Welcome to the Mudcat, Janie.

There's no way I can do justice to all of the amazing vocal music that seemed to almost seep out of every little corner and nook of Camp Ramblewood during the Getaway. I know very little about songs, and others have done a splendid job of describing that aspect of the weekend. Needless to say, there was a lot of beautiful vocal music being made.

I can comment on the instrumental aspect, since that is my musical orientation. One of the first things I heard upon arriving on Saturday afternoon was a few people, scattered here and there, playing fiddles and guitars and other instruments. Just sitting around in fields or on porches and things. That was very pleasant.

As the weekend progressed, I enjoyed an aural smorgasboard of different kinds of sounds and many different kinds of acoustic music coming from a wide variety of instruments. There were the usual assortment of stringed instruments with necks, but I also enjoyed GutBucketeer's gut bucket bass. And there were squeeze boxes. I saw several concertinas of the usual sizes, and there were two bass concertinas. Those were a real treat. And there was one melodion. I didn't hear it played very much, but the little I did hear sounded really nice.

I would have to say that the highlight for me was when Dick (I'm pretty sure his first name was Dick) Swain invited me to jam with him, he on his bass concertina, and me on my Italian accordion. I really loved the way those two instruments sounded together. We played some dark and moody Finnish waltzes, which we both loved, and then we moved on to somewhat lighter and sweeter British Isles and American pieces.

That was my first real experience of jamming with other people on my box (playing the the actual melody and basses,rather than just the basses under other people's melodies). Eventually, we were joined by another concertina player, and a fiddle player.

About that time, the singers in the next room started having difficulty hearing themselves, so we left for a less intrusive location to continue our jam. About the time I started running out of pieces I could play, our group aquired two large Celtic harps a second concertina, and a second fiddle. The only way I can describe that sound would be to say that it was not only beautiful, it was mighty.

I sat in on parts of a couple of workshops. Rick Fielding and Jed Marum conducted a very interesting workshop on instrumental techniques. There was quite a bit of information being presented that I didn't understand because it was about stringed instruments, but I enjoyed hearing the stories that Rick and Jed told about how they came to adopt some of the different techniques they use, and I especially enjoyed hearing them play.

I also sat in on part of a blues workshop that was being conducted by Roger in Baltimore and Max. That was a treat. I enjoy the blues even though I don't play them, and Max, Roger, Dani, and another female singer who's name I didn't hear, really got down with those blues and belted out some funky, gutsy stuff.

I also enjoyed the Mudcat jam that wended its way in the the wee ours of the morning Sat. night/Sun. morning. I came to it somewhat late from the other jam, but it was great sitting in the big circle of Mudcatters taking turns singing and playing music. I was even asked to play my accordion. I was pretty nervous about playing solo in front of a bunch of people, but they were very welcoming and generous in their encouragement. So I guess that was a rite of passage of sorts for me as an accordion player.

And of course it was wonderful seeing Rick again, and meeting so many people I've gotten to "know" in a virtual sense, and being able to get a fuller sense of who they are as people through spending time with them in the 3D sense. Not the least of whom was the legendary Micca. Pene Azule and I decided that he must have had multiples of himself wandering around the Getaway. He was so friendly and gregarious that there are quite a few people who probably think they spent most of the weekend hanging out with him.

I'm still not back to my real world yet. I'm still making a nuisance of myself around the Mudcat offices, and there's the concert tonight to look forward to before I head for home.