Good Fun Had By All!

Remember to rest after you have tunes! :-)

Thank you for a wonderful evening...

Tonight's slow session (1/15/14) was a great deal of fun. Thanks to the folks who came out and made music! It was an absolute pleasure.

We played all four of our learning tunes and made several new sets out of them. We put the Boys of 45 (or "Micho Russell's Favorite") after The Flax in Bloom. We stuck The Lilting Banshee on before The Humours of Glen. We made Mrs. Crotty go before the Friendly Visit, and finally we just plain played the heck outta The Maids of Mitchelstown (don't tell their dad).

Next month's session will be held on Wednesday, February 19. We'll work on these new sets, plus sets from the playlist and a bunch of new learning tunes. Melora says she has a few in mind, and I've got some up my sleeve, so between us we'll have a nice evening of music planned. Look for the tunes in the next few weeks.

A big Slow Sesh welcome to George B., who joined us for the first time and really rocked out the accompaniment. Lovely playing, G-man!

Thanks again to all who came out! See you soon!

Hilary

p.s. April Verch, Cape Breton fiddling phenom, will be wowing the crowd with her trio on Saturday night, January 18, 2014 at Old Songs. Tickets are for sale, and can be purchased by calling the office at 518-765-2815 or by visiting www.OldSongs.org.

January Slow Session on Wed., Jan. 15!

Eric doing our other favorite thing...

Happy New Year! It's Winter!

or rather, it was winter last weekend!

How was your New Year's? Hope you had tunes and fun with friends and/or family! Seems like things have warmed up a bit since then - that deep freeze took its toll on all of us, I'm sure. Hopefully this brief thaw will mean clear roads and safe driving just in time for this month's session.

Anyway, this Wednesday evening, January 15 at 7:30 PM, we'll continue our tradition of gathering at Old Songs to have some Irish tunes.

Hope you can make it!

Tunes? Mrs. Crotty's Hornpipe, Micho Russell's Favorite reel (aka "The Boys of '45"), The Lilting Banshee jig, and a surprise tune! We'll go over the tunes from this season's list, as well, so print 'em out and bring 'em along!

See you soon,

Hilary

Slow Session Wednesday, Dec. 18!

Hi, Friends,

While Tuesday was a bit frightful, Wednesday looks All Clear! and we'll be holding our Wednesday evening Slow Session on December 18 from 7:30-9:00 PM.

All the tunes we'll be working on are on the tunes page. Tomorrow night's learning tune is Mrs. Crotty's Hornpipe. I'll have a surprise tune for us to learn...

I hope to see you all out at Old Songs Community Arts Center tomorrow night!

Hilary

Great Little Session Last Night!

Hiya, Friends!

Dang, I keep forgetting to take photos of us playing tunes at Old Songs! All right, maybe the photo wouldn't be so exciting (not that you're not all nice looking and everything, especially the bouzouki player), but the music is really nice! Thanks to everyone who showed up, and to those who couldn't be there but wanted to.

Our next session will be Wednesday, December 18 at 7:30 PM. The December Learning Tune is Mrs. Crotty's Hornpipe. (Of course you'll all know it by then so I'll have a surprise hornpipe to go with it. Practice your b flats, folks!)

Once again, we had a small but dedicated group of musicians. We worked our way through tunes we've worked on in September and October. Our learning tune last night was The Shaskeen, a nice reel in G. There are a few changes I need to make to the version that's up in Google Docs. There are a couple of C#s in the A part that I neglected to include, and there are some variations in the B part that need to be adjusted. That should go up soon. In the meantime, you'll still be able to grasp the tune with the sheet music that's up there.

Our tune list from last night:

Eddie Kelly's #1 & #2 (jigs) - OK, I found the sheet music for Eddie Kelly's 1, so print that out if you haven't already. This is such a great set of tunes. I think we have Joe Leathem and Amy Schoch to thank for bringing this set of tunes to the session.
Taims in Arrears / Hardiman the Fiddler / Snowy Path (slip jigs) - we messed around with the order on this a little bit, but I think this order is the final for now
Humours of Glen - this is a sweet little jig introduced by Amy Schoch (Amy strikes again!). I seem to recall hearing the Mulcahy Family play this tune. Anyone else have a recollection of who recorded it?
The Shaskeen (reel) - see the notes above about the tune. We played this for a while and had some in-depth discussion about variations and adjustments. It's such a great tune! I hope we can get this back into the repertoire - thanks to Amy Schoch for suggesting this tune as well.
Friendly Visit / The Honeysuckle (hornpipes) - great tunes, nicely played!
O'Malley Waltz - Sweet tune by Tom "Rabbit" O'Hare.
Knotted Cord (reel) - we went over this nice reel, and explored some differences in endings. I will transcribe the ending that Joe Leathem plays, which he says he learned from Planxty on their first album. He gave a different name for the tune. I'll grab that for you soon!

I wish you all happy tunes and friendly faces! Happy Thanksgiving!

See you in December!

Hilary

p.s. remember the Olde English Pub session on the second Wednesday of the month (7:30 PM), and the Albany CCE (Comhaltas) session on the third Sunday of the month (slow session at 2:30 PM, regular session at 3:30 PM).