Tapestry, Nov. 21, 2015

Come on out to Tapestry on Saturday night and join us for a fun dance with David Kirchner calling and the great Tim Reese joining us on fiddle. With Tim in the mix we are sure to play a number of old Contratopia favorites along with some tunes that Tim will bring to the party.

The Riff City cover shot is a reminder that we still have a few of these CDs available for your holiday shopping. We will have plenty at the dance but you can also order the physical CD from CD Baby and you can purchase downloads from all of the usual suspects; iTunes, Amazon, CD Baby, etc.

There is a lot of discussion these days in the musician community about the pros and cons of making recordings in the emerging "music business." Even the biggest names (with notable exceptions) only sell a fraction of the CDs that they used to sell. And downloads are shrinking too.

Fanfare Magazine (a great record review source) recently quoted an "executive at a top label" who reportedly said that the average number of sales for a classical CD in the U.S. is between 100 and 150 physical copies. It's not rocket science to calculate that this number of sales doesn't cover the cost of recording, or even manufacturing.

What's a band like Contratopia to make of this? We knew when we decided to record Riff City (after a 10 year break) that we wouldn't sell more than a few hundred copies. We were pretty careful with our expenses but we did use a first-rate studio (Wild Sound in Minneapolis) with great microphones and a great vibe. We all agree that it was worth the cost.

However, we would like to sell enough copies to break even, hence this long-winded sales pitch. We are still (as they love to say on public radio) short of our fund-raising goal. So, if you have enjoyed our music in the past and are trying to think of just the right present for that certain someone we have just the recording for you!

We hope to see you on Saturday night. If you can't make it this week there will another chance to dance with us on December 12. Erik Sessions will be fiddling that night and, yes, we will still have a few CDs for sale.

Harvest Stomp! 2015 in Northfield

Come join us in Northfield for another great dance at the Armory downtown on Friday night. This will be our first chance to play a dance together in several months so it's sure to be high energy music.

Hope to see you there!

Video no. 1 from concert at ArtHaus

Contratopia from Behind The Mic™ on Vimeo.

Many thanks to Al at Behind the Mic for filming, editing and uploading this fun video to his Vimeo account! This is the opening set of tunes from our ArtHaus concert on August 21: Loaves and Fishes/Too Many Goat/Fourth and Walnut. We don't often get to play together during the summer months so you can see that we were enjoying ourselves. We are hoping to see more footage from this concert over time.

Patrice needed to leave early the morning after the concert but Pat stayed around and joined Erik and me for a fun hour and a half at the Winneshiek Farmer's Market. We were fortunate to have nearly perfect weather for both events and we all had a great time.

Special thanks also to our friends at the Palisades Inn for sponsoring our concert appearance by providing lodging for our out of town band members and video crew!

Hope you enjoy the video. Thanks again to Al.

Contratopia Concert in the ArtHaus Courtyard on Friday August 21

Come on out and hear the band next Friday in the lovely courtyard next to ArtHaus on Water Street in Decorah. We plan to play two 40-45 minute sets and we will include a performance of our entire first CD, Hands Four, as part of the show. We will probably play the imaginary "first side" (tracks 1-6) of Hands Four just before the break and then open the second half with "side two" (tracks 7-11). We will play a few other tunes, including some from our current Riff City release, before and after the Hands Four recreation.

We've never done this before and we will have to brush up on a couple of arrangements before the show but I think it will all be a lot of fun. Check the ArtHaus site, linked above, for more details. Please tell your friends and, if you can, drop by and enjoy the music.

(Thanks again to Tom Gau for the use of his beautiful Hands Four cover art!)

Derby Day in Decorah with Contratopia!

Kind of last minute but, just in case you are in the Decorah area and have missed the massive publicity campaign, we will be playing a concert followed by a dance tonight at the Elks club in downtown Decorah. Ted Hodapp will be flying in to call the dance and add his feet to our percussion mix.

Concert is at 7:00 and the dance should start by 8:00. We will bring more than enough copies of our new Riff City CD to meet the demand. It's a beautiful day today, tonight should be a very good time!

Riff City On the Road

Here's a video of Contratopia playing the dance length version of the title track of our new CD at Glen Echo Park on Feb. 27, 2015. Expertly shot by Julia Fischer as part of Kevin Mabon's ongoing contra dance documentation project it captures the band (and the mighty Ted Hodapp as caller and foot percussionist) in fine fettle.

We apparently set something of a length record, outlasting the camera battery and forcing Kevin to perform a little surgery near the end. The operation was a success and you have to be paying pretty close attention a little after the 13 minute mark to notice anything. These videos are a great service and we thank Kevin and Julia (filming in Kevin's absence) for their gifts.

Our whole tour was great fun even though our Sunday night Glen Echo dance was cancelled when the Park closed at 3:00 on Sunday afternoon due to treacherous icy roads and walkways.

There were many highlights:

• A surprise visit in Philadelphia from our old friend Chris Aschman who joined us on trumpet for a few sets and had us all playing at a higher level
• Our return visit to Richmond (last there, we think, in 2001) to play for a great crowd of dancers
• Meeting up with Anders Fongen, who travelled from Oslo to dance to the band
• As always, the giant Glen Echo dance on Friday
• The Incomparable Hospitality of Ted and Lynn
• A pilgrimage to the Krispy Kreme store in Fredricksburg
• Finally, a fun visit to the House of Musical Traditions in Takoma Park to try out some instruments (Erik nearly bought the Vega mandolin in the video below and the fiddle did come home with us)

Mt. Airy (Philadelphia), Glen Echo, Richmond, Glen Echo Reprise - This Week!

