San Francisco Free Folk Festival, Day One

Typical June weather for San Francisco, foggy and blustery. I was glad I wore a fleece jacket and was wishing for gloves.

The gurdy string is still stretching a little, so I didn't sign up for open mic - I didn't trust it enough not to go flat in mid performance. I did, however, stand outside the door and crank for part of a couple class periods and chat with people as they came by. Considering the conditions, the gurdy performed fairly well.

I took the quadrille class with Cathleen Myers teaching. It was fun, even with no lobsters, and turns out to be good practice for the Mikado Ball in September. I said, "I am SO there." She grinned and said, "You already have the clothes," referring to what I'd worn to Space Cowboy's Ball. I grinned back and said, "I have BETTER!"

The "odd meters" class was more jam session for the presenters and less practical exercises for the participants, but they're terrific musicians and it was no hardship to listen to.

The rounds class was fun and  silly.  The Tinwhistle class turned out to be Tinwhistle For The Complete Beginner - which there's nothing wrong with except it was was a bit TOO beginner for me. I found a corner to stand on and gurdied instead.

"About Unaccompanied Singing" - well, I was hoping for practicum with critique and what we got was basically a touchy feely bardic circle of competent amateurs. As lowest common denominator goes, this was really pretty good, though it suffered from the usual tendency for people to pick really long pieces which meant they were still going when I left to meet Ellen at 6. Moderator Bill Hall (I hesitate to say instructor as he didn't teach anything) asked "Who do you imitate when you sing and why?" There is no good or bad answer to something like this. However, it was a cue for the several people to my right to sing some cut-your-wrists-and-die ballad with lots of verses. One fellow did a very good job with "Far Amerikay" that was identifiably a direct lift from Kevin Conneff of the Chieftains - right down to the vocal ornamentation.

I have had the uncomfortable luxury of hearing what my recorded voice sounds like. I know that I cannot imitate certain vocalists because of the way my voice sounds, so I don't. (Those people who have expressed an opinion on the subject have described my sound as "pretty." I can live with that.)  Given that it's pretty nigh impossible for me to sound like anyone but me, much less a multi-voice male early music ensemble, I said so - then sang three verses of the Agincourt Carol. Bill thought it sounded very "operatic," but his niche apparently is sea chanteys and other trad. He'd never heard 15th century ornamental cadences before. Not to toot my own horn, but judging from audience reaction, it was probably one of the high points of the session. Though the lady who did the Ladino lullaby "Durme Durme" was terrific and I quite liked the un-pretty but heartfelt Yiddish lovesong another woman did. You don't have to have a pretty sound to sing well if you have something to say and mean it.

Gaius stayed over last night on his way to Pacifica. We stayed up and nattered at each other for awhile. He's taken off already and I will be picking Ellen up for Day Two of the festival shortly.

SF Free Folk Festival, Day 2

I started my day with Chris Caswell's "Deep Listening." THIS was more like it: exercises designed to teach the participants to hear the harmonic relationships and overtones when singing single notes and building chords over them - along with some basic music theory to go along with it. There is something very, VERY physically satisfying about hitting a gorgeously harmonic chord with other voices. When you all just nail it, it's just - indescribable. Very well taught and well worth an hour of my day.

I ran into the lady who had sung the Ladino piece yesterday. She took one of my cards and said she'd email me the music. I was also approached by a young lady who had heard me sing and asked what living history group I was involved in - turns out she played SCA in the Midrealm and just relocated to the Bay Area. I gave her a card and told her I'd be happy to shoot her the necessary local contact info for Cloondara if she emails me.

Second period was my chance to explore a corner of the hurdy gurdy repertoire I have not previously examined - French dance and folk tunes. At this jam session, mine was the smallest, softest, most primitive gurdy in the room - which meant I had to trade off to pennywhistle for some pieces my instrument just didn't have the range for. Didn't know a single tune, so I was completely dependent on my ear and ability to pick things up as fast as possible. Despite feeling like I was madly dog paddling at the deep end of the pool, I got invited to hang out with some of the core players and jam in the lunch area after we had to vacate the classroom, so I didn't go to a class third period. Cards have been exchanged as Mitch says they occasionally get together to play in Berkeley.

I was going to take Alan's English Country Dance class, but I walked in, he said something and I walked back out again. His headset mike was set so loud it was bouncing off the cement walls of the gym in a positively painful way. So I went back outside, found a sunny spot on the sidewalk and began to play. A few people came by, as always, to listen and ask questions. At one point I looked up and my listener said, "Please to, what is?" in a heavy Russian accent. It turned out he had about five words of English. Feeling like Kevin Costner crawling around on the floor pretending to be a buffalo while the Indians mutter, "What the f***?" among themselves, I made a violin bowing sort of gesture - he nods and cries something in Russian. I point to the flywheel inside the gurdy, give it a turn, then make the bowing gesture again. Fortunately at that point, another man walks up, who turns out to speak some Russian. We get a three sided conversation going for several minutes about hurdy gurdies and music and coming to Amerika and so forth.

Ellen and I headed to the stage to check out the Faux Hawaiians - a trio specializing in Hawaiian pop music from the 20's and 30's, and Craig Ventresco and Meredith Axelrod performing ragtime guitar duets.

Fifth period was Pam Swan's hour on mouth music. It was fun, but did we really need to spend most of the period on TWO "name game" songs with thirty people in the game?  I can teach a half a dozen multi-verse songs in Latin in that time. Dammit, when the class description says "Explore Appalachian chin music, Scottish puirt-a-beul, Brazilian coco, Georgia Sea Islands playsongs, African dance songs, Irish diddles and more in this world tour with a musical passport" I expect more than what we got.

I was fighting a headache, so Ellen and I came back to the East Bay and had gourmet burgers at Barney's in Berkeley. Bleu cheese, bacon and an excellent burger on a chewy crusted baguette was just what I was in the mood for.