Minnesota Country Dance Weekend

We're all looking forward to being the Friday night contra dance band for the Minnesota Country Dance Weekend this week, held at the lovely Sokol C.S.P.S. Hall in St. Paul. Check out the Weekend webpage for details.

Erik and I will be driving up from Decorah on Friday afternoon and we will be hunting the elusive perfect fiddle tune, a rare but lovely bird. Neither chamber of Congress will deter us from our appointed round trip.

We are all looking forward to getting to work with the great caller David Millstone. We hope that some of you can join us.

A brief commercial message: I will be bringing along a few copies of my new solo CD, Deer Tracks (for solo mandolin), in case anyone has a taste for slightly off-center, classical solo mandolin music. You can listen to samples at CDBaby or learn more at my Kickstarter site. I'm pretty sure that it's available at iTunes now also. Our own Pat O'Loughlin sat in the producer's chair for this one, so it's at least partially a Contratopia production.

It'll be Friday before we know it.

Hail to the 2013/14 Contratopia Season!

I just updated our "dances" page on the Contratopia website with what we know of our 2013/14 season. Since the season begins this Saturday night at Tapestry Folkdance Center in Minneapolis I thought I'd better bring things up to date.

I moved info about last season's performances to our "history" page, which is getting pretty long. Right now the history starts with the 2001/2002 season but someday I need to try and reconstruct the years before that. Any way you look at it we have been playing together (and "playing" is definitely the right word) for a long time.

This new season will begin with Ehler Orngard making his second appearance in the role of Erik Sessions and Pat, Patrice and I are looking forward to it. Mr. Sessions himself will return in his featured role on October 4th when we play the Friday night dance for the Minnesota Country Dance Weekend and, as you can see, the original quartet has several more dances already on our calendar beyond that.

As always, we hope to see you at one or more of these events.

Tapestry, Mid-Summer 2013

Time flies and we want to mention that you can catch Pat, Patrice, John, caller Ted Hodapp and guest fiddler Tim Reese at Tapestry Folkdance Center this holiday weekend. We'll be playing for the regular Saturday night contra on July 6 from 7:30-11:00. This will be our first ever gig with Tim standing in for Erik and it promises to be an exciting evening.

I can definitely say that we aren't over-rehearsed for this dance so there is a high probability of new and interesting musical hijinks. Come on by and see/hear what happens!

Glen Echo, March 1, 2013

Here's the video that Kevin Mabon took of the band playing one of our oldest sets just before the break on Friday night. Dave Richardson's classic jig "Calliope House" (played in E, with the A and B sections reversed), Pat's unique version of "Booth Shot Lincoln" and Erik's Portland Collection hit, "It Ain't the Heat, It's the Humidity".

It's a 12 1/2 minute dance and Kevin's roving eye captures all sorts of stuff. Excellent close-ups of Ted's feet, a good look at the wonderful and friendly Glen Echo dancers, lots of band interaction. A highlight is Erik's romp starting at the 10 minute mark.

Here's a straight link to the video if that works better for you:
http://youtu.be/TCqa3MrXCkw

We're having a quiet morning here in Takoma Park after going out to Shepherdstown last night. Yesterday morning we had a quick White House tour (minus Patrice, who arranged the tour, but had a little problem with ID; it's a long story), then we toured the Old Post Office building and it's great bell tower tour. On to the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception for a pretty interesting experience. Then out to the big aerospace museum near Dulles airport, followed by dinner at the Devonshire pub in Shepherdstown. A busy day.

It's not too late to make plans to come dance at Glen Echo today. We'll be playing the afternoon waltz and the evening contra. Say hi if you stop by.

Art Hounds Track Us Down!

Thanks to the networking skills of Jim Leedham and Suzie Nakasian, Contratopia was mentioned this morning on Minnesota Public Radio's weekly Art Hounds feature. The radio spot was really about tomorrow night's Northfield Winter Stomp dance but they used (very artfully, I might add) shorts bits of our recordings of "Booth Shot Lincoln" (just in time for the Oscars!) and Erik's tune, "It Ain't the Heat, It's the Humidity" (re-titled for tomorrow night "It Ain't the Cold, It's the Snow").

The Winter Stomp piece is at the start of the feature and, I believe, it will air again this afternoon. Check it out. More importantly, come to the dance tomorrow night. I see over 80 people have already said they will be there on Facebook. (Hopefully the latest Storm of the Century will allow Erik and I to drive up from Decorah in time. If not, rest assured that Patrice and Pat will lay down some rockin' tunes with a mystery guest fiddler or two. And Robin Nelson will be there to direct dance floor traffic and work her magic!)

2013, Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

A new year. I was thinking of letting this blog quietly go dark for 2013 but I found it useful today when I was trying to remember a couple of events from our past. So here's the first post for 2013.

Two weeks ago Pat (and Margie), Patrice (and Al) and Ted (and Lynn) all came down for a January concert/contra in Decorah. It turns out that there was another, very cool world music band giving a show in town the same night but we still managed to have a healthy crowd of dancers (many well below the average contra dancer age) that night and everyone had a great time.

We all had dinner together at the wonderful Oneota Community Food Coop before the show and the next morning we gathered again for breakfast at Decorah's Rubaiyat restaurant (minus Patrice and Al, who drove back to Minnesota after the gig, but plus Karen, Sara and the three hungry daughters).

The visit to Decorah was the first step in preparing for our return to the DC area in early March. Step two happens next Saturday, Feb. 9, when the band, along with Ted as caller, will meet at Tapestry in Minneapolis for what I'm sure will be a great dance. The band will meet again on Friday, Feb. 22 (with Robin Nelson calling) in Northfield for the Winter Stomp. The Friday after that we'll be playing at Glen Echo with Ted.

We hope you can make it to one or more of these dances in the next few weeks. By the final Sunday contra at Glen Echo on March 3 this band should be in pretty good shape. It'll be fun.