October Surprise

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.