how to meet musicians or fun at the airport

Subject: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Rex
Date: 26 Jul 99 - 08:33 AM

Just wanted to mention a chance occurance this weekend. I was taking part in what they call Buffalo Bill Days in Golden, CO. It seems that ol Buffler Bill is buried up on Lookout Mtn. above Golden so they have a celebration for him every year. Sometimes I have time to join in. This time I was dressed as an 1870's gambler with a six shooter on my hip and playing poker with Wild Bill Hickok, Doc Holliday and Calamity Jane. Now and then when the crowd got big enough we would exchange some words about cheating and such and exchange gunfire. Then we'd get up off the ground, dust ourselves off, kiss and make up and get back to playing cards. In between I would play fiddle with Calamity playing an old Echo harmonica. After awhile I had to leave for the airport to pick up my nephew who is come to visit us. I gave back the Colt revolver and gun belt to Wild Bill as airports don't care for that sort of thing. (I did win it fair in the card game! everyone keeps a card or two as a spare!) Well at the airport I am still wearing my 1870's duds and learned that my nephew's plane was late. (They are supposed to be) That suited me fine as I was wore out and thought I might have a chance to doze a bit. So I sit down and do that. Then this fellow comes up in a nice black suit and wants to know if that's a fiddle in that case. Yep. "What kind of music do you play? I play Old-time stuff." "Well I like the 19th century tunes." "I have a banjo with me, get your fiddle and lets play some." So I did. We walked down two more gates and his family was there. It turns out that he was a Russian Orthodox minister from Nebraska with a passion for the old tunes. He had a beautiful old Vega Wyte Laydie five string and could play the fiddle well too. So we were passing the instruments back and forth. His son had a 3/4 fiddle there as well and he joined in. Another fellow turned up enjoying the music and he joined the circle of instruments being passed around. A crowd formed around us after a bit and we all had a great time. The time just flew and I regretted having to leave them to greet my nephew. But it just shows the fun you can have when you drag an instrument around with you. That's all for now.

Rex

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Art Thieme
Date: 26 Jul 99 - 09:16 AM

Bill grew up in & around LeClaire, Iowa. Moved away with the family when he was 12. He told 'em, "Don't do anything 'til I get back!"------And they're still waitin' for him.

The house where bill grew up in Iowa was sold to the place where he died for $1.00 and the folks in Iowa are still wondering what happened in that transaction & how it could've taken place. (Anybody know?) But there is a Buffalo Bill Museum in LeClaire, Iowa----right on the Mississippi River----right where the steamboats I used to sing on would take off from each day--5 months a year. THE TWILIGHT, a diesel excursion boat still offers 2-day trips (overnight) from that location about 3 times a week. I'm not there anymore, but it sure is a beautiful & relaxing trip.

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: WyoWoman
Date: 26 Jul 99 - 09:27 AM

That's an absolutely GREAT story! And probably more fun for the arriving and departing passengers than anything they've encountered in an airport. Did lots of people gather 'round?

WW

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Bill in Alabama
Date: 26 Jul 99 - 11:23 AM

Those are often the best--the most memorable--- of times. Each year we perform for five days at the Museum of Appalachia Homecoming in October. The show closes each day at 5:00 pm, and we (the Foster Family) head for the nearest Cracker Barrel Store, which happens to be in Lake City Tennessee, still dressed Appalachian style, with instruments still in the car. A couple of years ago, we ran into several other performing groups, easily recognizeable by their attire and, after we finished our meal, we had an impromptu jam session--fiddles, guitars, harmonicas, hammered dulcimers, mandolins, and banjoes. Besides the hired performers from the homecoming, there were many folks who happened to have instruments with them, and we went on into the wee hours, on the porch of the restaurant. Now it has become an informal but traditional gathering each evening during the homecoming.

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Rex
Date: 28 Jul 99 - 10:13 PM

I've been away awhile. Sorry. I've been to that museum in LeClaire. Art, that house you mentioned must have gone to the museum in Cody WY. as it sure isn't on Lookout Mountain. Although Lookout mtn. is indeed where he is buried much to the chagrin of the folks in Cody. That's another story. To WyoWoman, I guess there were around 40 folks that made a point of coming up close on the seats around us. Others were rocking and grinning where they sat. Especially I noted the ones behind the counters at the gates nearby. And yep, Bill in Ala., the chance happenings are the best. It reminds me of when I was on the Amtrak heading for Oakland and bumped into a tenor banjo player who was part of a 20's banjo orchestra on their way to Sacramento. He was a rebel of sorts and would play fiddle tunes and such on the banjo. I had a mandolin with me and we started to play in one of the coaches. Well the porter hushed us and told us to move on so we moved to the lounge car and had a great time there. I guess in that case the audience was really captive and would take what they could get.

