I got home at about 3 p.m. Monday and have been napping a lot ever since. (Can you tell I'm tired from too many consecutive nights of too much singing. I only lasted until 2:00 a.m. on Friday (technically Sat.) and 3:15 a.m. on Saturday (technically Sunday). Drove from Albany to Binghamton last night (I-88 is one of America's most beautiful interstates, passing postcard villages off in the valley just to the North. When the train goes by, it looks like a model railroad set-up.) The rest of the distance today.

It's not the first time that the evening concert has been moved indoors--but the last time that happened was back in the 1980s. (I've been going to Old Songs for a very long time.)

The most memorable of the performers for me was Harmonia--their Romanian gypsy songs workshop showed an obscene amount of talent, and they made it look almost humanly possible to play that complicated that fast, while still retaining driving rhythms. And Shelly Posen's song about Pesach (Passover) at the Jewish songs workshop. And SAra Grey, who takes a banjo and a ballad and adds soul to them. And all the Mudcatters singing in the Dutch barn on Friday and Saturday nights. Thanks to Sandy and Caroline Paton and to Bob Zentz and Joel Mabus for knowing how to run a good song circle and coax a great song out of everybody, even the shy ones.

I'm off to sleep soon. (And the sleep deficit is worth it!) When I recover, I'll work on the Getaway some more. The Getaway is in October, and I expect even more Mudcatters there than at Old Songs.

--Charlie Baum

Burke--the "Oh, Good!" is a running joke with Artisan [they say, "Here's a song with a Chorus," and the audience responds "Oh, Good!"]. There is a story that a few weeks ago at the New Jersey Folk Festival, everyone started using the "Oh, Good!" refrain until the last concert of the festival, when everybody had gotten to word to surprise Artisan by changing the response of "Oh, Good!" to "Oh, Shit!"