This rob is beat. Yesterday was a great day, full of what I’d like my day to be oft filled with – music and more music. Heather tried out a new drum harness and getting to stand up with the djembe just changes the entire dynamic of what she’s doing – and even sort of opens up her voice a little bit. It projects a JOY that sitting doesn’t, and I was sort of stunned by how much more fun it was for us to both be mobile. I’m really looking forward to playing more shows with her new standing-up rig. We’ve just got to figure out how to mic that well.
Takoma Porch was absolutely marvelous. MaryAnn Ryan just deserves so much credit for creating something so marvelous. I think we really could be witnessing Takoma Park history in the making. I wonder if this is the way it felt when they first created the Takoma Park Folk Festival – not that this is the same sort of entity, but I think it’s going to become another of these great community events that I think are really the positive side of the area.
ilyAIMY played for about an hour and then we turned the House of Musical Traditions “stage”… “porch”… whatever – over to Wytold who was actually performing with a woman that we’d met maybe a decade ago in Pittsburgh – Emay (formerly of “Stealing Liberties”?) played her heart out, jamming on percussion and singing and was every bit the marvelous performer I remember from that bar in Western PA. Plus or minus the fact that a bird left a fecal gift on my guitar, it was close to a perfect day.
From there I headed over to Seeker’s Church just over the line into DC where I was running sound for an Institute of Musical Traditions show. Actually it was an IMT / Songwriters of Association cooperative gig celebrating the winners of the Mid-Atlantic Song Contest – so it was a greatly acronymized endeavour : the MASC show by SAW sponsored by IMT? A lot of lifting and toting and shoving and pushing – my new least favourite activity is snake-wrasslin’ – i.e. winding and unwinding a 100’ 16 channel snake just absolutely sucks.
Three wonderful performers : Tom Dews playing Mississippi blues – I’d heard him before, but his voice in person is a good deal richer than anything I’d heard out of him recorded – Andrea Pais – incredibly powerful voice and great piano chops, I’d booked her before and was happy to see her again, absurdly talented, really young, and just wrapping up her SECOND master’s degree to boot – and then the night was wrapped out with someone I didn’t know : Kipyn Martin. I’d caught a lot of buzz about this woman, but I have never seen her… she totally Lived up to her press though and I was really, really impressed with her voice and songwriting. I bought a disc from her and was generally really stunned by the control and clarity of her vocals.
A good night. Then lift, tote, shove and push everything back into the car, lock up the church and head home… tomorrow morning I get up and do it all again. Do I REALLY want to add “sound guy” to my list of hats?
