The Elysian Fields

I've mentioned before about seeing Brother at Musikfest... conveniently, I found this clip of Brother at that aforementioned festival... not only that, but I'm in the audience!*

It's just a short little intro/transition piece, but it gives you the idea of the energy this band generates with the crowd at this venue (or, for that matter at the Celtic Classic, when they play that gig... often on the "same" stage! =)

This ends the set of tunes by Brother ~ unfortunately, their Australian take on Celtic rock is tougher to find than it should be. I wish I could have found some more clips of entire tunes, particularly stuff off my two favorite albums, 1995's Exit from Screechville and 1997's The Digging Bone. The tune Rainmaker off the latter is great, and The Crow, off the former, is on my list of Best Songs Ever. Exit... also has a couple of great instrumentals featuring the dual attack of Hamish and Angus on bagpipes... or, one on pipes and one on didgeridoo...



* Note that I am in the audience. I am not, to the best of my knowledge, in the video...

Oy.

The worst part of it is that I missed the Philadelphia Funk Authority

Check out some of the rest of the lineup - this year they brought in lots of small-time acts no one has ever heard of, such as Boston, Jethro Tull, Avril Lavigne, Earth, Wind & Fire, Live, Collective Soul, Kool & the Gang, Stone Nipple Chickens Temple Pilots, Lonestar, Diamond Rio, Poison, John Fogerty... jeez, gotta catch my breath here... Dennis DeYoung, Roseanne Cash, 38 Special, John Gorka, Edwin McCain, Roomful of Blues, Seamus Kennedy, Sligo Rags, Brother, Finn's Fury, Tempest, Tanglefoot, Jeffrey Gaines, and a... ahem... few others.

Not sure which days I'll be down there. Friday is a definite, as that's Poetry Night at the Moravian Book Shop.

Yeah, I'm not going to make it down there today, even though Brother is closing out the fest tonight and I missed them on Friday night.

On Wednesday, thefrogger and I ate lunch to the accompaniement of Shafaatullah Khan, who did some interesting things with hand drums but had a sitar player who played the same little bit over. And over. And over. That evening, I fested with one of my dad's cousins and her husband - we wandered about catching bits and pieces of a few acts, including Cast in Bronze, Russ Rentler, and a longer stretch with the Boris Garcia Band. I introduced them to Mama Nina's for dinner, and that seemed to go over well. We also caught a few works from Watermelon Slim and the Workers. Ol' Slim looked pretty roadworn and frail, but he could make that slide guitar sing, and his own voice accurately transcribed the blues.

On Friday, I wandered a bit after work and before poetry at the Moravian Book Shop, catching some of (I think), The Terry Barrett Band, and a bit of Ceili Rain. Ceili Rain have a lot of musical talent, not quite my thing, and the Christian aspect kind of overwhelmed the Celtic aspects after a bit. Their bass player used a Warwick, though, so that's a good thing. =)

Randy Weeks was playing over at the Americaplatz - I liked his stuff well enough, but for some reason he reminded me of another vocalist. I closed my eyes at one point, and, without the visual aspect, realized who it was: Gobo Fraggle. I suppose that won't be considered a positive association, but, for my part, I really like the tunes Gobo sings lead on, especially the tunes that are more bluesy, and rather in line with Randy's own writing. Randy was accompanied by a guitarist - and I want to say Chet Thompson, but as there's another guitarist by that exact name, I may just have a few wires crossed. Anyway, this guy, who accompanied Randy's vocals, harmonica, and acoustic guitar with a telecaster, was an exceptional player. Definitely the best guitar playing I witnessed during this year's fest.

So those really exceptionally beautifully carved drums I mentioned Sunday?

Out of curiosity, I stopped by today and asked how much they were. Turns out they were sold - the two in the stand, two larger, and two smaller - as a set. Just over $2,000 for all six, a few iron bells, and other percussion. $5,000 would have been a fair price, and probably would still barely pay a decent wage for the labor involved.

Didn't actually watch or listen to much at lunch - caught a bit of the warm up of a world dance group, but I think that they use pre-recorded music and their thing is just in the dancing, and we didn't see that, as we couldn't really see that far into the tent. thefrogger picked up some kind of sausage sandwich, and we sat and watched a bit of the Community Music School show while he ate. We listened to a teacher (we think) playing some jazz, blues, and swing piano stuff. He then accompanied a small child who played violin, followed by a pre?teen on piano.

