BS: Kitchen Table Reducks

Subject: BS: Kitchen Table Reducks
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 04 May 21 - 06:58 PM

My old Kitchen Table thread is ten years old, so I am starting a new one. The old one had over 1,300 messages. I'm glad to revive this. Despite the definition, Feel free to include music in your comments. There's a lot to catch up on.

For starters; are the Shellbacks still in existence? My Gospel Messengers split up five or swix years ago when my best friend, Joe Evans died. Franklin Cummings; Joe's close friend and next door neighbor of 50 years predeceased him by three or four years. I miss them both every day. My tenor, Derrick Hanchard is still around.

My life has expanded, musically and personally. I am still playing traditional and my own folk songs, and have expanded into standards a little from the forties and fifties. I don't perform often (not asked, much.) I continue to play in nursing homes, which have just started opening up to visitors. Mostly, I have been doing a lot of writing, and am putting together a book of stories. I am very active on Facebook, and am very happy to be back here at the kitchen table.

What up? You woke? :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Kitchen Table Reducks
From: keberoxu
Date: 04 May 21 - 07:04 PM

What's this -- ducks at the table?

Subject: RE: BS: Kitchen Table Reducks
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 04 May 21 - 07:18 PM

The ducks are reduxing.
It's called a paraducks.

in honor of mny old friend Art Thiemne.

Subject: RE: BS: Kitchen Table Reducks
From: Joe_F
Date: 04 May 21 - 09:19 PM

These days, thanks to Zoom & Joe Offer, we can see a lot of real kitchen tables, and (after the singing) actually converse at them. That has been an important consolation to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Kitchen Table Reducks
From: Waddon Pete
Date: 05 May 21 - 08:05 AM

If I'd known you were coming I'd have baked a cake!

Subject: RE: BS: Kitchen Table Reducks
From: Charmion
Date: 05 May 21 - 09:21 AM

Hi, Jerry; it’s nice to see you back on the board.

Edmund (CET) and I moved from Ottawa to Stratford (Ontario) in 2017, when he turned 60 and retired from the Canadian Army. The plan was that he would go right on practising criminal law, and the pair of us would go right on road-tripping to folk festivals and music camps, until we dropped off our respective perches.

That lasted only until Thanksgiving 2020, when Edmund died of a completely unexpected heart attack, and the COVID-19 emergency continued into its third season of isolation, travel bans and border closure.

So now I play a little guitar most days, to keep my hands capable, and mandolin with three friends (two fiddlers and a guitarist) when the public health rules allow. I moved stuff around in the house to free up space for the four of us to sit two metres apart when case counts are low enough to permit indoor gatherings. Singing in the presence of other humans is verboten, and I found Zoom choir practice to be profoundly alienating, so I generally keep my mouth shut these days.

I’m more and more tempted by Joe’s song circle on Zoom, however. I’m dying to see what Mrzzy looks like.

Subject: RE: BS: Kitchen Table Reducks
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 05 May 21 - 12:25 PM

Hi, Charmion

My heart goes out to you. You've had your life ripped apart with no warning. Not that warning's really helps all that much. In a stretch of three years I lost my wife Ruth, who had Parkinson's disease and Dementia, her brother Everette who was one of my closest friends, my best friend and Best Man at our wedding, Joe Evans, who sang bass in my gospel quartet for ten years, and both of my sisters... and had a heart attack that took me down for a couple of years. Somehow, we manage to get through things, no matter how hard the toll may be. When everything finally stops collapsing, then you feel the full weight. I hope you are coming up from the depths. I am.

In those three years, I almost lost how to play, and the lyrics to many songs I've sung for many years... ones I wrote the lyrics to. I was beginning to doubt if I'd ever regain my playing. I set things aside for two or three weeks, and when I came back, I didn't push myself. I just started playing, with no concern or self doubts. Much to my joy, I found not only was I able to start playing old songs; I was just playing chords and whatever came out in picking, and I started writing a new one.

Thinking about your post and some of the things I've been experiencing these last two or three years, I thought of Johnny Cash's song, Get Rhythm. I'll start a new music thread, to honor the division of posts here, but I'm talking about the message in those two words. Get Rhythm.The last three years I was out of rhythm with life. My days were all mixed up, I was stressed easily and lost perspective on what my life was. I had to stop fighting life, and find a new rhythm. I fought the law/rhythm, and the law won.

