy hair. There is a small geodesic dome with a clear plastic front on it on one end of the pool. It houses live folk music at times (not while we were there) that gets piped out to the pool. How amazing is that! Even though we were jolted by the news that we forgot our towels at home, Rab magically teased some from the management. We look forward to more good times with all the great folks out there!

Back from Bozeman

2009-01-28T19:49:00.004-06:00

What a time we had! The Wintergreen dance weekend folks were the perfect crowd for our music, even though this was our third time playing for this event. It was our first chance to work with the remarkable Cis Hinkle and I have to say that we hit it off right away. Cis is a very musical caller who exudes energy and confidence and was open to anything we wanted to try. We also got to play more than the usual number of square dances and we had several opportunities to turn Patrice loose on old-time oboe and even (God forbid!) piano.

As much fun as we had working with Cis we had nearly as much fun listening (and dancing) to Fiddlerats (for this weekend, Caroline McCaskey, Cole Ingraham & Eric Anderson). They are wonderful players and every set they played was exciting. Caroline, Cole and Eric were also very open to collaboration and some of the highlights of the weekend involved them joining with us for a few special numbers. I should also mention that Fiddlerats has an excellent CD for sale titled Contraband.

During the post-dinner concert on Saturday night Caroline and Cole came up to add percussive spice to Pat's great tune "Two Bits" (formerly know as "Pat's African Tune") and then Eric joined us for a special one-time-only take on Handel's "Arrival of the Queen of Sheba". We had two fiddles, oboe, flute, concertina, guitar on chords and piano playing the bass line. For me, the whole thing peaked late on Saturday night when I think we played one of the four or five best hours we've every played. Everything seemed to line up and it was great.

As always in Bozeman the hospitality was amazing. Oshi, Mark, all the folks on the committee, Mitchell Frey handling the sound, all the callers (there must have been at least a dozen) who came to study at Cis' feet, all the young fiddlers and musicians, the folks who came to our workshops, every single person was warm and friendly and made us feel great.

Special thanks, of course, go out to Rab, Mich, and the boys for taking us into their home again. This time even Sugar the dog was my pal. Also, a big hug to Oshi for loaning us a vehicle. This allowed Pat to take us on a death-defying journey up past Bridger Bowl on Friday morning and around to a delicious lunch in Livingston.

As always it was great to see former Decorah area resident Steve Marty and get to play a little music with him. One of the highlights of the weekend for me was jamming on my tune "Canny Crow" in the upstairs hallway of the Emerson with Steve on guitar, me on mando and the wonderful sound of two oboes. Steve's band Weatherwood has recently issued their first CD and will be a featured band at Wintergreen 2010. Their CD release party is this coming weekend at Equinox Theatre in Bozeman.

Just like last time Pat and Rab took tons of photos but I have none at this point. Hopefully we'll post a few of the better ones here in the near future. With luck we'll be invited back again someday!

Winter Flurries

2009-01-02T10:56:00.002-06:00

It's a new year and we are gearing up for our winter flurry of music and travel. In two weeks (Jan. 17) Erik and I will drive up to Minneapolis for a full day of music: a band rehearsal, followed by a Mostly Waltz dance at Tapestry from 3-5 in the afternoon and a full-length contra at Tapestry in the evening.

This will be a kind of boot camp for the following weekend when Erik and I will drive to the MSP airport (notice a pattern here?) to meet Patrice and Pat for our flight to Bozeman. There we will spend 3 wonderful days (Jan. 23-25) playing, workshopping and jamming with our Montana friends at the Wintergreen Dance Weekend.

A month later, on Feb. 20, Erik and I will travel north again. This time to Northfield, where we will play with our musical better halves (halfs?) at the 3rd(?) annual Winter Stomp. This amounts to a short tour for the Decorah guys because we then will drive on to Minneapolis to play at Tapestry on the 21st. Hopefully Pat will lead us to a good old-time jam session that Saturday morning. Maybe we'll even get to visit the Pickin' Parlor or the Podium while we're in the Big Cities.

Since Decorah set an all-time record for December snowfall (no climate-change doubters here!) we fully expect January and February to co-operate with our travel plans and keep the roads and the airways clear for us. Hope to see you at some of these events. Stay warm.

Off to Minnesota

2008-11-21T19:15:00.005-06:00

Tomorrow Erik and I will be heading up to join Patrice and Pat for a dance at Tapestry Folkdance Center in Minneapolis. We'll be joined once again by our pal, caller Robin Nelson. I think the last time we played at Tapestry was on March 15th, so it will be especially fun to visit one of our favorite places again.

The four of us had a reunion a few weeks ago when we played at the Northfield Armory for the annual Northfield Harvest Stomp but that seemed to come and go pretty quickly. We're slowly gearing up for our next visit to the Bozeman Wintergreen Dance Weekend in a couple of months and I think we are all really looking forward to seeing our Montana and Idaho friends in January.

On the local front, Erik and I are happy to be a part of a just-released, holiday CD project aimed at benefiting Helping Services for Northeast Iowa. It's a collection of tracks from a variety of local musicians that was put together by Benji Nichols and the folks at Inspire(d) Media and will available for sale at many local businesses.

Erik and I appear on a track that comes from a live recording of Decorah's annual Burning Bright holiday concert. Along with our good friend Beth Hoven Rotto (leader and fiddler of local legends, Foot-Notes) on piano and lap dulcimer, we play a set that begins with a waltz of mine titled "G for Gordy" and then segues into an adrenaline-fueled, near-train-wreck version of "Cold Frosty Morning." The waltz is titled for our old friend Gordy Macmasters who had passed away a few months before the concert.

(Beth, by the way, was the subject of a well-deserved feature article in the Fall 2008 issue of Fiddler Magazine.)

In the "small world" department I received a surprise phone call this week from an old music friend in Indiana, Tom Yeiser. We hadn't spoken for over 15 years (since our move to Iowa) but Tom is very active in the Bloomington, Indiana dance scene and owns and operates a recording studio (Sweet Owen Sound) that he built himself just west of town. This is Contratopia-relevant because years ago, when Erik was a youngster, Tom hosted Erik during a Pig's Eye Landing tour.

Hope to see you down the road...

October Surprise

2008-10-05T21:17:00.004-05:00

No, none of us are running for office so there's no point in sharing skeletons from our closets or revealing our alien origins. In fact it's no surprise at all that we had a great time the other night playing the Friday night contra portion of the Minnesota Country Dance Weekend. Pat, Patrice and I were sorry that Erik couldn't join us but we had a delightful time with our buddy and fiddler extraordinaire, Linda Breitag.

Our good friend Sue Hulsether was our caller for the evening and she worked us pretty hard. The dancers clearly were having a good time and St. Paul's Sokol hall was jumping. It brought back fond memories of some of our earliest Contratopia gigs playing for the October weekends of days gone by.

A special treat came at the end of the evening when Amy and Maria from the wonderful Last Gaspe' were kind enough to join us for a couple of sets. I think we did a set with "Mason's Apron" and "Julia Delany" that was especially fun for me because I had a great seat to enjoy the twin fiddling of Linda and Maria.

We have added a few more dances for the spring to our schedule, thanks to our friends at Tapestry. It looks like we'll be playing Saturday night contras at Tapestry on Jan. 17, Feb. 21 and April 18, 2009. We will also be playing for afternoon mostly waltz sessions on Jan. 17 and April 18. [Note correction: original blogpost said April 25]

Our next dance will be at the Armory in Northfield, MN on Oct. 24 where Erik will lay down his hoe (is that a hoedown?) and rejoin the band for the annual Harvest Stomp! contra.

Hope to see you there.

The New Season

2008-07-23T23:23:00.004-05:00

A lot of water has gone under the bridge here in Decorah since the last post. You can see some photos of Decorah's 500 year flood here, courtesy of decorahnews.com.

Despite more summer excitement than usual Contratopia's 2008-2009 season is coming together nicely. Here are the dates that we have so far:

August 26, 2008 (w/Linda Breitag on fiddle)
Contra dance as part of the Nine Nights of Music at the Minnesota History Center, St. Paul, MN (6:30-8:00 p.m., Robin Nelson calling)

Oct. 3, 2008 (w/Linda Breitag on fiddle)
Contra dance at The Minnesota Country Dance Weekend (details to follow)

October 24, 2008
Northfield Harvest Stomp! contra dance at the armory in Northfield, MN (Robin Nelson calling) (details to follow)

November 22, 2008
Contra dance (7:30-11:30) at Tapestry Folkdance Center, Minneapolis, MN

January 23-25, 2009
8th Annual Wintergreen Dance Weekend in Bozeman, Montana (w/Randy Miller's Celticladda and Cis Hinkle calling!)

February 20, 2009
Northfield Winter Stomp! contra dance at the armory in Northfield, MN (Robin Nelson calling) (details to follow)

All of these dances promise to be great fun but we are especially looking forward to our 3rd visit to beautiful Bozeman in January. The Wintergreen folks put on a wonderful weekend and the dancers there are some of the friendliest people you will ever meet. Now's the time to be making those January travel plans!

Here in Decorah the floodwaters are gone and tomorrow is the start of the annual Nordic Fest. Erik and I will doing a couple of gigs with our buddies Jim & Jody as Bear Creek Bluegrass. Thursday night we will play from 9-midnight in the courtyard of Sabor Latino and Friday we'll do a two hour set (I think from 4:00-6:00) somewhere on Water Street in one of the entertainment tents. If you are in town stop by and say hello.

