St. Paddy's day was an experience. My daughter and I have been working for a couple months to get her skill level on the bodhran to a tolerable level; our plan was to go out and be street musicians downtown for the day, until it was time for my bar gig.

The long-awaited day came at last, and we weren't disappointed, although the weather wasn't altogether cooperative. Friday was a nice day, temperature in the 50's. Sunday was a nice day, temperature in the 50's. Saturday was blustery, spitting snow, temperature in the mid-30's. I decided God is mocking me--"hey, you haven't been to church in a while, have you? Well, you'll want to try a little of this!"

We started out on the downtown canal, as planned, but witht he cold, no one else was there. We gave that up after not too long. We ended up in front of the entrance to the downtown yuppie mall and played there for about two hours. We had nearly constant attention, and received many compliments, although the nippy breeze made the listeners have short attention spans. We made oh, something over five bucks altogether. Then we went and spent twenty bucks on lunch. I guess I won't be quitting my day job.

The Daughter loved it, though--she was enjoying herself hugely, and I believe she is just about fully hooked on the music now. Heh heh heh--my fiendish plans are bearing fruit.

My paid fiddling gig was that evening, at the tiny local bar where we have our sessions every Tuesday. I had heard they had a pretty good St. Paddy's party. I had no concept at all what this meant in practice, as it turns out.

The place was a zoo! They had put up a tent in the parking lot that basically doubled their square footage. We--me, another fiddler, an uillean piper, an bodhranista, and a bozouki player--played out there for the first hour, then moved inside the bar for the second hour. The tent was packed and they only had hookups for two microphones. We worked out a mike-sharing arrangement, but geez--we couldn't hear ourselves at all. People came up and told us we sounded great, but you could've fooled us--we had no way of knowing.

When we moved inside, we had access to a better sound system, so we each had our own mike after that. There were more people inside that tiny bar than I would've thought could fit in there--wall to wall, shoulder to shoulder. We played like crazy--ultimately, we went about forty minutes over our allotted time, but heck, we were having fun, the people were enjoying it, and we couldn't see any way to get outside again in any case.

Now I understand how it is to be an Irish musician on St. Pat's. I had so much fun, I can't even begin to describe it. The Daughter and I are alike in one respect at least--we're both tremendous hams. I can hardly wait till next year!

She and I are going to St. Louis the end of next month for the first (and one of the best) Irish music festivals of the year. She will be taking the drum workshop with Paddy League, said to be one of the best bodhran players in the world. He is also an extremely good-looking young man of 21. She has already fallen in love and stolen my CD of him.

Unlike here, Missouri law will allow her to go into the bars for the post-workshop sessions. We will have a great time, I have no doubt.

Beannachtai na Feile Padraig to all!

Jenny