Why I don't review events...or I was too busy eating Fish & Chips to hear the music

So, two weekends ago, we were pretty busy. Trusty companion and I played music all weekend, including a lovely visit down to New Jersey on Saturday night to visit with accomplished guitarist (and guitar maker, among other things) Iris Nevins and hear her play a few tunes with Tommy Peoples.

Peoples, renowned Donegal fiddle player, has a unique, rich, and heavily stylized way of playing. In fact, I don't know any one of us mere mortals who can actually play like him. As a fan of long-bowed fiddle music, I am always amazed at the power and subtlety of his short, deliberate phrasing. He uses dynamic so brilliantly. A really nice Clare-style fiddle player told me to listen closely to his playing. "When you listen to Tommy," she told me, "you need to listen as much to the rests as you do to the notes." We had a little deja vu moment after the concert, when another fiddle player (who had ostensibly taking the workshop with Mr. Peoples earlier that day) turned to Tommy and said, "I hear what you mean about making the rests have an impact." In my opinion, when the man plays, his music is like a bubbling fountain: soothing, invigorating, inspiring....beautiful. I'll never come close to playing like him, but he sure is fun (and a little awe-inspiring) to listen to!

Sunday was unreasonably beautiful and sunny. Trusty and I drove down into the bowels of Columbia County for an afternoon of "Celtic" music. We were due to play on the Trad Sampler Stage at the Celebration of Celts festival (www.celebrationofcelts.com). So, Cel of Celts....what is it? It is a really fun, really nicely put together festival of all types of music from Scotland, Wales, England, Ireland, Cornwall, Breton, wherever.... They held the festival this year at The Meadowgreens Golf Resort on Route 9H in Ghent. It was a nice space -- rolling green hills, sand traps to stow your toddler in, that sort of thing, and the venue managers seemed to go out of their way to use the sprinkler truck on the roadways to keep the dust down. Always a plus when you're trudging along with sand in your teeth.

We came into the event space, and walked past the food vendors (bridies, pasties, fried things, fish fry....BEER), past the traddie tent where the 77th Regiment Balladeers were singing and playing (very nicely I might add), and went to the far side of a parking lot where a solo act was playing lovely guitar and singing through a more-than-adequate sound system. At first I thought it odd that he was playing to a parking lot, and then I realized he was on the deck of the club's restaurant and there were tables outside, so plenty of people were listening and taking refreshment.

We ambled through the soft goods vending area (t-shirts, CDs, magic wands, dancing shoes, leather head gear, chain mail, wooden swords, Medieval tattoo parlour....) and further on up to what we affectionately call the "Rock Tent". It was particularly nice having the Traditional Sampler (allegedly acoustic traddies) tent far far away from the Trad Forward (traddie rock) tent, so there was no overbleed. Of course, I wasn't there on Saturday night, so I can't really say whether it helped or not for real. (Noone can control those sound guys in the rock tent, anyway. They're just wired differently: loud & proud, like.)

We did manage to catch a bit of The McKrells (Kevin and someone else I didn't recognize) set. Man, what wonderful entertainers -- they know how to get the crowd moving, and they can SING. Yeah! Those of us who are kitchen instrumentalists are always jealous of the singers, and especially of the entertainers. We don't know how to do that. We're like the autistic version of Irish music: we get so caught up in the beauty of the smallest ornament that we're like lost little puppy dogs on stage. We just want to hear the instruments and float away on the music. If the audience is awake at the end of it, so much the better!

We hopped on the traddie stage after Iona (ionamusic.com) stepped down. They had a lovely multi-instrumental approach, fun singing, and a really stellar Scottish-style fiddler who would be in trouble if I was ten (ok, twenty) years younger. Well, I gotta tell ya, I was nervous following his act, but hey, we got on to do sound check and he came running up and wanted to know where I "learned how to play like that?" (Meanwhile, I'm thinking, "Who? Me?") So, my head got inflated, and that was probably why I couldn't hear anything out of the monitors. I don't mean to complain, but I'm so used to playing right on top of everyone else in the band, that having loads of elbow room was really a weird thing. I'd like to pretend I'm really worldly and know what I'm doing, but really I don't. You get on a real stage, with a real sound guy, and monitors that work and everything, and it's like all of sudden you've never played any tunes in your life, and you can't remember what note is where on the fingerboard, and wow, I vaguely remember that song....

Yeah. So I had more fun cruising around checking out everybody else's schtick than I did playing, but it was nice. We survived. The tent didn't burn down around us. At least I think it didn't....I had a mouthful of fish & chips, and I'm not really sure what happened.