Highlandville, Derby Day

2008-04-30T22:35:00.004-05:00

On Saturday we will end our 2007-2008 season with what has become our traditional Derby Day Dance at the Highlandville schoolhouse. This gives me another chance to use Pat's beautiful photo which captures the venerable old building so well. We will be joined by the excellent caller David Kirchner and, we hope, many fine dancers from the Decorah area and beyond. Teaching at 7:30, dancing at 8:00.

Directions: From Decorah, take Locust Road (W38) about 11 miles, take a right on Big Canoe Road (A26), after about 3 miles turn left on Highlandville Rd. Go north about 2 miles to Highlandville and just after crossing the bridge over the creek turn left.

From the North, turn south off of Minn. Highway 44 onto county road 8, midway between Mabel and Spring Grove. This becomes Locust Road (W38) when you cross the state line into Iowa. Take a left on Big Canoe and follow the directions above.

Last Saturday we had lots of fun at Carleton College with Linda Breitag sitting in on fiddle. Robin Nelson called a great series of dances and the mostly college crowd kept us all energized. Since Linda doesn't know all of the original tunes we do this gave us a chance to play a few more traditional tunes than usual. Here's a list of what we played:

Angeline the Baker
Scollay's
Loaves and Fishes/Too Many Goats
Connaughtman's Rambles/The Kesh Jig
Fourth and Walnut/Steady On
Mason's Apron/Maggie in the Snow/Julia Delany
Red Wing
Benton's Dream
Morrison's/Cliffs of Moher
Motel Henri/Reel Eugene
La Bastringue

Waltzes: Mother's Day & Last Call at Hawley Cooke

Hope to see you on Saturday. If not, we'll catch you next fall.

Next Stop - Earth Day

2008-04-22T19:54:00.002-05:00

I know that today is the real Earth Day but we will be in Northfield, MN on Saturday night to celebrate the Day at the 2nd Annual Earth Day Contra Dance held on the Carleton College campus. This should be another great time with Suzie and all the special folks who have come to the Harvest and Winter Stomps! over the last couple of years.

When is Contratopia not Contratopia? This is a riddle we've asked ourselves many times. Currently our consensus is that whenever three of us are gathered together for a dance (often with a guest fourth member, often a fiddler) and aren't calling ourselves something else then we are probably Contratopia. Clear enough?

On Saturday Pat, Patrice and I will gather with one of our favorite fiddlers, the remarkable Linda Breitag, to play in Northfield. I think I'm correct when I say that Linda was once a member of the St. Olaf Choir, so this will be a homecoming of sorts for her and a great pleasure for us. Hope you can make it.

Two Bits Tour, Day 4, pt. 2

2008-04-13T10:26:00.006-05:00

Pat and Patrice (with the help of Patrice's generous husband-to-be, Al, and the resources of his amazing group, Five By Design) have collaborated to make 50 of Pat's photos from the tour available. While there are a few too many shots of me looking goofy (and too few shots of Pat, who was taking the photos) they are a lot of fun to see.

In the last entry the band had just finished the Sunday Waltz Time dance. This dance ends at 6:00 and the evening contra starts at 7:30 so there isn't a lot of time to go out looking for food. We solved the problem by calling in an order to a fine local Italian restaurant and having food delivered. This allowed us the chance to sit around and visit with old friends without the stress of wondering if we were going to be late getting to the gig.

The crowd at the Sunday Night Contra and Square Dance is usually a little smaller than the Friday night crowd but they sure know how to have a good time. I see that tonight, for instance, they will have the treat of dancing to the calling of our old friend Beth Molaro (source for the title of my jig "Bunch of Stuff") and the music of the legendary Rodney Miller and his Airdance Trio. I can't remember if Ted called any squares last week but I suspect that Beth will make up for any deficiency in that regard tonight.

It being the last dance of our tour we let out all the stops and had a great time with the Sunday night group. Five of the sets were tunes we hadn't played yet on the tour. By avoiding repetition we managed to sound pretty fresh even though we were a little tired. We did a better job with Pat's African Tune this time although I nearly crashed the whole dance by missing an important downbeat during the transition. All in all it was a great way to end the tour.

Here are the sets we played on Sunday night, April 5 in order:

Revelry Reel/French Sneakers/Maggie in the Rain
Manistique/Reel Eugene/Evil Diane
Timmy Clifford's/The Return Home/O'Keefe's (in D)
The Judge/Canny Crow
Whistling Britches/Riff City/Easy Club
Calliope House/Booth Shot Lincoln/It Ain't the Heat, It's the Humidity
Aly on the Plains/Hay to Market/Just 4 Guys
Black Squirrel Frisbee?/No Contest/Pat's African Tune
Mason's Apron/Maggie in the Snow/Julia Delany

Waltzes: Emma & The National Road

I thought both waltzes were especially lovely that night and Patrice played an absolutely gorgeous piano solo during National Road.

Thinking our adventures were over we headed back to Ted's for the most curious encounter of the whole tour. As we parked in front of the next door neighbor's house (who are really nice folks) they came out to greet us wondering if we knew anything about what you see below:

It seems that mysterious visitors had planted hundreds of plastic spoons in the yard. Our alibi was undeniable but a fun photo shoot ensued. Next morning, sadly, the spoons were all gone.

Finally here's a shot of us at DCA having exited the Metro and waiting for the shuttle to take us out to the Northwest terminal:

All's well that ends well. We're looking forward to our next visit sometime in the next couple of years. Hope to see you then!

Two Bits Tour, Day 4, Pt. 1

2008-04-11T23:01:00.008-05:00

(Breakfast at Ted's, photo by Pat)

Sunday started with Ted fixing us a delicious breakfast of potato pancakes and eggs. We can't say enough how much we appreciate Ted's hospitality. More importantly we love the way he calls dances and his foot percussion really adds a strong fifth voice to the band. Plus it's great to have his excellent button box playing hambos during the breaks.

(Hambo Ted, photo by Pat)

We worked up a set list for the afternoon Glen Echo Waltz Time dance. We rarely plan ahead for contra dances but the Sunday afternoon waltz session needs a little forethought. We found time for a frisbee workout in the front yard before cramming back into the car for the windy drive to the park. This time we got to listen to Swap's (where is that little "o" diacritic?) great Du Da CD.

We were blessed with excellent sound persons at every stop on this tour but we knew that on Sunday we would get to work with Jamie Platt, one of our all time favorite guys. He had been working long shifts all weekend at the park but he made sure that we sounded great for both dances on Sunday.

(Waltz Time in action, photo by Pat)

Waltz Time is one of the favorite things we get to do. We have so many waltzes that we love to play and here we get the chance. The dancers are amazing to watch too. One of the highlights for me this time was getting to see how much fun the dancers had with Erik's rendition of the "Sakkijarven Polka" and the rare chance to get to hear Erik and Ted play two hambos. I only wish there had been time to play another 6 or 8 waltzes. Everything sounds so good in the ballroom.

Here are the tunes that I think we played on Sunday afternoon. The formula was three waltzes followed by a different kind of couples' dance.

1) Mother's Day
January Waltz (We've opened with these two almost every time we've played this dance.)
Alice's Garden
Red Wing polka

2) St. Louis Christmas
Last Call at Hawley-Cooke
Turning by Threes (first performance by the band)
Hambo no. 1

3) Favors Her Father
Ballroom Echoes
Ms. P's Waltz
Tango Argentino (We play it every time but it's a great tune.)

4) French Creek Waltz
Shaoxing Waltz
Evenings & Weekends
Unbelievable! as a swing tune

5) Aubrey and Andrew's Wedding
Smitten
Two Rivers
Hambo no. 2

6) The Highlandville Waltz
Steciak's
Spring Forward
Sakkijarven Polka

7) Bighorn River Sunset
Small Town Downtown (I think this was the final waltz.)

Two Bits Tour, Day 3

2008-04-10T22:22:00.006-05:00

Saturday morning (not too early) Pat, Erik and I hiked up to one of my favorite music stores, The House of Musical Traditions, where we spent an hour or more making noise and enjoying the hospitality of the friendly HMT folks and their customers. Patrice had deserted us to visit with old friends and Ted enjoyed some time in his own house without a band making a racket. We then took a brief stroll along the lovely Sligo Creek on the long way back.

We regrouped and all piled back into the Tedmobile for our trip to Shepherdstown with a brief stop at the Manassas (or Bull Run) National Battlefield Park. Arriving in Shepherdstown with plenty of time for dinner we surveyed our options and ended up at Kazu Thai & Japanese Cuisine on the main drag. We won't go into details here about my deplorable taste in food. I'll simply point out that this was the first time I had ever dined in a Thai restaurant. That should tell you enough. Despite my reluctance I had a very enjoyable meal and I think the rest of the group really appreciated the fine food.

Then, of course, there was the dance. I love playing in the hall in Shepherdstown. It's intimate in all the best ways. We set up on floor level but we can still see everyone in the place most of the time. The dancers are a great mix of old and young and I can always tell that there are a few sharp musicians in the room who can probably play rings around me. We responded with some of our best playing of the tour and had a ball. This dance was particularly notable because we played what we've been calling "Pat's African Tune" for the first time in public. It was a good first try but it will get better.

The trip home took us up towards Frederick, Md. and included our first, and only, stop at a McDonald's just around midnight. This was, obviously, the opposite of our earlier dining experience but it did hit the spot. Back at the crib we enjoyed some of the antics of Shaun the Sheep and called it a morning.