Rex

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Hasek
Date: 29 Jul 99 - 01:00 PM

To all of you who take the spirit of " Old Time music " and share it in the most unusual locations.............keep creating threads like this and the whole world becomes a deliteful ball of yarn.......

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Jeri
Date: 29 Jul 99 - 01:06 PM

Does about 15 folkies singing 'Barrett's Privateers' at full volume after eating dinner in a Chinese restaurant count?

I was once at a Pizza Hut and there was a party of barbershop quartet members at the next table. They just launched into a couple of songs during dinner, to the surprised delight of the rest of us diners.

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Peter T.
Date: 29 Jul 99 - 01:58 PM

This is a fine thread, but it depressingly reminds me that people in the Western world (maybe outside of Ireland) don't sing in public much. Why should these things be a big event? Why not barbershop quartets in every barbershop, or McDonalds's quartets in every McDonalds, or laundromat singers? Why shouldn't the airports, restaurants, streets be filled with ordinary people raising their voices in song, pulling instruments out, etc.? What kind of a stupid, passive culture is this!!!
(Sorry to creep this thread -- it just struck me as crazy. I am happy to celebrate these sudden moments of delight. But what a comment on it all).
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Bert
Date: 29 Jul 99 - 02:17 PM

What kind of a stupid, passive culture is this?

It's one where the police come by and tell you to be quiet when you are singing on your own front porch.

Bert.

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: bseed(charleskratz)
Date: 29 Jul 99 - 03:04 PM

Yeah, but Bert, did you really need the heavy metal back up band and the 500 watt vocal amp? ;-)

Seriously, as I have recounted before...oh, nobody wants to hear that story again.

--seed

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Songster Bob
Date: 30 Jul 99 - 01:27 PM

Back in the pre-metal-detector days of my mid-youth, I and a few friends went to meet Mike Rivers at the airport, where he was returning from a business trip (he's now such a seasoned traveler that they practically reserve his seat on the plane, since he'll be outbound by the time they refuel and sweep the peanuts off the carpet).

Well, the bunch of us decided to greet him with music, so we had banjo, fiddles and hammered dulcimer (this was in the days of the Greasy Run Toad Trompers), and struck up a few tunes waiting for him. When he came out of the passenger tunnel there, he had his guitar in a gigbag over his shoulder, so he unlimbered it, tuned it up (it was in "United Airline tuning" -- slack strings for safety's sake in the cold of a baggage hold) and joined in. Then we packed up and went home. Didn't think to pass the hat to the assembled fellow travelers (obscure cold war punning reference), or we could have paid for our parking.

Bob Clayton

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Mudjack
Date: 30 Jul 99 - 01:40 PM

Bert, BSeed, who have their copy of Sing Out by now, read Appleseeds and the story about the musician stuck on the ground amongst a ton of disgruntled passengers.I wished I could share it on this thread but I'm not sure of it's legality's. It is certainly a noteworthy story for this thread.
Mudjack

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Charlie Baum
Date: 30 Jul 99 - 01:51 PM

In the days of my youth, when I used to travel about with the Yale Russian Chorus, we were known to spontaneously break into song in odd locations: the Matterhorn ride at Disneyland and the Duquesne Incline in Pittsburgh come to mind. (The Matterhorn ride is so short, you can only get through two (2) verses of "The Battle of Borodino.")

We would also sing in college dining halls and restaurants while we were on tour. The wonderful thing about a cappella singing is that you can make music in situations that would be daunting if you had to set up instruments.

--Charlie Baum

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: katlaughing
Date: 30 Jul 99 - 02:10 PM

When my youngest was just a baby, I tended bar, briefly, at a pizza place near the college. Wednesday nights were always a lot of fun because the college acapella group would come down after rehearsal for pizza and beer. They were at least twenty of them, usually, sitting at a long picnic style table with benches. They always were in high spirits and never failed to launch into a grand medley of folk tunes and pop stuff. It was always really, really fun.

Boulder, CO always has someone singing and playing an instrument out on the "mall". Northampton, MA, used to, at least on the weekends.

PeterT: I think the passiveness is a symptom of people who are fed the pablum of Madison Avenue & tv, who are afraid to be different and stand out. Gosh...they might actually be embarassed!(tongue firmly in cheek!)

