Random Sunday AM Notes

Random Sunday AM Notes

I'm not the first or last person to use his blog to procrastinate.

I played three gigs this weekend! (Actually, three is nothing; by the end of the day today Pete will have done five!) Friday night the Barnowls practiced at Rachel's Bread. I landed in South Bend from Florida ON TIME at 6:05, rushed home, grabbed my fiddle and was at Rachel's by 7:25. We played for an hour or so.

Then yesterday morning I was settling into my prep for next week when Pete called and invited me to sit in with the Heisenburg trio for an hour that morning (making it the Heisenburg Quartet, or as I called it, the Hot Club of Heisenburg). So I was back at Rachel's and played through a dozen pop / jazz tunes with Pete, Jake and Kent. Pete somehow got Rachel to come out and sing a verse of Autumn Leaves in French. She was fantastic - smokey, low voice - perfect for the song. I had played maybe 2/3rds of the tunes before, so I did some serious improvisation. Pete does such a great job leading with his guitar - I call it the six string piano - that it was easy. And Jake added a nice solid bottom end to it and it all just kind of flowed out. It was a lot of fun.

Last night the Barn Owls reconvened to play for the Goshen Contra Dancers. They have been trying to get us for the last year, and we finally found a date that worked. It is so much fun playing twin fiddles with Bev - passing the high and low parts back and forth, finding harmonies, varying the rhythms... Still, by 10:50 I was pooped and my bow arm was turning into wood. Fiddling for dances definately has an endurance aspect - most dances last 15 or 20 minutes, which is along time to hold a fiddle up.

I'm in between my last two trips of this heavy travel schedule. In the last 3 weeks I've been in the office I think a total of 1 1/2 days - maybe 2. Tomorrow I fly to Dallas, returning Wednesday afternoon. This will be a packed trip, but at least it is only 3 days. I have a lot of preparation to do for it yet today and on my flight tomorrow. Then I expect to be home for a while. At least I don't have any flights booked right now.

Tonight Mom and I will go to the 8th Street memorial service and light a candle for Dad. We've done that every year since he died, and it is a really nice service.

So in between this heavy work and travel schedule I'm squeezing in some things that are important and fun. But I'm looking forward to being in town for a couple of weeks.