Vernal Equinox at Tapestry

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

'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

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

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

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

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)

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?

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 ...

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

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

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

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.