Northfield Harvest Stomp Coming This Week (Oct. 24, 2014)

Whoah! What a sleepy blog!

OK, so things have been too busy for the last few months to post here (or maybe I've been too lazy?) but Contratopia is getting ready to launch the new 2014-2015 season, starting this Friday in Northfield.

It's not like we've been inactive since last February. There have been a number of gigs, together and apart, plus lots of real world events, both happy and sad.

We've got several dances lined up, including another swing out to DC at the end of February/beginning of March, and we are finally wrapping up work on our fourth CD, which was actually recorded back in February and March.

The new CD is titled Riff City and we hope to make it available, physically and online, in the next few weeks. We'll be sure and make a little noise when it's ready.

For now though, consider coming to Northfield on Friday and having some fun while we dust off some familiar tunes and maybe try some new ones.

More info at this Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1475505296048419/?ref=3&ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular

Glen Echo & Shepherdstown Coming Right Up

We are heading out east this weekend for another visit to a couple of our favorite dance halls. The fabulous Spanish Ballroom at Glen Echo Park will be our home away from home on Friday night and Sunday afternoon and evening. On Saturday night we will return to the lovely & historic War Memorial Building in Shepherdstown, WV (pictured above).

The band is coming off of another high energy dance last weekend in Northfield, MN. We all had significant challenges trying to get to Northfield because of near blizzard conditions and roads covered in thick ice but we made it there and back to our various homes without injury or accident.

We were hoping that DC in March would involve some Spring weather but it looks like temperatures may only be in the 30s and 40s most of the time that we are there. It was 10 below here again this morning so anything above freezing still sounds pretty great.

Whatever the weather we are looking forward to playing for lots of enthusiastic dancers! You can find out the details about these events by following the links on the "dances" page on our website. Hope to see you there!

Big Time in Decorah!

Thanks to all the folks who came out in snowy Decorah last night for our annual concert/dance event. I'm pretty sure that it was a record crowd for the dance.

Pat and Patrice came down from the cities on Friday afternoon and we indulged ourselves in a series of rehearsals. We started Friday evening, after a great dinner at the Old Armory BBQ, with a lengthy session on Center Ave. We followed up on Sat. with a morning practice and then a trip to the Oneota Food Coop where we played ("will play for food") a short acoustic set. Then back home for a couple of more hours. Back to the Coop for dinner, then to the Elks.

We were amazingly organized (by our standards) and used our time well. We prepared (who plays what, where)(we even took notes!) several sets of tunes for a recording session that we have scheduled a week from Monday at Wild Sound in Minneapolis. Then we performed those arrangements as the bulk of our concert set last night. We hope this recording will be the first step towards a new CD for the band.

The concert audience was great, very attentive and forgiving. They also did a great job at providing percussion during Pat's tune, "Two Bits". Ted Hodapp, our caller for the evening, worked the soundboard during the concert and really made us sound good.

The dance itself was most excellent. The energy level was great. We could have used a much larger dance floor. We stopped promptly at 10:30 because Pat, Patrice, Ted & Lynn all needed to drive back to the cities and wanted to stay ahead of the worst of the snowy, windy weather to come.

This event kicked off 2014 for Contratopia, our 14th or 15th (we're really not sure when we started) year as a band. We'll be a little busy, by our standards, for the next couple of months with dances and recording work. Next dance will be Feb. 21 in Northfield, followed by a weekend of dances at Glen Echo Park, near DC (with an excursion to Shepherdstown, WV), at the start of March. Hope we'll see some of you out on the floor!

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.

Return to Tapestry

Next weekend we get to return to our home court at Tapestry in Minneapolis. Our last visit was way back in April when we played for the 2nd annual Call of the Loon weekend. (It's not too soon to register for the 3rd Loon weekend, April 12-14, 2013 featuring the fabulous Notorious and caller Diane Silver.)

Our dance next Saturday (Dec. 15), with our buddy David Kirchner calling, will mark the end of our longest ever absence from Tapestry land. I'm tempted to joke about imaginary reasons for this (fill in your favorite conspiracy theory here) but the truth is that this is just the way that the calendar worked out. In any event you can bet that Patrice, Pat, Erik and I will all be ready to play next week. It should be a great time.

This is also a chance to remind you that Contratopia CDs make great stocking stuffers. You may have all three of our CDs but there may be family and friends who don't. Also, this year is the first holiday season that the Erik Sessions/John Goodin Notes from the Farm CD is available. While we're at it I should also mention the John Goodin Mandolin Tunes CD as well. I'm linking to physical CDs available from CD Baby here but all of these CDs are also available as mp3 downloads from iTunes and the other usual suspects.

Hope to see a bunch of you next weekend. We will try and remember to bring some CDs to the dance too.

Harvest Stomp! Again

Another year, another Stomp! Patrice, Pat, Erik and I will try to pull ourselves together for the start of yet another Contratopia season this Friday evening in Northfield, MN at the wonderfully noisy downtown Armory. Come and out and add to the abundant energy that is always present when students from Carleton and St. Olaf mix with youngsters and geezers (both on the dance floor and in the band) from around the region. Watch in awe as Robin Nelson weaves order out of the chaos. See Contratopia try to remember how tunes go and who plays what. It'll be fun.