I find it difficult to seperate my life and music. They are so intertwined. I won't go on any further here. This is more of a Facebook post. Now I'll go post the song, by Martin Delray, with a little help from Johnny. I'll expand on this post on my Facebook page.

Subject: RE: BS: Kitchen Table Reducks
From: Bill D
Date: 05 May 21 - 05:04 PM

Sadly, the Shellbacks lost their organizer and it was far too much work for anyone to cope with recruiting and organizing rehearsals.

One of the highlights of the FSGW Getaway was the year they attended in full voice and talent.

All good things must pass.. and be replaced by new good things.

Subject: RE: BS: Kitchen Table Reducks
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 05 May 21 - 05:16 PM

Shellbacks:

They were a delightful collection of folks, as well as fine singers. I arranged their concert at Mystic Seaport and it was very memorable.

Subject: RE: BS: Kitchen Table Reducks
From: Donuel
Date: 05 May 21 - 08:26 PM

I have a new insight and respect for Charmion.
I have been lucky in the life and death department
My current pseudo tradgedy is that I do not now or ever had a singing voice. I just don't like what I hear. Maybe thats not the point but it feels like a loss. I rarely play cello anymore and stick to mandolin and ukelele for an economy of effort.

Subject: RE: BS: Kitchen Table Reducks
From: keberoxu
Date: 05 May 21 - 09:06 PM

Jerry, perhaps this link will answer your Shellback question.



Shellback Chorus Farewell

Subject: RE: BS: Kitchen Table Reducks
From: Jeri
Date: 05 May 21 - 09:45 PM

Well, here's one we won't let you forget: Handful of Songs

Subject: RE: BS: Kitchen Table Reducks
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 May 21 - 10:31 PM

Nice!

I linked the old thread to this one (see the top).

Subject: RE: BS: Kitchen Table Reducks
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 05 May 21 - 10:44 PM

Good memories here. I read every post on the Shellbacks and greatly enjoyed them. Yeah, that song sounds familiar. Thanks, all.

Subject: RE: BS: Kitchen Table Reducks
From: Jeri
Date: 06 May 21 - 09:29 AM

My memory of the Shellbacks, aside from the wonderful singing, is one of working to get my car off a stump at the Getaway, where it was stuck like a turtle, waving its wee wheels around helplessly. And the buzzards on he house, watching. (I don't think they wanted the car, but were waiting for one of us to drop.)

Subject: RE: BS: Kitchen Table Reducks
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 06 May 21 - 01:12 PM

They sang at Mystic Seaport the same time When they came to the Getaway. My wife Ruth and I had the over to our house for a wonderful, relaxed time. Terry Silver even came to a practice of my group, The Gospel Messengers, and sahred a few songs with us. Wonderful memories.

Subject: RE: BS: Kitchen Table Reducks
From: keberoxu
Date: 08 May 21 - 10:33 PM

One weekend ago, I watched a livestreamed performance of
Martin Carthy from Whitby in northern England.
No, he was not at anybody's kitchen table,
it just sort of looked as though he were.

The performance was being done in a little studio in Whitby
and the microphones and everything were next to
a very cozy looking cupboard with dishes displayed on it,
and a clock whose time was permanently stopped at
something like ten minutes past four.

No audience on the premises,
just two people working cameras and soundboards.

Subject: RE: BS: Kitchen Table Reducks
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 11 May 21 - 11:54 AM

Jerry, I was reminded recently that while we haven't actually met, we've crossed paths. I had a great aunt from Ansonia, CT, who was in a nursing home in Shelton or Derby. You knew of the place and when we talked about it I THINK you'd been there to perform?

That would have been early-1980s.

Subject: RE: BS: Kitchen Table Reducks
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 11 May 21 - 06:04 PM

Stilly: I've played at Gardner Heights nursing home in Shelton since 2001. It wouldn't have been me in the 80's. They're allowing visitors again, starting last week Donna and I went to visit a friend there, today. As soon as they get clearance, I'll be back playing music and telling stories again. I miss it greatly.