Our new friend photographer Doug Plummer (see the last blog post) today sent a link to a Flickr site with some great photos of Friday night's dance at Glen Echo. I especially like the shot of Patrice and the piano. Thanks a million Doug!

Here are the tunes that we played on Sat. night in Shepherdstown, WV:

Ain't Broke/Two Days to Maine
Revelry Reel/French Sneakers/Maggie in the Rain
Nail that Catfish to a Tree/Queen's Polka/Reel St. Antoine
What Spring/Knee High in December (jig & reel)
Waitin' for Nancy/Over the Waterfall/Squirrel Hunters
The Phoenix/Sheehan's/Shenandoah Falls
Reel St. Joseph/Star of Munster/Two-Legged Stool
Black Squirrel Frisbee?/No Contest/Pat's African Tune
Old French/Badlands All Night/Sand Island
Fair Jenny/Four Potatoes/Catharsis

Waltzes: Ms. P's Waltz & Aubrey and Andrew's Wedding

Two Bits Tour, Day 2

2008-04-09T21:08:00.003-05:00

(Friday night, Glen Echo, photo by Doug Plummer?)

We slept in on Friday morning and after breakfast we unpacked instruments and proceeded to have one of our longest (and most fun) rehearsals in years. Tunes and more tunes until mid-afternoon. Patrice, Erik, Ted and I headed off to the Metro and down to the National Gallery of Art for a short visit, while Pat stayed behind to cook up a gourmet treat for us. Walking toward Union Station, near the Capitol, I was amazed to see of couple of tour buses belonging to Decorah's own Hawkeye Stages at a red light. It's a small world indeed.

After Pat's delicious cooking we left Hodapp Manor for Glen Echo Park and the Friday Night Dance. Ted always programs great music for us in the car and this time we listened to a live recording by the fabulous Horse Flies. Very inspiring stuff.

Before the dance started we were approached by friendly and polite photographer Doug Plummer who said he'd like to take some pictures. He's working on a book of contra dance photos, among other things, and we were pleased to find ourselves the subject of his Daily Photo for April 4. In another "small world" moment we discovered that he is also doing some photo work for Decorah's own Luther College, my employer in the real world.

The dance itself was great. Over 280 of the nicest dancers on the planet in one of the finest ballrooms anywhere. We always have a great time playing at Glen Echo. After returning to Ted's we were treated to a couple of episodes of Shaun the Sheep before calling it a night.

Here are the tunes we played on Friday, pretty much in order:

La Bastringue (circle mixer)
Loaves and Fishes/Too Many Goats/Fourth & Walnut
Ross' Reel/Cornutopia/Happy Ears
Palisades/Christmas Past/Fairbanks
Sandy River Belles/Liza Jane/Rockabye Baby
Sweetbriar/What You Got There/Scandy Twist
Hogwart's Express/Colored Aristocracy/Steady On
Fenstermann's Surprise/Stumpy/Bunch of Stuff
Ain't Broke/Two Days to Maine/Squirrel Hunters
All Fall Down/Flying Home to Shelley
Waitin' for Nancy (post-dance clogging tune)

Waltzes: French Creek Waltz & Last Call at Hawley Cooke

Almost Home Away From Home

2008-04-08T22:11:00.002-05:00

There's always another view of any band experience, although I can ditto most of what John said about our DC escapade. Not only do I look forward to playing with my favorite dance musicians, I get to pick up so many new jokes from Ted. I love seeing friends we've made from previous tours and it starts to feel like we're at home in our DC home. I wouldn't mind if Ted's couch was about a foot longer so I could stretch out for sleeping, but better me than my taller companions! Actually I sleep amazingly well out there. Maybe it's from exhaustion - or the Dramamine I used pre-emptively to counter all those curves and hills on the way to Shepherdstown, not to mention the "back ways" to Glen Echo.

The cherry blossoms totally cooperated and stayed on the trees while we were there, in spite of rain. What a thrill! And I love getting to visit my old friend, Deb Anderson in Kensington. We talked weddings since she just got married a couple years ago and I just got engaged a couple weeks ago. Deb and I are both the same age (which I won't reveal, but Al and I call ourselves Geezers in Love, so that's a hint). Check out Al's vocal group Five By Design at www.fivebydesign.com. Deb's husband Richard made the best peach pancakes!

I never tire of seeing the dancers cruising around the floor. The waltz afternoon is a particularly mesmerizing experience and I find ways of playing a tune that are inspired by watching them. Thank you to all the great dancers we experienced.

And if 284 people dancing in one area (Spanish Ballroom at Glen Echo) isn't enough, try having a dance just a few feet away at the same time for some jiving swing dancers on Friday in the Bumper Car Pavillion and Cajun on Sunday night. The dance energy was off the scale! I've stored up some of it to help me ease back into everyday life at home - which includes getting those dang tax returns done. See you at the dance!

Two Bits Tour, Day 1

2008-04-08T18:27:00.003-05:00

(Erik & Ted play a hambo during the break. Photo by Pat O'Loughlin)

Erik drove in from the farm and picked me up at 5:30. We met Patrice at the Minneapolis airport about 4 hours later and soon were settled in our luxury (not) seats for the flight to DCA. My guitar and mandolin flew first class though, thanks to a friendly Northwest employee who stowed them in an empty bin up front. Ted and Pat (who had flown out two days early) met us at the baggage claim and we started our trip to Philly.

We grabbed a tasty dinner at the Glenside Pub, home of memorable sessions in the past, and made it to the hall on time (for a change). The Glenside dance is one of our favorites and April 3 was a good night for us. It seemed like we didn't need a lot of warming up and instead went straight to full throttle. It helped that our old pal Scott Higgs was handling sound and Ted was telling some of the best jokes ever (OK, that's a lie).

A big treat for me was discovering the new Tuneadelphia! tunebook for sale at the door. This is a great collection of tunes composed by folks associated with the local SPUDS group and is beautifully printed with excellent notes and illustrations. Kudos to compiler/editor Sarah Gowan and her crew of contributors. If you are looking for new tunes you definitely should get one.

When the dance fun was done we loaded back into the Tedmobile and hit the turnpike. A long, late drive back to Takoma Park with exhausted, aging musicians (and the everyoung Erik). I think this was the drive where we listened to a CD of one of our spiritual guides, David Sedaris. Finally we made it to Ted's place and set up camp for the weekend.

Here are the tunes we played that Thursday, not necessarily in order.

Waitin for Nancy/Over the Waterfall
Loaves and Fishes/Too Many Goats/Fourth & Walnut
Bay of Fundy/Maid Behind the Bar/Mouth of the Tobique
Manistique/Reel Eugene/Evit Gabriel
Mason's Apron/Maggie in the Snow/Julia Delany
Sweetbriar/What You Got There/Scandy Twist
Two Lieutenants/Sledding at Walnut Ridge/Emory's Crossing
Palisades/Christmas Past/Fairbanks
Road to Bangor/Eager to Please/La Maison de Glace
Angeline the Baker/Scollay's/Liberation

Waltzes: Alice's Garden & Ballroom Echoes

Heading East

2008-03-27T23:36:00.003-05:00

About this time one week from tonight we'll have just finished playing for a dance in Glenside, PA. The first of five dances that we'll play in four days in the mid-Atlantic region. A week from tomorrow we'll play the Friday Night Dance at Glen Echo, MD and the night after that we'll drive (in Ted Hodapp's luxurious chariot) over to Shepherdstown, WV for their Sat. night dance. On Sunday April 6 we'll finish our dance flurry by playing (again at Glen Echo) for both the Waltz Time folks in the afternoon and the Sunday Night Dance folks in the evening. On Monday we'll hop on a plane, weary but joyful, for Minneapolis and a return to normalcy. No doubt Ted will sleep soundly Monday night! If you are in that part of the world please come out and dance and say hello.

A big Thank You goes out to Erik's Aunt Nikki, the president of our Swedish fan club and owner/operator of Nikki's Place. Following her suggestion I have upgraded this blog a little. The main new feature is the nifty email subscription option from Feedblitz. If you don't use a feed reader but still want to know when we add entries here you can sign up through this widget and it is supposed to send you an email. Let us know if you try it and it doesn't work.

I've also added a photo under the blog title. For now it's a shot I took of our dog Suzy during a hike last year at Effigy Mounds National Monument. I've also added a photo of the band and Ted huddled around the statue of Franklin Roosevelt's dog, Fala, taken during our last visit to D.C. in November of 2006.

We are all looking forward to next week's music and dance and hope to see some of you soon!

St. Patrick's weekend at Tapestry

2008-03-17T22:07:00.003-05:00

We had a busy day on Saturday, the official Vatican-sanctioned St. Patrick's day, at Tapestry in Minneapolis. We played both an afternoon Mostly Waltz dance and the regular evening contra dance. In between, Pat and Margie treated the band to a special dinner at their place.

The afternoon session wasn't overly crowded but the band and the dancers had a great time. We got to play a number of new waltzes (and even a new hornpipe turned schottische) and could really hear ourselves well. A very nice warmup for the much larger Waltz Time dance we'll be playing at Glen Echo in a couple of weeks.

The evening contra was nicely crowded and very high energy. Thanks to Patrice's inspiration we played more Irish tunes than usual (replacing some of our regular tunes in sets with similar traditional tunes) and really enjoyed it. We even closed the evening with a nice rendition of Planxty Irwin.

