Nothing is happening in the Irish music scene right now. The summer slump. I have made myself busy by downloading and editing ABCs. My latest set is two 3-part reels, Mayor Harrison’s Fedora and The Cup of Tea. This will be included in the November-December playlist once one of my pals makes sure the chords are correct.
On www.thesession.org someone posted that August 27th was “Play Music on the Porch Day”. I forwarded it to my friends. Zero interest! The post was uploaded on August 20th so not enough notice for people. The idea is to play something on a porch and upload it to https://playmusicontheporchday.com Maybe there is zero interest because people think it is Music on the Porsche Day.
On a similar topic, there are a few “tune-a-day” sites on YouTube. Some, to be honest, are quite embarrassing. To use a word popular in the Six Counties, they leave you feeling ‘scundered’ i.e. embarrassed for the musicians. (‘Scundered’ is not to be confused the Scottish ‘scunnered’, which means totally and utterly pissed off.)
Other sites, like Fergal Scahill’s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xda9TFujYkk and Katy Henderson’s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IPChPya30U are technically very good. These musicians focus on one tune at a time. I would like to do a “set-a-month” where a group of us would play two or three jigs, reels etc. Hopefully, there would be some coordination and turn-taking; I would like something more organized than six or seven musicians playing the same thing for 192 bars. I’ll float that idea in the next few days with October possibly being Month #1. Let’s see if the response is more positive than the Porch/Porsche proposal. At least, I’ll be giving more notice!
A friend has just sent this to me. It’s a while since I have seen such a group of weirdos. The clip calls into question the standards of hair-dressing and dentistry as well as the prevalence of incest in Dundalk. Joking apart, a great sound. The segue into Banish Misfortune is really smooth too.