Our name changes from time to time--first, we were the Point Isabel Poodle Players when we needed a name when we played some background music for a video that was being made about the dog park at Point Isabel (Richmond, California--just about directly across the bay from the Golden Gate Bridge. Despite the fact that my two Labradors have got all the poodles that belong(ed) to other members outweighed, the last part of the name has sort of stuck to us (we no longer play much at Point Isabel where the seminal membersl, Charlie, Sally, and I met). We've also been Nancy and the Crowes. I have suggested a couple of names for the group, most appropriately The Born Once Gospel Band since about half our repertoire consists of old time gospel tunes although none of us are particularly religious, and Charlie Bond and the Bail Jumpers (Charlie is our lead guitarist and lead male vocalist--before entering law school he had received an undergraduate degree in ethnomusicology and spent a while playing in clubs and for a while in a touring country band). For one performance (at a cocktail party at the end of a conference of university summer session executives we were Sally and the Seniors (Sally Senior is our autoharp player, and a former president of the association of summer school executives--who got us the gig, and a later one at the Cal Women's Faculty Club. As I started this post I just thought of another name I'll try to get the group to accept--it's even more descriptive than the Born Once thing: Will Work for Food. As Charlie says, we're the best band in our price range--we were offered money once but refused it, suggesting that instead of paying us our hosts have their piano tuned so we could use it in the gig.

In addition to the traditional spirituals we play quite a few traditional mountain tunes and Carter Family songs, fiddle tunes, bluegrass and contemporary folk, some blues, and some original stuff: Charlie writes beautiful poetry which he sets to fiddle tunes and, Walter, our piano player, in addition to writing scholarly thrillers (T. Rex and the Crater of Doom), writes beautiful fiddle tunes, notably his "Sally's Song." We have a couple of (and sometimes three) fiddlers, one of whom, Kimmie, is the seven year old daughter of John, our bass player, Dick on resonator banjo, yours truly on open back banjo, harmonica, and occasional lead vocals, Patricia on mandolin, Nancy on guitar and lead female vocals, Josh--our other lead guitarist, Hank (a bit more than seven years old) on fiddle, Walter's wife Millie on vocals.

A couple weeks ago a fine country/traditional singer, musician, and song writer, Walter Forbes (anybody know him?), after playing and singing with us commented that he knew of lots of groups who were worse that we are who are filling concert halls and making piles of money. I guess it was a compliment.

--seed