Back in February when we had a little time on Saturday afternoon Erik, Pat and I recorded a few tunes at Patrice's house while she was off earning a living. Here are a couple of mp3s from that afternoon:

We don't pretend to be an Irish traditional music band but we all love that music. This version of Sheehan's is loose but I think it has a good feeling to it.

We also played a sloppy but very fun version of Queen's Polka. It features Erik letting loose a little and shows some nice give and take between Erik and Pat. My guitar harmonization is sometimes OK and sometimes a little less than that but it doesn't stop the tune from being fun for me to listen to.

Here are some of the tunes we played at the Mostly Waltz session on Saturday afternoon. Like we do at Glen Echo we played 3 waltzes followed by a different couples' dance.

1) Mother's Day, January Waltz, Alice's Garden, Off to California (as a schottische, with my Off to Minnesota sandwiched between)
2) St. Louis Christmas, Last Call at Hawley-Cooke, The National Road, and a mystery hambo (Erik knows the names of the hambos but I don't)
3) Aubrey and Andrew's Wedding, Ballroom Echoes, Ms. P's Waltz, Riding on a Load of Hay (polka)
4) French Creek Waltz, Shaoxing Waltz, Evenings and Weekends, Tango Argentino
5) Two Rivers, Everybody Wins-Everybody Loses, The Highlandville Waltz, All of Me (swing)
6) Bighorn River Sunset, Steciak's, Bob's Angels (world premiere), another hambo?
7) Spring Forward (another world premiere), South of France (not sure if there were any more tunes after this)

At the evening dance we played some of these sets and tunes (not necessarily in this order):

Loaves and Fishes/Too Many Goats/Fifth and Walnut
Aly on the Plains/Hay to Market/Just 4 Guys
Angeline the Baker/Scollay's/Liberation
Bay of Fundy/Maid Behind the Bar/Mouth of the Tobique
Mason's Apron/Maggie in the Snow/Julia Delany
The Judge (Larry Unger) for a square dance, I think
Two Lieutenants/Sledding at Walnut Ridge/Emory's Crossing
Sweet Music/Why Ted Flies/Smash the Windows
All Fall Down/Flying Home to Shelly
another jig set that started with The Kesh Jig (a Ctopia first) and had a D modal jig in the middle and ended with Road to Lisdoonvarna

Waltzes: Favors Her Father, G for Gordy, Planxty Irwin

Big Fun in Northfield and the Twin Cities

2008-02-25T20:55:00.002-06:00

Here's a nice video (thanks to Griff Wigley) from last Friday's dance at the Armory in Northfield. You can see that Robin Nelson is doing an amazing job of directing a lot (a blizzard? an avalanche?) of energy and the dancers are having a great time. There are even a couple of seconds of rare video of Contratopia at play at the very start. The first half of the video has us playing the classic "Ross' Reel" and the second half finds us playing one of my newer tunes called "Ain't Broke". Griff also has made available an excellent album of photos from the Winter Stomp! Thanks, Griff!

The next day was full of big city fun. Pat made sure that Erik and I were up and out of the house in time to get a good seat at the old-time jam at what I think is the Artist Blend coffee house on University near Raymond. I won't drop names but, once there, we got to play great tunes and hang out with some of the finest old-time musicians anywhere. Great music, great people. Stop by some Saturday morning and see for yourself. Thanks to everyone at the jam for making us feel at home!

A delicious lunch (well, breakfast for Erik) followed at the original Keys restaurant just around the corner. Then we rushed to Patrice's place for an afternoon of rehearsal and learning new tunes. This followed by a light but excellent supper at El Norteno on Lake St.

Saturday night was another fun dance at Tapestry. Bob provided especially fine sound for us and Steve joined us on harmonica for a couple of sets near the end. Robin was our caller for the second night in a row and she did her usual stellar job of keeping things interesting and fun. Best of all we get to return in less than three weeks for both a waltz afternoon and a contra evening.

For the record here is a list of the tune sets that I can remember us playing at one or the other dance. These aren't in order and I don't think we repeated any sets but the first group I think were Friday sets and the second group Saturday ones.

Flowers of Edinburgh (for a teaching dance on Friday, our first ever use of one of my favorite James Oswald tunes)
Mason's Apron/Maggie in the Snow/Julia Delaney
Angeline the Baker/Milk Run/Liberation
The Phoenix/Sheehan's/Shenandoah Falls
Ain't Broke/Two Days to Maine
Ross' Reel/Cornutopia/Happy Ears
Road to Bangor/Eager to Please/La Maison de Glace
Sandy River Belles/Liza Jane/Rockabye Baby
Waitin' for Nancy/Over the Waterfall
Calliope House/Booth Shot Lincoln/It Ain't the Heat, It's the Humidity

Dunn Meadow/Canny Crow
Nail that Catfish to a Tree/Queen's Polka/Reel St. Antoine
Reel St. Joseph/Star of Munster/2-Legged Stool
Palisades/Christmas Past/Fairbanks
Aly on the Plains/Hay to Market/Just 4 Guys
Soft Shoulder/Cowboy Jig/All the Rage
Hogwart's Express/Aristocracy/Steady On
Sweetbriar/What You Got There/Scandy Twist

Waltzes:
Alice's Garden (new for us)
The National Road
Dacie's House/Judy and Jim's Wedding
South of France
Aubrey and Andrew's Wedding
Last Call at Hawley-Cooke (world premiere)

One Week To Go

2008-02-15T23:35:00.002-06:00

About this time next Friday we'll be packing up our gear after playing at the 2nd Annual Northfield Winter Stomp! That dance will be the first leg of our February Winter Dance Weekend Tour that will conclude the next night at Tapestry in Minneapolis. Hopefully this year the weather will cooperate.

Tonight, Decorah's own Scandinavian-American dance band Foot-Notes was in Northfield with their wonderful blend of fiddle, mandolin, guitar & bass and old-time schottisches, waltzes, two-steps and polkas. Tomorrow night, here in Decorah, Erik and I will play with our local Western Home String Band for a regular contra dance with Bill Deutsch doing the calling.

Hope to see you at one or more of these events!

Seems Like Old Times...

2008-01-14T21:49:00.000-06:00

The whole gang convened at the Tapestry Folkdance Center last Saturday night for our first dance there since April 28, 2007. We had a ball. A big crowd of enthusiastic dancers, including many beginners, seemed to have an excellent time. Beau Farmer did a great job of integrating the newcomers and praising the veterans for helping them along. We had the special pleasure of being joined for two dances by the extraordinary David Edminster on tenor sax. He tore the place up on Pat O'Loughlin's slinky tune "Cement Donkey"! We'll be back at Tapestry in Feb., March and May.

We will gather next in Northfield, MN on Friday Feb. 22 for the 2nd annual Northfield Winter Stomp! from 7-10:30 at the Northfield Armory. (Click here for photos from last year's Stomp!) Robin Nelson will be calling with us that night and will also be with us at Tapestry the following night. In addition, Robin is teaching a series of contra dance lessons in Northfield starting on Friday Jan. 25. A great opportunity to learn from the best!

It occurred to me that it might be fun to try to keep a record of the tunes we play at our dances, kind of like fans keep track of setlists from the concerts of their favorite bands. Here are some of the sets that we played last Sat., not necessarily in order.

Old French/Badlands All Night/Sand Island
Revelry Reel/French Sneakers/Maggie in the Rain
Timmy Clifford's/The Return Home/O'Keefe's Slide (D major)
Aly on the Plains/Hay to Market/Just 4 Guys
Angeline the Baker/Milk Run/Liberation
Temperence Reel/Bay of Fundy/Mouth of the Tobique
Dunn Meadow/Canny Crow (with a quick "Pop Goes the Weasel" in the middle)
Cement Donkey/Moss Don't Grow (with David on sax)
Reel St. Joseph/Star of Munster/Two-Legged Stool (with David on sax)
Palisades/Christmas Past/Fairbanks

Waltzes:
St. Louis Christmas
January 12, 2008 (world premiere)
Favors Her Father

Change of Plans

2007-12-19T20:29:00.000-06:00

There's some good news/bad news regarding our 2008 calendar. First, the Bad. It turns out that we won't be playing at Tapestry in April after all. Our apologies if you've planned your vacation around this dance and already booked your flight. These things happen.

The Good News is that we will be playing a Mostly Waltz dance at Tapestry sometime during the afternoon on March 15. This will be followed by the already scheduled contra that evening. I know that's the Ides of March but I've already consulted with the experts and the omens are good.

Hope you are enjoying your holidays.

Let Me Count the Ways...

2007-11-19T22:52:00.000-06:00

Realizing that this week is the start of the Shopping, er "Holiday", Season I thought I'd take a minute to note some of the many ways that Contratopia's recorded music can be found. I realize that almost everybody who reads this blog probably has all three of our commercial recordings, but you never know. It could be that the spirit of giving might lead you to want to share some of our recordings in either a physical (CD in a jewel case with booklet and liner notes, etc.) or a purchased digital form with a whole slew of your friends and neighbors. What better surprise for those music and dance lovers on your list? If that is the case then here are some of the ways you can get from here to there.

1. All of the band members can supply you with CDs. Just get in touch and we can fix you up. Or send me an order form from our website. I'm not certain but I think that the Homestead Pickin' Parlor in Minneapolis might have a few CDs in the shop also. CyberYankee's Contracopia website also can supply you with both Smitten and Hands Four and the folks at Great Meadow Music can fix you up with Smitten as well.

