Reading: Haunted Providence by Rory Raven
Music: various trad
TV/Movie: The Devil's Rejects
Link o' the Day: TheSession.org

Not a bad weekend. Not bad at all. The rain was kind of a damper, but other than that... good stuff happened. I finished up a rush job on a new edition of Bob and Ray and Tom (see cover below).

Money made from that went into a bookstore buying run to celebrate the Auburn Tigers win over Tennesee. Pretty Maggie and I picked up an armload of good stuff. My haul consisted of John Scalzi's third novel The Lost Colony, Rory Raven's Haunted Providence, a big ole banjo book by Tony Trischka. a small sketchbook in which I've already filled pages with doodles, and a small wooden artist's model. I was hoping to find Tobias Buckell's Sly Mongoose on the shelves--but no joy. I may end up doing Amazon or buying the electronic version from Fictionwise.

As I've said before in regards to Mr. Buckell, "We watch his career with great interest."

Sunday we got down to Westerly for Swamp Yankee Days. It wasn't as good as past years--too much crap, too little art, but the lousy weather may have had something to do with that. Pretty Maggie's mother is going to come up some other weekend, but we did meet up with my dad's old ladyfriend and enjoyed a nice lunch.

Later that night I hit Ward's Pub. It got off to a rocky start as when I opened my banjo case, I discovered that in transit the tailpiece had snapped off. Actually, it was the screw that holds the tailpiece on. A mess of strings faced me. I managed to rig up a fix that worked, reset tyhe bridge and got back in tune in quicker time than I thought and had a pretty good night of tunes. My week's work on learning "The Gravel Walks" paid off as my version wasn't too different from the "house version."

Lemme explain. Irish trad music, like most folk music, is usually passed down from person to person, not just be sheets of written music. While this is charming and all, and makes for some neat little variations here and there, it also means that if you learn a piece of Irish trad music from a book, you then have to relearn it when you play at a session. Using one as the starting point for the other. The differences are often minor and easy to adjust to. Sometimes they take a bit more work. And when the same tune has six different names, or the same name can be ascribed to a half a dozen different tunes, it gets more confusing. Oh, and the written music doesn't necessarily reflect how it's exactly played.

But it's worth it. It really is. And if you don't get too bogged down with trying to keep it straight, and just play it as its dealt, it makes it more fun.

This week I'm trying to learn two non-Irish tunes that are played ina regular set at Wards: "Ashoken's Farewell" by Jay Unger which folks may recognize from the Ken Burns' Civil War series, and an old, fairly easy tune called "Oh, Them Golden Slippers" by James Bland which seems to be claimed by various folk groupings.

Today I've been working on a bunch of edits for the SFWA Bulletin. I'm also prepping the next issue of the Rhode Island medical journal. Tomorrow I should receive the very last edits for the Jan Wahl book and get cracking on the Baby Peggy book.

Busy as a bee! bzz! bzz!

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Today's link goes to an old favorite: TheSession.org, a bulletin board style site that has all the new there is on Irish trad sessions, tunes, and the players. Some great gossip to be found here as well.

Enjoy!