The guy at the Leiderplatz - Little Toby Walker, according to the schedule - was just doing soundcheck when we first passed through the area. I mentioned to Rich that he sounded pretty good, but I didn't think I was into what he was doing all that much - sounded much more old-timey country. On the way back, I heard some nice blues guitar though, so I may have been better off just sitting there to listen.

So I ended that last post with a statement that we needed a percussionist, with no further information.

Well, today, we went down to MusikFest (we being: patrixa, Justin, Rachel, and me). After a lunch at Bowmanstown Diner (the only diner in the world that won't serve omelets or home fries at 11:30am on a Sunday, but is otherwise my favorite diner), we parked and began to wander around the fest.

None of the acts really hit me - they were mostly bluegrass, country that sounded kind of like bluegrass, and celtic that sounded almost like bluegrass. Even the trombone quartet - which was mostly playing classical - did a ragtime swing piece that probably would have sounded natural with a banjo playing along.

Rachel picked up an ocarina, flute, and a percussion shaker (for Mr. B) from the Native North/South American folks. patrixa also picked up an album of the flute music being played at the moment. They bought Deb a bead bracelet as well.

Met up with noone234 at the Volksplatz and after a bit we headed over to the drums at Spirit in the Wood. They had some dununbas that sounded great, and a beautiful conga (the picture at the link is nowhere as near as nice looking as the one they had there - the hardware looked like cast iron, and it the wood itself had a beautiful, but simple appearance). We picked up a kalimba, a carved, hollowed out frog with a sawtooth pattern that makes a frog-like sound when the stick is slid over it, and a djembe.

We stopped at another tent with drums - one was in the process of being carved. They were from Ghana, and the kpanlogos they had were exquisite - very intricate carvings, and, to top it off, a beautiful sound (this link goes to a vendor who imports them; I will correct if I can swing by during the week and find out if these guys have a site of their own - I'd much rather show off their art, although the linked one looks pretty good too! =) patrixa bought a unity sculpture from them; the man had carved the three intertwined figures out of a single piece of wood. You can see the approximate shape of the original piece when you slide them together, however the sculpture is best viewed folded open, as if the three figures were twirling in a dance.

We wandered some more, were nearly lulled to sleep by one of the celtic band's tunes, and headed back to the Main Street stage to hear the trombone quartet. On the way back, I noticed a few guys sitting out playing drums behind the stage; one guy had a kpanlogo, the other a conga (think he works next door to me; I recognized but couldn't place him at the time), and the third - well, I didn't see his drum. After the trombone quintet finished up, we headed back down to the drummers, and between one of the drummer's daughters (either the kpanlogo guy or the third guy) and patrixa, I was volunteered to jam with the three, plus an 18 year old playing electric blues guitar.

We played a couple of tunes - having owned the drum for a total of a couple of hours, I wasn't overly confident at first, nor, to be honest, at the end. I did, however, have fun.

Now, it's all well and good that we now have a bunch of percussion instruments to use while we play, or during recording. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that we need some one to play congas and/or a drum kit to play along with us when we're doing trumpet, sax, clarinet, and bass. So, yeah.

We need a percussionist.

Wound up spending most of lunch talking with a co-worker. Did catch the first of three from the Philadelphia Songwriters Project, and she was pretty good.

Plaza Deli provided a delicious antipasto salad, generously portioned, and reasonably priced (cheaper than a lemonade.)

While there, waiting for a co-worker, somebody else's lunch was rung up as $4000, and as she was apologizing to the guy and correcting it back to $4, I mentioned that it seemed a pretty fair markup for Musikfest pricing...

Today's lunch music was provided by Carla Ulbrich, who mixed comedy with music - and, unlike many such performers, she actually had a good singing voice and could play guitar quite well. I was, of course, suitably impressed when she switched to the Parker Fly - an instrument I am somewhat partial to, having known Ken Parker and the people who did a lot of the work on it; it's been about 14 years, but I'm willing to bet I know at least one person who actively built at least one part of the guitar she was playing.

Carla's songs were fun - both silly and serious all at once - from driving away Wal-Mart to sitting in a waiting room to proving therapy works to one song which she then wrote a parody on which she then wrote a parody on...