2. Our friends at CD Baby can send you our CDs and many other excellent recordings by people we either know or admire (sometimes both). You can see our page here and you might note the special discount for ordering multiple copies of a title. While CD Baby takes a cut of the purchase price in exchange for their great service we still love to sell CDs through them because it's easier than going to the post office. Also you can use your favorite credit card to pay.

3. In the digital realm you can listen to and purchase our recordings from most of the major vendors. There are separate iTunes pages for Smitten, Ballroom Echoes and Hands Four and I should note that iTunes fans have been very good to us. You can listen to, and purchase, all of our tracks at Rhapsody.com and over 50 other online services too.

4. Of special note is the new MP3 sales option direct from CD Baby. We have priced both Smitten and Hands Four at only $9 for the complete albums and Ballroom Echoes at only $6. If MP3 is your preference then this is a great way to go.

So, until we get that next CD recorded (and your guess is as good as mine), these are some of the ways to purchase what we've managed to record so far. Hopefully we'll see many of you at some of our upcoming dances in the new year and your holiday season will be a good one.

Northfield Harvest Stomp!

2007-10-21T20:24:00.000-05:00

Just days away from the start of our new season on Friday, October 26 from 7 to 10:30 p.m. at the Northfield Armory, 519 Division Street in downtown Northfield. Details here.

So far the weather looks promising (we don't want to make snow storms a regular part of our visits to the Armory) and our anticipation is building. Can we still play? Do we remember any tunes? Which mandolin will John bring?

Erik and I played our local dance here in Decorah last night with our Western Home String Band friends and seemed to be able to manage a few tunes OK. In fact a lot of the playing was pretty darn good. Rob, Mike, David and young Ben all did a great job of keeping the train on the track despite our best efforts to confuse them.

Hope some of you can make it to the dance on Friday. Otherwise we'll hope to see you at Tapestry during the winter, or maybe out East in April. Here's the full schedule in case you haven't memorized it yet:

2007/2008 Season: When & Where

October 26, 2007
Contra dance in Northfield, MN (details to follow)

January 12, 2008
Contra dance (7:30-11:30) at Tapestry Folkdance Center, Minneapolis, MN

February 22, 2008
Contra dance in Northfield, MN (details to follow)

February 23, 2008
Contra dance (7:30-11:30) at Tapestry Folkdance Center, Minneapolis, MN

March 15, 2008
Contra dance (7:30-11:30) at Tapestry Folkdance Center, Minneapolis, MN

April 3-6, 2008
Mid-Atlantic Tour 2008 (w/Ted Hodapp): Glenside, PA (3rd); Glen Echo, MD (4th); Shepherdstown, WV (5th);
Glen Echo, MD (6th, afternoon waltz & evening contra)

April 19, 2008
Contra dance (7:30-11:30) at Tapestry Folkdance Center, Minneapolis, MN

May 3, 2008
Contra dance at the Highlandville Schoolhouse, north of Decorah, IA

May 17, 2008
Contra dance (7:30-11:30) at Tapestry Folkdance Center, Minneapolis, MN

CD Baby Gets It Right

2007-10-06T22:36:00.000-05:00

Our good friends at CD Baby are now in the business of selling mp3 downloads of our (and thousands of other) CDs. They have already been making our music available for download from most of the major vendors (iTunes, Rhapsody, eMusic, Napster, etc.) for a few years but now they are offering full CD downloads direct from the CD Baby site.

Why buy direct from CD Baby? Let me count the ways. First, we get to set the price. So for now we are asking $9 each for Smitten and Hands Four and only $6 for Ballroom Echoes. Since CD Baby only keeps 9% of the sale price most of the money goes directly to us to pay for things like strings, instrument repair and shoes for the kids. Not for the Mercedes or shopping sprees in Paris. OK, sometimes we buy chocolate or maybe a pizza.

More important than price is the quality of what CD Baby is selling. You can go here to read the details but, basically, you will receive high-quality DRM-free mp3s, a JPG of the CD cover and a text file with info about the recording.

CD Baby is only selling complete CDs and not individual tracks so you will still need to visit our friends at iTunes, etc. if you really want to download a single set of tunes or a waltz.

By the way, we love it when our listeners buy our recordings in any format and I personally think that DRM is a bad, bad idea. You will definitely never be sued by us for enjoying our music!

YouTube-Northfield-Google Book Search Fun

2007-09-20T11:41:00.000-05:00

Our good friends in Northfield have loaded a wonderful music slide show of photos from our Winter Stomp! dance in Northfield earlier this year. It features great photography set to our own recording of "Mason's Apron" followed by "Maggie in the Snow." If you haven't seen it yet check it out. We are actually in a couple of the photos but the focus, as it should be, is on the dancers.

In a little over a week Pat and Patrice will be half of a great band that will play at the St. Olaf College homecoming event and then Contratopia Proper will show up later in October for a Friday Harvest Stomp. Here's the announcement:

The Northfield Harvest Stomp!
Friday, October 26, 2007, 7:00 – 10:30 p.m.

A community contra dance at The Northfield Armory, 519 Division Street. Dance instruction 7:00 - 7:30 p.m. (recommended for all participants) followed by dancing to Contratopia and led by Robin Nelson. Admission: $9 adults, $6 students and youth under 18 ($20cap per family). No partner needed, and no previous dance experience necessary. Comfortable shoes and festive dance-ready attire recommended. All ages welcome, but participation in the main dance is recommended for children 10 years and older. (A dance area for younger children will be provided alongside the main dance area so that children can have fun dancing safely alongside the main dance.)

Finally, thanks to the ever-inventive folks at Google Book Search, here's a quote from:

A Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen By Robert Chambers: "It is painful to hear some of the young ladies at our parties reddening with a kind of horror at being asked to join in a reel or country dance and simpering out "I can't dance reels -- they're vulgar; "

Thankfully, as the slide show above amply demonstrates, the ladies and gentlemen of today have no such concerns!

The Company We Keep

2007-08-31T22:59:00.000-05:00

It's still a few weeks until the four of us (Pat, Patrice, Erik and me) get together for our first dance of the new season in Northfield. But when we aren't playing as Contratopia we each get to keep some pretty good company.

Down in Iowa Erik and I get to spend time with some mighty fine local musicians. In particular we play with our buddies Jim Skurdall and Jody Koenig as Bear Creek Bluegrass and with our local contra dance group the Western Home String Band.

Last Saturday we played with Western Home for a dance that was held as part of the new student orientation at Luther College. Bill Deutsch did a great job of calling this slightly chaotic event held in a nearly dark parking lot where several hundred energetic young students are mixing while eating free pizza. Campus pastor Mike Blair on guitar, professor David Ranum on English concertina (a Stagi Hayden Duet no less!) and student Ehler Orngard (of Ames' excellent Barn Owl Band) on fiddle and whistles joined Erik and me in supplying the tunes. On Saturday Sept. 15 most of us will drive out to the Highlandville schoolhouse for the first official Decorah contra dance of the season.

Tomorrow Erik and I are playing a wedding reception with Bear Creek (with Bill Musser substituting for Jody on bass) here in town. On Sept. 29 Bear Creek will be playing a barn dance for the Oneota Community Co-op, probably our last gig of our summer season.

Up in Minnesota Pat and Patrice are keeping fine company as well. I'm not sure exactly who is joining Pat in the Testostertunes (Testosterunes?) these days but it looks like they played last Sat. at the Tapestry Folkdance Center.

Pat, Patrice and our good friend, fiddler Ken Steffenson will be playing at a street dance somewhere in St. Paul on Thursday Sept. 20. And on the 29th Pat, Patrice and Ken will be joined by Ken's Danebodium bandmate Dan Leussler to play for the Harvest Festival held during Homecoming at St. Olaf College.

Going along with this theme I have posted an old home recording of a tune I titled "The Company You Keep" over on my So Many Tunes blogsite. Here's the link to the mp3 version of the tune:

The Company You Keep (mp3)

Calendar Update

2007-07-30T22:02:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Patrice's hard work we have just arranged to play for a series of dances at the Tapestry Folkdance Center in early 2008. I have updated our official calendar at the Contratopia website but here is our upcoming season in a nutshell:

We will play two dances in Northfield, MN; one in the fall on Oct. 26 and one in late winter on February 22. We will play five dances at Tapestry, once each month January through May. We'll play what has become our annual early May dance at the Highlandville schoolhouse near Decorah and we will take to the road for another visit to the mid-Atlantic region in early April.

There has been some talk of having us play a couple of "mostly waltz" dances on Saturday afternoons at Tapestry in the spring also and we'll be sure and announce them if those arrangements come together. Otherwise this looks like a pretty full schedule to us.

Tom Gau's beautiful artwork for our first CD is something I always enjoy. Usually I only see it as I'm handing a CD to someone so I thought I'd place it here to add some class to this short entry. Thanks again, Tom, for both the original drawing and the finished CD cover.

History

2007-07-06T10:00:00.000-05:00

I was updating the dances page on our official website last night with a few dances that we have scheduled for next season and I moved the list of last season's gigs over to our history page. This, naturally, led to reflections on music, people and places in the band's history.

I grabbed the photo above from our long-time buddy Ted Hodapp's dance page. I'm guessing this was taken sometime in the year 2000, pretty early in the band's journey. See how happy we are?!