Check out our Dances page (http://www.contratopia.com/Cdances.htm) for more details about this weekend's mid-Atlantic dance tour. We'll be heading out to Takoma Park, our base of operations for this mission, over the next couple of days. There we will meet up with Master Caller Ted Hodapp and the ever tolerant Lynn. We intend to have a great time playing for dancers in the Philadelphia, D.C. and Richmond areas and we hope to inspire a few folks to invest in our new Riff City CD as well.

This has been a highlight of the Contratopia Season for many years and we are definitely up for it again this winter. I even bought some of those gloves with the fingertips cut off in case it's chilly at Glen Echo. (I know that's hard to believe but it has happened once or twice in the past.)

We hope to see lots of familiar faces and some new ones as well.

Winter Stomp only days away!

After a little uncertainty we can now say that this year's Northfield Winter Stomp will occur next Friday, Feb. 20th, 2015, at the Northfield Armory, in the middle of historic downtown Northfield. There will be a dance lesson at 7:00 and the dance will begin at 7:30. We will once again be joined by wonderful caller Robin Nelson and you can bet that we will have a great time.

Tonight, Valentine's Night 2015, Pat O'Loughlin and John Goodin will be joined by fiddler extraordinaire Tom Schaefer and legendary Irish guitarist Daithi Sproule, with Robin Nelson in the driver's seat as caller once again.

Tomorrow, Sunday the 15th, Erik Sessions and John Goodin will play at a Family Dance from 2:00-3:30 at the Decorah Congregational Church on Broadway in Decorah. Erik and John will be part of the Western Home String Band for this dance called by Bill Deutsch. Bring the kids!

The video above is snatched from the Tapestry website and is both fun to watch and musically interesting, if you are a member or long-time friend of Contratopia. It catches the band near the end of a long contra, expertly called by Beau Farmer, when the band is pretty relaxed. We are taking some liberties with Daniel Steinberg's great tune "Rock-a-bye Baby" and having a good time. You'll have to take my word that we can actually play the tune properly but this video probably starts around the 6th or 8th time through the piece and, at this point, we are just having a nice, albeit noisy, friendly musical conversation. Many thanks to our mystery videographer for this candid look at what often happens when we play at Tapestry!

Minneapolis Weekend Almost Here

Time is flying and I just realized that I hadn't posted a notice of our unofficial Contratopia Minneapolis Weekend here on the blog yet. It's Thursday evening, Jan. 15, 2015, as I write and on Saturday the 17th Erik and I will drive up to Minneapolis for a flurry of Contratopia activity.

Luckily there are no flurries in the forecast and our visit is coinciding with a small January thaw, following on last week's bitter arctic weather. A perfect excuse to come out dancing.

So, if you can, join us at Tapestry Folkdance Center on Saturday for an afternoon Waltz Time event and an evening contra dance. Check the Tapestry calendar for exact times. The excellent David Kirchner will be our caller on Saturday night.

On Sunday we will present a rare concert performance at the home of Robin and Eric Nelson. See the announcement above for details. We are very nearly sold out at this point so if you are interested please contact Pat at the email address in the flyer soon.

We will, of course, have plenty of copies of Riff City available at all of these events and would love to help you adopt a copy or two for your collection.

We would love to see you sometime this weekend. Please come by and say hello.

Schedule Correction for March 1

We're sorry to announce a change in plans for our upcoming Philadelphia, Glen Echo, Richmond weekend at the end of February. We learned a few days ago that we will not be playing for the March 1 Waltz Time dance at Glen Echo after all.

The good news is that the most excellent Taylor Among the Devils band, featuring Jonathan Jensen (one of my favorite composers), will provide the music that afternoon.

Contratopia will play for the Sunday evening contra at Glen Echo on March 1 and we hope to see many of you there. We will have a little more sleep than usual before that and should be rested and ready to play up a storm.

We hope to be invited back to play at Waltz Time again sometime in the next couple of years. If so we'll be sure and let everyone know.

Oh, don't forget it's not too late to order a copy of Riff City before Santa makes his rounds! See the previous entry for a link to order from CD Baby.

Happy holidays from all of us at Contratopia Central!

Free shipping at CD Baby through December 3rd

Well, not actually free, they're charging a nominal 1 cent per order for all CDs in stock. This is a worldwide offer so it's especially interesting to anyone overseas who's been wanting to buy a copy of Riff City, or any of our other CDs. You can click on the link below to go to CD Baby and order.

Riff City at iTunes

Our new CD Riff City is now available for download from both iTunes and CD Baby. That means you can click on one of the links in the previous sentence and buy a copy right now, no muss, no fuss; immediate gratification. (Now that would make a good album title.)

Of course if you want the physical, high quality CD you can always buy one from the band tomorrow night (Saturday, Nov. 8) at Tapestry. Then you'll get to see the excitement in our eyes as we thank you for getting us one step closer to recouping our investment. Plus you get a physical copy of Maria's great artwork.

Any way you choose is fine with us. We're confident that you'll enjoy the tunes.

Riff City has arrived

A decade in the making, Contratopia is proud to announce the release of our 4th CD, Riff City.

It is hot off the press so, for now, the best way to get your hands on a copy is either to order one from CD Baby (http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/contratopia4) or to buy one directly from us. Digital download options will be available soon.

We will have lots of copies with us on Saturday night when we play at the Tapestry Folkdance Center in Minneapolis.

More news to come. You can go to the CD Baby link to hear sound clips or come hear us play the tunes live at Tapestry on Saturday.

Cover art and package design by our friend Maria Nicklin Collins (www.furyworks.com).

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.