Go to the event in Facebook and let everyone know you are planning to attend. (Thanks, Arlo!)

Contratopia 2012-2013

OK, so it's been four months. We've always said that things are slow around here in the summer. While this has been a very dry season water-wise (causing farmer Erik no end of concern and extra labor) it has actually been a very active one musically.

All the members of Contratopia have been busy with weddings, special events, camps and dances since last April. We even managed to all be together to play for a memorable wedding reception in June outside of Maiden Rock, WI. (I think this was the first time ever that Contratopia was able to convene in the month of June.)

So, going forward (as they love to say in business and politics) what's in store for the 2012-2013 season?

At this point it our tentative schedule looks something like this:

• Harvest Stomp dance in Northfield on Friday October 19, 2012
• Sat. night contra dance at Tapestry Folkdance Center on Dec. 15, 2012
• Sat. night contra dance in Decorah, Iowa sometime in mid-January, 2013
• Sat. night contra dance at Tapestry sometime in Feb., 2013
• Winter Stomp dance in Northfield sometime in Feb., 2013
• Friday night contra at Glen Echo, MD on March 1, 2013
• Sat. night contra in Shepherdstown, WV on March 2, 2013
• Waltz Time afternoon dance at Glen Echo on March 3, 2013 (we've got our fingers crossed)
• Sunday night contra at Glen Echo on March 3, 2013
• Sat. night contra at Tapestry sometime in April or May, 2013

We'll keep you informed as these tentative dates and events become more firm and we hope to see you somewhere along the way!
 

Loons on Parade

About this time last Sunday we were playing for the "mostly waltz" hour at Tapestry's second annual Call of the Loon dance weekend and, thanks to "craigwildgoose" and youtube, you can see a nice clip of some of our favorite people dancing as we play a very relaxed version of my tune "Favors Her Father."

While there was plenty of room on the dance floor at that moment you can find another video that will show you the rest of the Loon crowd chowing down on the delicious Sunday brunch that was being served in the next room.

We had a super, awesome, most excellent, great time all weekend long. The band was tight, the dancers were giving off powerful good energy and Doug Lohman from Armadillo Sound gave us one of the best monitor mixes we've every had. Hearing each other clearly makes a big difference in how we play and we were really enjoying listening to each other play new and interesting things.

Call of the Loon 2 was a big success and you should consider a trip to Minneapolis next spring (April 12-14) for version 3. Word on the street is that next year's band will be the fabulous quartet incarnation of Notorious, an event not to be missed.

Thanks to everyone who made the weekend possible and especially to all the dancers!

Cherry Blossoms, Shaun, Linda and More

(Video courtesy of Kevin Mabon)

Right about now, one week ago, we were just about finishing up a tremendously fun dance in Frederick, Maryland. It wasn't the biggest crowd of our short four-day tour but the band had a great time playing there. Plus the dance was in a gym and someone found a basketball after we had packed up our stuff. They had to run us out finally after a pretty inept display of hoop prowess.

This was our first extended time away from home without Erik Sessions playing fiddle but Linda Breitag did a wonderful job of fitting in and playing some great tunes. Linda also was introduced to our late night Shaun the Sheep viewing ritual and got to participate in one of our fun-filled drives from Glenside, PA to Takoma Park.

As usual, there were many, many highlights of the trip but time is short so here are just a few:

• The temperature: We've never had such warm weather in March and the halls were all very comfortable. It was especially great not to be cold in the Spanish Ballroom. 
• The generosity of everyone we met: Too many names to mention tonight, but you know who you are. Thanks for the meals, the tunes, the friendly conversations, and, most of all, the dancing.
• The mighty hospitality of Ted and Lynn: You can't imagine how thoughtful, patient and kind they are; and funny to boot! Thank you, thank you.
• A special thanks to Rick Mohr for loaning me his guitar on Thursday at Glenside and to Orrin Star for his guitar loan Friday through Sunday. Orrin did a great job providing the sound for us at Glen Echo on both Friday and Sunday and even sat in with us on a few sets. In addition I had the pleasure of attending an excellent workshop on the guitar style of Norman Blake that Orrin taught at the House of Musical Traditions on Saturday afternoon.
• Smithsonian Folkways visit: I did not know that Linda Breitag had been the third employee at Smithsonian Folkways back in the late 1980s but she offered to take us to meet her old boss, Jeff Place, who is still the Archivist there. I was just amazed at the opportunity to visit the collection and have Jeff show us around. I still can't believe that I was in the same room with the boxes of master tapes of recordings by folks like Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Doc Watson, Pete Seeger and Ella Jenkins. What a treasure!

The band already has plans to return to DC next March and, hopefully, see many of our old friends again. I should be caught up on my sleep by then.

Next up for us is the Call of the Loon Weekend at Tapestry, just two weeks from now. Hope to see you there.

Two Days to Northfield!

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

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

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

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

(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

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.