This reminded me that Ted has been kind enough to serve up two recordings from one of our earliest concerts on his website for a long time. These come from a long ago performance at Haugen Hall here in Decorah that we played for a wonderful group of friends and neighbors. I'm not sure where the master recordings are for this concert, I'm not even sure who did the recording (maybe Jody Koenig?) but I've got a CD copy of the show.

I've created an mp3 version of our rendition of Erik's beautiful tune "Oak Woods Song" that you can download and enjoy. I really like this recording because I remember that we barely knew the tune at this point and everybody was really paying close attention to each other while we were playing it. (Of course we always pay close attention to each other, but this was really
close attention.)

Patrice was stuck playing a keyboard instead of a piano and she's lower in the mix than I would like. But, if you listen carefully, you'll hear how she reinvents the harmony to the tune each time it comes around. The chords that appear in the Contratopia Tunebook for this tune don't come close to the richness of what Patrice achieves here.

About this time of the summer I start to really miss playing regular contra dances with Pat, Patrice and Erik. I get to play quite a few wedding dance gigs with excellent musicians (like Ken, Linda, Jim, Jody, Bill, Rob etc.) but it's not the same as settling in for a three hour session with Contratopia where the dancers and the caller are simply there to dance. However, that's enough nostalgia for now.

Summer Hibernation

2007-06-09T23:29:00.000-05:00

It occurred to me while I was playing a duo gig with Erik at the Burr Oak, IA Laura Days event this afternoon that I had neglected to bring the 2006-2007 Contratopia season to a satisfying blogospheric close.

Lest anyone in a distant part of the world (and I can see from Google Analytics that folks from all over do visit this site from time to time) wonder if the band exploded in a fit of "artistic differences" following our gig at Highlandville, let me assure you that everything is great and we're looking forward to the start of our next season in the Fall.

We do need to do a little work towards getting a few gigs nailed down but I know for sure we'll be out East in April of 2008 for a long weekend and that we'll play a dance or two for our new friends in Northfield, MN as well. Hopefully our old friends at Tapestry in Minneapolis will find room for us a few times also.

All of us have plenty of music in our lives during the summer season but we rarely get together as a quartet. Pat, Patrice and I usually play a few weddings and other private events with one or another of our favorite alter-Eriks. This summer we get to play with both Ken Steffenson and Linda Breitag at different times and I'm looking forward to having Ken join us next Thursday in Fairibault.

Patrice and Pat both stay busy, often playing with other fine musicians for dances at Tapestry. This summer they will both be on the staff at the first ever Midwestern Heart family dance week to be held the Shell Lake Art Center in Wisconsin from August 12-18. This should be a great week and I think there is still time to sign up. Speaking of camps, fiddler Sessions is off to the June Maine Fiddle Camp next week. I'm counting on these camps to give us a nice supply of new and new-old tunes for us to play with next season.

Erik and I keep busy enough here in Decorah playing for weddings and other events as well. Along with our duo gigs we get to play a few times with our buddies Jim and Jody in Bear Creek Bluegrass. Our first performance of the summer comes up a week from Thursday, June 21st, at the Sabor Latino courtyard on Water St. You can also catch Bear Creek at Sabor on the opening night of Nordic Fest and in the entertainment tents on Water St. on Friday and Saturday during the Fest.

If you run into any of us at one of these summer shows please say hello.

Two for the Show ...

2007-04-25T19:57:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday night at Carleton was tons of fun! Frederick Park held a large crowd of energetic young dancers in thrall as he explained both the history of contra dance (and social dance in general) and where to put your feet. We got to provide the music. A highlight for me was the long square dance that Frederick called where he asked us to only play one tune, not a medley as we typically do. We had a ball giving "The Squirrel Hunters" a thorough working over. Even better, it looks like there's a good chance we'll get to play in Northfield again next Fall and in Spring 2008.

This Saturday (April 28th) we'll be reunited with our "Fifth Beatle", Ted Hodapp, at Tapestry in Minneapolis. It will be our last dance at Tapestry for this season (no more until Fall) and our first chance to give Ted a hard time since our D.C. Tour back in November. Ted has already set up another mid-Atlantic tour for us for next April but we'll have more news about that later.

All good things come to an end and Sat. May 5th (that's Derby Day back where I come from) Contratopia will close this season with what has become a traditional finale at the beautiful Highlandville Schoolhouse (see Pat O'Loughlin's photo above) just north of Decorah. Thanks to the sponsorship of the Decorah contra dance group we'll get to work again with our buddy Sue Hulsether. Even though the dance floor is small we always have a large amount of fun playing in the Schoolhouse.

If you've never made the pilgrimage to Highlandville you owe it to yourself to take a look. Dances have been held there for over 30 years now. As Bill Musser wrote in 1994:

The mixture of people that came amazed me. How could such a diverse group - from the cow barn, the classroom, the commune, and the office; the very old, very young, progressive, conservative, single, and married; believer, atheist, agnostic, meat-eater, vegetarian - all hold this singular pleasure of dancing to old-time music in common?

You can find directions for getting to the Schoolhouse from Decorah at the website of our good friends Foot-Notes who have been carrying on the tradition of dancing there for over 15 years. You can bet that we'll play Erik's lovely "Highlandville Waltz" before the evening is over.

Earth Day - Carleton College - Frederick Park

2007-04-14T21:52:00.000-05:00

April 22 is Earth Day but we get to celebrate a day early (Saturday the 21st) with the legendary Frederick Park at Carleton College in Northfield, MN! Our last visit to Northfield was serious fun and this time (knock on wood) there shouldn't be a blizzard. The dance runs from 7:00-10:30 at Severance Hall on the Carleton campus.

I was already excited to meet Mr. Park (did I mention that he's Legendary?) but I just discovered that he now is in a band (the Burning Desire String Band) with one of my all-time favorite musicians in the world, Bob Lucas. It's been, literally, decades since I've had the luxury of soaking up some of the Lucas musical inspiration but maybe Frederick can help me recall some of those amazing days of yore.

Erik and I will also both definitely be in the audience for Lissa Schneckenburger's house concert here in Decorah on Tuesday April 24th. The show starts at 7:00 and you can reserve a place by contacting Bob Fitton at fittonro@luther.edu. We're both looking forward to what should be an excellent concert and we're expecting to hear some great new tunes.

Three to Get Ready...

2007-04-08T16:06:00.000-05:00

A couple of Very Unusual happenings here in Ctopia Land. First, as mentioned earlier, we rarely add a gig to our schedule once we plan out our limited season of dances. But, thanks to the enthusiasm of our new friends in Northfield (and a little money), we will be returning to the banks of the Cannon River to play the Northfield Earth Day Contra Dance on Saturday April 21. The legendary Fred Park (legendary because Pat's always telling stories about him) will call the dances and risk his good reputation by associating with us. This can only be a good time. Severance Hall, Carleton College. Teaching begins at 7:00 and the dance lasts until 10:30.

The dance in Northfield creates an even more historic first for the band: dances three weeks in a row! There's no telling what will result! First Northfield, then Tapestry on April 28 and, finally, the Highlandville Schoolhouse in rural Winneshiek County on May 5. Plus we get to work with three of the finest dance callers on Planet Earth; first Fred Park, then Ted Hodapp, then Sue Hulsether. Details, including directions to Highlandville, are at our "dances and news" page.

Vernal Equinox at Tapestry

2007-03-26T21:30:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday we had a great time playing for the regular Saturday night contra at the Tapestry Folkdance Center in Minneapolis. Erik and I drove up from Decorah, Patrice only had to come a few blocks and Pat rolled in from a week of travel and adventures in the Southwest US and Baja Mexico.

Robin Nelson called a carefully prepared and masterfully executed series of dances and the crowd was one of the largest that we've ever had the pleasure of playing for at Tapestry. The unnaturally warm weather (sure it's spring in most of the country but it's usually still winter in Minnesota in March) certainly contributed to the large turnout.

It's pretty rare for us to add a date to our schedule this late in the season but we hope to be able to announce something pretty soon. We have just a couple more dances to play before we enter the long summer hibernation.

Big news for summer, though, is that Patrice and Pat will be on the staff at the first ever Midwestern Heart family dance week to be held the Shell Lake Art Center in Wisconsin from August 12-18. Check out the website and treat your family to a great vacation with some of the finest musicians and callers in the upper midwest!

Blizzard Walk

2007-02-25T10:05:00.000-06:00

What a snowy adventure this weekend! While the trip to Northfield was pretty good (and the dance extraordinary, thanks to Suzie and crew), the short trip I had to Tapestry was quite snowy and moreso on the way home. My car managed to plow through the alley, only getting hungup temporarily. Planning to get to my church gig on Sunday morning, I dutifully snowblowed my garage pad at midnight.

This morning I plunged in fits for about 20 feet into my unplowed alley - stopping to shovel myself out about 6 times. It was so deep I started to "plow" with my bumper (and the car door as I left it open so I could hear when the tires began to spin). If I could only get out the alley, I'd be ok. I finally threw in the towel (or shovel as the case may be) and called another piano player who was going to attempt it. It is now 11 am and my very kind neighbor took the 2nd shift of using my snowblower to clear the car pad we share, but alas we've run out of gas. Bless his heart - he's shoveling the front walk! With more snow expected (already have about 10") I suspect I'll have yet another opportunity to play in the snow! How I wish I'd had time to buy some more yarn to work on a new knitting project!

