A Contratopia Cornucopia - This Week Only

Please join us at the Cellar in the Old Armory building in Decorah at 7:00 on Friday, Oct. 28 for A Contratopia Cornucopia, a unique combination of music and food. We will provide seasonal, organic, acoustic, mostly homegrown tunes and master chef Justin Scardina will serve up small plates of tasty dishes with a harvest theme. The Water Street Music Series is presenting this event and you can purchase advance tickets through the WSMS website.

The band is having fun designing our musical menu and we will feature some new combinations of familiar and exotic fare. This concert with food will give Contratopia a chance to mix up some of our basic ingredients to create some new flavors. We hope you will consider joining us.

We played for two dances this past weekend: Friday in Northfield, Saturday at Tapestry in Minneapolis. Both dances were tremendous fun and served as a great kickoff to our new season. Unfortunately it will be a few weeks before we get to play another dance, but it's always wonderful to wind Contratopia up again and start it spinning down the road. We hope we'll see many of you along the way in this our 17th season as a band.

Season 17 (2016-2017) Almost Here

The photo above shows the four of us, I believe, on the front porch of the house that Erik and Sara were renting outside of Decorah somewhere around the turn of the century. I think we were rehearsing that day to prepare for recording our first CD, Hands Four.

Many years later we are set to commence our 17th (although I could be off by a year or two) Fall to Spring season as Contratopia. We have a flurry of activity this month and we will be returning to the east coast in March. In between I am sure we will play a few more dances here in our home region.

Things will kick off (this should be the only football analogy) on Friday Oct. 21 with another great Harvest Stomp contra in Northfield, MN. This dance will be held at the Northfield Ballroom; the town Armory, our former site, is no longer available.

The following night, Oct. 22, we will play once again at the Tapestry Folkdance Center in Minneapolis. We have played at Tapestry many times over the years and we think of it as our group home.

On Friday Oct. 28 Patrice and Pat will travel to Decorah to join John and Erik in presenting A Contratopia Cornucopia: A Harvest of Local Food and Music, along with chef extraordinaire Justin Scardina. This will be the first event of the new season for Decorah's Water Street Music Series and will be a combination of a concert and a feast of delicious culinary creations. (Tickets are available now but seating is limited, so don't delay if you are interested.)

Looking ahead to March 2017 we are excited to be returning to the Spanish Ballroom at Glen Echo Park for contra dances on both Friday March 17 and Sunday March 19. On Saturday the 18th we will make our first visit to the contra dance in Annapolis, MD. We are also hopeful that we will once again be playing for the Sunday Waltz Time dance at Glen Echo on the afternoon of March 19.

I'm sure that we will schedule some more dances as we go along, but that's it for now. We hope you can join us for some of the fun!