But last night's dance - a number of stalwart (read "crazy") people braved the storm to come dance. Pat was able to snag our good fiddler friend Ken Steffenson and newly found harmonica player Steve Watney to conjure up a nice spicey band for the evening. Robin Nelson called and when she turned to us for a name, Blizzard Walk just seemed to pop out. Thank you to Ken and Steve for bailing us out and providing a great night of dancing! Now, I've heard March is the snowiest month and am crossing my fingers that instead March 24 at Tapestry brings us a nice balmy spring day for our next dance there.

Winter Stomp Indeed!

2007-02-24T17:16:00.000-06:00

Big Fun in Northfield last night at the Northfield Winter Stomp!

Well over 200 highly motivated folks showed up last night at the Northfield Armory to dance and socialize and drive the cold winter away. Take a look at these photos (courtesy of Mark Heimat) to see what you missed. Or, if you were there, you can play "Where's Waldo" looking for you and your friends.

Special thanks to Suzie and her extraordinary crew, the folks at the Armory for all their help and the hardy souls who drove down from the Twin Cities to add their experience to the wintry mix. The band and caller Robin Nelson had a great time and rumor has it that we may get to do it again someday.

It's February in the upper midwest and sooner or later you have to pay the piper. Threats of terrible weather nearly prevented Erik and me from making the trip to Northfield. But a certain person's store of good karma held off the truly bad stuff until today. This led the Iowa half of the band to make the difficult decision to renege on our commitment to play at the most excellent and revered Tapestry Folkdance Center for tonight's contra and race home (well, at around 40 mph) this morning ahead of the storm. We promise to make it up to Pat, Patrice and the good people at Tapestry somehow.

The Deep Freeze Tour

2007-02-17T17:59:00.000-06:00

It's less than a week now before our Northfield-Minneapolis mid-winter tour. It's rare for us to play two nights in a row without having to fly someplace to do it so we're all definitely looking forward to next weekend.

Friday night we have the honor playing for the Northfield Winter Stomp! at the Northfield Armory. The idea is to create some enthusiasm for contra dancing in a town with a large potential dance population and, ideally, to get a regular dance going. Our good friend and partner-in-crime Robin Nelson will be teaching and calling the dances and we're confident that everyone who comes will have a good time. We hope this will be only the first of many dances in the Cannon River Valley and that we'll have the chance to return many times.

I expect that Erik and I will return to Minneapolis with Patrice and Pat after the dance and that someone will offer us shelter for the night. On Saturday we'll have the chance to hang out in the Big City. I'm hoping to talk Pat into taking us to one of the Saturday morning jam sessions in the area. I know Erik said something about visiting some fiddle shops and I'm always interested in stopping by the Homestead Pickin' Parlor to see what's new.

Saturday night we have a special dinner invitation (plus there's a White Castle in Pat's neighborhood!) and then we get to play more dances with Robin, this time at the Tapestry Folkdance Center. It's hard to imagine a more fun weekend. We hope you can make it to one or both of these dances. You can keep score and see if we play any of the same tunes both nights.

Wintergreen 1

2007-02-04T09:20:00.000-06:00

Just about this time a week ago we were getting ready to wrap up the Wintergreen Dance Weekend in Bozeman. About as much fun as this band has ever had and an all-around great event. The real world (which also is a lot of fun but has a large "work" component) has been pretty all-consuming since our return on Monday.

The Bozeman folks were Great; all the organizers, dancers, scholarship workers and super-gracious hosts. Rab and family (even Sugar the dog who Pat managed to turn against me early on) deserve special mention. Kindness, patience, great food (especially considering my limitations), transportation, a fine room for an all too rare rehearsal and more! All the folks from the Bozeman Folklore Society conspired to make our lives easy. Oshi and Rab and Lynn (and the rest of the committee) made sure that everything was just right for us and Mitchell Frey did a great job keeping the sound together.

Oshi and Mark hosted a wonderful dinner and music party on Sunday night where we got to be part of a really fine session with Kathy, Vickie and Pat from Out of the Wood along with Oshi and her daughter (many names escape me these days) and the fine pianist Eric (does he really work for Google?) Anderson.

Seth Tepfer was a blast to work with during the whole weekend. He called great dances and the Wintergreen folks clearly enjoyed everything he did. He even had a dance that required us to become the Contratopia Blues Band for ten minutes or so! Out of the Wood was most excellent in the role of "other band" and I really enjoyed their playing. Plus they have the secret weapon of Pat and his funny songs. (You've got to hear "Chipmunk with a Death Wish.")

I also enjoyed getting to hang out some with former Decorah-area resident and fine guitarist/mandolinist Steve Marty. Steve moved out to Bozeman just about the time I moved into Iowa and we have many music friends in common here in Winneshiek county.

Where are all the photos? Well, I know that Pat O'Loughlin and Rab Cummings filled a 2GB SD card full of photos and then they dumped them onto Rab's computer and took some more. I'm fully expecting to have a bunch of photos to link to in the near future.

A Flurry of Activity

2007-01-15T21:35:00.000-06:00

Patrice is the punster in the band but I couldn't resist. I guess I could have titled this post "Calm Before the Storm" but that would have been just as bad. The real message is that we're getting geared up for some action.

Saturday we'll be playing a contra dance at Tapestry in Minneapolis. Beau Farmer will call the dance and try to keep us in line. A few days later, on Thursday the 25th, Erik and I will drive back up to meet Pat and Patrice at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport for our flight out to Bozeman and the Wintergreen Dance Weekend. This was a major fun time when we were there in 2003 (was it really that long ago?) and I know it's going to be excellent this time too.

On the home front I've recently set up a new blog I'm calling So Many Tunes. It contains free home-recorded mp3s and sheet music of some of my tunes. Take a look and see what you think. I'll try and add a new tune or two every week or so.

Hope to see you at one of these upcoming dances!

Surviving Christmas as a Church Music Director

2007-01-04T09:47:00.000-06:00

I am among the general living public again. Among the highlights of Christmas:

-Stomach flu causing me to miss 3 rehearsals on the Tuesday before Xmas
-Piano player for Sunday morning Mass forgot to show up (usually wonderfully dependable and talented - she was mortified)
-Star soprano with laryngitis for Xmas Eve
-Worship programs with pages all out of order
-4th grader in the Children's Choir fainting during Mass requiring EMT's with a backboard to join us about 3/4 through 5 pm Xmas Eve Mass (one of them did say "Nice music")
-Singing of Gesu Bambino prepared with replacement of aforesaid soprano pre-empted by overly eager lector greeting the congregation before Mass.

Merry Christmas indeed! Actually there were plenty of good spots, too, but I was pretty exhausted after the final Joy to the World! I hope you all have a wonderful 2007!

It's Nice Up North

2006-12-30T19:52:00.000-06:00

Just a few weeks now until we fly into Bozeman for the 2007 Wintergreen Dance Weekend. The Emerson Center for the Arts & Culture is a great site for music and dance and we fully expect to have even more fun than we did in 2003 on our first visit. Seth Tepfer from Atlanta will be calling and we're looking forward to meeting and hearing the folks in Out of the Wood as well. Hopefully we'll get to share some tunes over the course of the weekend with them and some of the other excellent players in the Bozeman area.

It's not too late to catch our own Pat O'Loughlin playing with an All Star band at Tapestry on New Year's Eve. We've all played at this event, together and in various groupings, over the years and it's always a very good way to start the new year.

Contratopia is very pleased to announce that we've added a dance to our calendar for this winter. We'll be playing in lovely Northfield, MN on friday evening, Feb. 23 with our good friend Robin Nelson calling. This will be our first-ever public dance in Northfield and we're expecting it to be really fun. We'll have more details later.

Have a Happy New Year's Eve and remember, if you drink (even a little) let somebody else drive.

Holiday Festivities

2006-12-16T11:22:00.000-06:00

'Tis the season and there's music aplenty.

Patrice is busy, I'm sure, helping to prepare music for the Winter Festival of St. Thomas Beckett church in Eagan, MN. This occurs tomorrow (Sunday) at 4:00 p.m. and is bound to be a memorable event.

I'm confident that Pat O'Loughlin is putting in long hours learning new tunes (maybe even writing some new tunes?) in preparation for the New Year's Eve dance party at Tapestry with a stellar band that includes Becka Schafer, David Kirchner, and David Edminster.

Erik and I are occupied this weekend (last night and this afternoon) with the 10th annual Burning Bright holiday season concert here in Decorah. Along with accompanying a variety of songs we are priviliged to have a little spot of our own in the program. We're being joined this year by our friend Beth Hoven Rotto from Decorah's own Foot-Notes.

While known primarily as a fiddler, Beth is playing piano with us on a newly composed waltz written in honor of our friend Gordy MacMasters (master musical saw and chromatic harmonica player) who passed away this year titled "G for Gordy". She is then joining us on lap dulcimer while Erik and I play an uptempo "Cold Frosty Morning" on fiddle and mandolin.

While Contratopia doesn't get to play together for another month or so (Jan. 20th at Tapestry) we're all looking forward to the new year and, especially, our upcoming visit to Bozeman. Hope to see you there.

Mandotopia

2006-12-03T00:15:00.000-06:00

Mandotopia is a site I've created to bring together a bunch of different mandolin-related projects that I've created over the last few years. It includes links to pages with free sheet music which, while arranged for mandolin, is playable by most treble clef instruments. There are also a few home recordings of me playing some of the music.

There are complete collections of 18th century music composed for "guittar" (a wire-strung fretted instrument most often referred to these days as the English Guitar, although several scholars prefer different terms) including two sets of divertimenti by the wonderful Scottish composer James Oswald. You can also find several pieces by J.S. Bach and G.P. Telemann arranged for mandolins, sometimes with guitar.

You can view, and copy, quite a few of my own pieces as well. My set of Deer Tracks for solo mandolin features both the sheet music and home recordings of the pieces. If you are a mandolin orchestra member you might be interested in my compositions in that genre. My goal here is to corner the market on recently-composed free music for mandolin orchestra so I intend to add more pieces over time. In fact there are several categories waiting for me to add content. I'll get around to this someday.

Finally I've included links to a few articles that I've written that have been published in the Mandolin Journal, the newsletter of the Classical Mandolin Society of America.

Feel free to play and listen to this music and share it with your friends. The old music is in the public domain and I'm making my stuff available using a Creative Commons license. This basically means that any non-commercial use is OK with me. Just drop me a line if you have something commercial in mind.

The photo is a shot of my recenty acquired Pomeroy mandolin. It was brand new when it's creator, Don Paine, took the picture. It's a fabulous instrument and I strongly encourage anyone in the market for a new mandolin (at a very reasonable price for a handmade instrument) to check out the Pomeroy website and contact Don.

Live from the Spanish Ballroom

2006-11-26T23:01:00.000-06:00

Contratopia loves to play couples' dances, especially waltzes. We felt particularly honored the first time that the Waltz Time organization invited us to play for the Sunday afternoon dance at Glen Echo and even more honored when they invited us back. To see all those couples twirling around the beautiful Spanish Ballroom is always inspiring. Our waltz CD, Ballroom Echoes, takes its title from a tune I wrote that tries to capture some of that feeling.

Last Sunday was our third (or fourth) time playing for the Sunday afternoon dance and master sound man Jamie Platt (http://www.dancingplanetproductions.com/sound.htm) was kind enough to record the band and give us a copy. Here are links to two of the tunes from that dance.

First is a recently composed waltz, "Aubrey & Andrew's Wedding", that the band has only performed two or three times. This is live and unedited so there might be the occasional mistake but the feeling is good and the dancers were definitely with us on this one.

The pattern for the Sunday afternoon dance is three waltzes followed by some other kind of couples' dance. We only know one tango and we always play it at this dance. Here's a warts and all version of the "Tango Argentino" by Arthur Green with Patrice laying down a solid groove on piano and Pat adding just the right percussive spice.

Feel free to download these mp3s (I hope they're not too big) and share them with friends. Consider the recordings to be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution -NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. Meaning they can be used freely for non-commercial purposes but you should ask us for permission for commercial use.

Let us know if you enjoy these tunes. I'm hoping at a future date we can add some of the contra dance tunes that Jamie recorded for us last weekend also.

Glen Echo Friday Tailgate

2006-11-21T20:39:00.000-06:00

There's a fine tradition where a small group of dancers get together after the Friday Night Dance at Glen Echo for a little tailgate party, just down the hill from the lovely Spanish Ballroom. Even in November it's not too cold to hang out for a while and talk music, share home improvement stories and/or jokes. (Like the one about the turkish wedding band drummer who goes off to study jazz in New York.)

Contratopia has been able to attend a couple of these events and last Friday night we had a really nice time. I met two "persons of interest" there:

Robert Cox is the creator of a fine series of podcasts that feature contra dance music. Here's the link: http://www.contracast.com/

These are half hour collections of excellent music from a wide variety of fine musicians along with some tasteful announcing. Robert was kind enough to feature one of our tracks on his soundcast from 10/20/2006. It's nice to be able to just click on one of these shows and hear some good music, carefully chosen and presented with full credits and links to where you can go to purchase the recordings.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Orrin Star, a master of mandolin and guitar who's especially well-known in the bluegrass world. The tailgate meeting led to Orrin sitting in with us for a dance during the Sunday night contra where I had the benefit of a close-up lesson watching him play my Rigel mando on a medley of "Nail That Catfish to a Tree" and "St. Anne's Reel". His right hand precision and economy of motion gave me plenty to work on for months to come.

I saw today at the Mandolin Cafe that Orrin has announced a series of mandolin workshops from November through February 2007. I'd strongly recommend any mandolin players in the DC region, no matter what style you play, to consider attending these workshops. I know if I lived in the area I'd be signing up.

(Thanks to Pat for the photo of the band+Ted with Fala, FDR's dog.)

DC Pictures and others

2006-11-20T21:56:00.000-06:00

If you want to see a few more pictures (more to come later), go to http://fivebydesign.smugmug.com/gallery/2147815/. This is the nifty gallery in the corner of a larger gallery of the vocal quintet, Five by Design, which my close and personal friend Al is associated with. Check out their website www.fivebydesign.com to meet one of the finest performing groups doing swing and big band music.

While you're wasting your precious time on this nonsense, why not see more pictures of the group taken last January at Tapestry Folkdance Center in Minneapolis, MN. http://fivebydesign.smugmug.com/gallery/1232366

Glen Echo - Purcellville (Bluemont)

2006-11-20T20:53:00.000-06:00

Just returned from the Patch Weekend (briarpatch?, pumpkin patch?), a saturday night Bluemont dance (in Purcellville, VA) punctuated by a series of dances at Glen Echo Park. Much music, merriment and spirited dancing with our good pal Ted Hodapp calling and playing button box with us on the hambos.

Too many highlights to list them all in this short missive but we had some memorable moments. The friday night tailgate party, the late saturday diner with the awesome waitress and the sunday night sandwhich shop fiasco will all be remembered for years to come.

Special thanks to Jamie Pratt for his great work with the sound at all three Glen Echo dances and to Peter in Purcellville for working with us in a slighty scrunched environment. Jamie recorded a bunch of stuff and I'm hoping we can share some of that later on.

Can't wait for the next time. The Spanish Ballroom never disappoints.

(Thanks to Ted for the photos too.)

Fries with that Fiddle Tune?

2006-11-12T19:00:00.000-06:00

Erik and I had a unique opportunity to play some tunes in preparation for next weekend's tour this morning at a local fast food establishment. As part of a weekend of events celebrating 20 years of fries, hot apple pies, chicken nuggets, even yogurt and salads in our little town, we were hired to play jigs, reels, waltzes and hornpipes from 11:00 until noon for the folks who stopped in for their coffee or burgers, etc.

We, of course, realize that many people who enjoy contra and couples dancing to Contratopia's music rarely consume fast food. (Erik fits that bill. I, on the other hand, eat way too much of the stuff.) Nonetheless we could hardly resist the chance to play acoustic instrumental music in such an unlikely venue. We only wish that Pat and Patrice could have joined us!

Biggest surprise? The acoustics were excellent! I expected that it would be really noisy but the managers turned all the TVs and video games off and we could hear each other great. The sound was actually much better than many coffee houses and bars that feature music. Smoke-free, no alcohol too! Whoda thunk it?

(Thanks to Jim Skurdall for the photo and for joining us on guitar for the gig's only vocal, "Little Georgia Rose.")

Another Season - So Many Tunes ...

2006-10-31T19:58:00.000-06:00

Contratopia officially kicked off our 2006-2007 season on Oct. 28 at a wedding dance held in the Town Hall at Marine on St. Croix, MN. And what a dance it was! Sir Markus and Lady Rebecca held court surrounded by dozens of the finest lords and ladies.

Robin Nelson called wonderful dances and the band members enjoyed each others' company while playing several sets of either all new tunes or new combinations of old and new. We played "Aubrey and Andrew's Wedding" for the first time in public as a band and it was a particularly sweet performance. You can download a PDF file of the sheet music for this tune at this address: www.contratopia.com/Aubreys.pdf

This was sort of our shakedown cruise to prepare for our visit to Glen Echo and Bluemont in November (17th-19th) and I would say that we are definitely ready for the Spanish Ballroom.

You can find our 2006-2007 schedule over on the "dances and news" page of the Contratopia website. Stop and say hello if you make it to one of our dances.

(Photo courtesy of Pat O'Loughlin)

CMSA 2006

2006-10-23T22:30:00.000-05:00

I just returned from the annual convention of the Classical Mandolin Society of America in Louisville, Kentucky. Four days and nights of total mando immersion.

One of the many highlights was getting to play with the Atlanta Mandolin Orchestra as they performed my mandolin orchestra arrangement of "Smitten". They did a great job and the audience seemed to really enjoy it. The AMO was kind enough to sell Contratopia's Smitten CD alongside their own new recording after the concert and we sold several that way.

If you want to see some pictures and hear some sound clips from the convention you can go to the CMSA website (http://www.classicalmandolinsociety.org/) and click on "virtual tour". You'll find me on the page of pictures from Friday leading my workshop on "18th Century English and Scottish Music for Mandolin."

Here's a link to the handout from that session with links to the actual music that we played that morning (http://academic.luther.edu/~goodinjo/cmsa2006.htm).

I had a good group of 40-50 players and it was a lot of fun.

(Thanks to David Betts for the photo.)

John

2006-10-14T00:30:00.000-05:00

Pat & I just got done playing with fiddler Linda Breitag for the Friday night dance at the 25th Annual October Dance Weekend in St. Paul. More tomorrow night for me, Pat, Ken and David E. Joseph Pimenthal who we've met in Ames is the caller. Great fun. TTFN

Sample for the band

2006-10-13T21:49:00.000-05:00

Here's a sample post. We can add links and images to our friendly and witty prose and poetry if we want. Here's the link to the Contratopia website.