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: RiGGY
Date: 30 Jul 99 - 08:05 PM

Back in Feb 1967, NY radio host, Bob Fass, suggested to his huge WBAI listening audience that they ALL meet at the International Arrivals Building at Kennedy Airport at midnite. Friends were already planning to attend a Jim Kweskin & the Jugband concert that nite at Town Hall, so after it we took the convoluted multi-train ride out to the airport. What a great scene !! Literally THOUSANDS of freaks freaking out the airline staff [ it was nearly empty of "real" travelers ]. At two in the morning a red-eye arrived from some far away place, and as the bleary-eyed disembarked they were met by throngs of singing, happy, STONED, kissy folk, throwing flower petals in their path. Some great shared music that night !! We were from NJ [ I'm sort of embarrassed 'bout that, still....] and were too late for the last bus/train, so we stuck out our thumbs at 3am & caught a ride in a fellow WBAI-er's convertible that had the top DOWN. This was mid-winter NY ! We froze our little tushies off in the back seat [ heated frontseat, only] & they dropped us off at the George WashingtonBridge, so we could catch some shut eye in the bus terminal until the 1st NJ Bus left @7am. Anybody else from that huge crowd of Fass Followers out there ?? RiGGY

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: CarlZen
Date: 30 Jul 99 - 09:18 PM

One night at our local coffee shop, we met a banjo player from D.C. He comes out here on business occasionally, and this time he brought his banjo along. We were doing our monthly gig at the time, and after closing we were on the street and still talking. Someone said, let's see your banjo. He got it out of his car, and soon someone was picking on it to get a feel for the instrument. Since we all had instruments with us, it wasn't long before we all had our instruments out and were full steam into playing music. The coffee shop is on one of our town's main streets, in the older section of town, and as the hours progressed closer to the closing time of the local bars, several people were wlaking past on the street, and would stop. As the music continued we soon noticed that people were dancing on the broad sidewalk outside the coffee shop. The bars were all closed and we were still picking and people were still dancing. It wasn' until several instruments had lost several strings that we finally broke up and moved on. Somehwere in the middle of all this fun a car full of young men drove by, rolled down their windows, and shouted out, "GET A LIFE." It's moments like that which truly reaffirm life.

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Alice
Date: 30 Jul 99 - 09:27 PM

love these stories

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Sourdough
Date: 31 Jul 99 - 02:51 AM

CarlZen's story of the kids in the car shouting "Get a life" as they passed the scene where people had been making music is so clear tha tit's almost a cinematic moment. It's a wonderful story.

I love to look at maps and then go to places that have some connection to traditional music. That's why, one summer, as I was wandering about the Continental Divide on my motorcycle and spotted Cripple Creek, Colorado on my map, there was no hesitation about putting it on my "must go to" list. This was before that formerly delightful town had been turned into a caricature of a gold rush town in an attempt to make it into a gambling resort.

On the Main Street was a little store with the euphonious name of The Cripple Creek Music Store. Inside they had a selection of Cripple Creek dulcimers. I asked if I might try one and was given a most gracious permission. Because I had been out on my motorcycle for a couple of weeks and hadn't brought anything but some harmonicas with me, I really enjoyed the chance to play a stringed instrument.

The store, as I recall, was run by a young couple and soon she joined me on, I think bass. Her husband picked up a guitar and we were having a pleasant time when a young fellow came into the store with a mandolin. You guessed it, he joined in. From then on, it seemed new people were coming into the store with intruments every couple of minutes.

We chose songs just by somebody shouting out a title and then we'd be off. After about twenty minutes or so of this, I really wanted to call out "Cripple Creek" but I was handicapped by the feeling that I might break the mood. Cripple Creek might be the most banal song they knew, a song they were tired of. It might be like asking someone to play "Home on the Range". So I help my tongue. Of course, I still had a good time, everyone did.

After a bit, I took a break. I ran outside to the bike and took out my tape recorder. It only took me a minute of two to set it up and then I was back in the group, playing away.

It had been hard to get to the motorcycle because the little store was crowded now. Amazingly, most of the people were playing an instrument. There were even two fiddlers. It was as though people were coming out of the woodwork. The non-players gathered on the sidewalk and looked through the doors and windows. On that afternoon, this was THE place to be in Cripple Creek.

Finally, someone with more self assurance than I could muster that day called out, "Cripple Creek" and the group tore into it. Somehow we knew who should solo, taking turns in what seemed to be an orderly fashion, and the inventiveness was really exciting. Chorus and verse tumbled out in a sweet flow of music and time didn't exist, only tempo. Ultimately, though, time reasserted itself and the song came to an end that we had all agreed upon without knowing that we were doing so. There came a moment when knew it was time to stop playing. Every face was blessed with a smile. There were sparkling eyes all over that room.

Today, when I play back the tape I made that afternoon, I can remember that feeling very clearly because of something that tape captured. It happened right about this same time. The music stops. You hear the laughter and the excited voices. If you hadn't been able to tell from the music, the voices tell you that this is a real emotional high. Then a fiddler plays a fragment of Cripple Creek. Perhaps he is just trying an idea he's thought of. It's only a few notes. Then a banjo plays the same fragment, kind of echoing it. There is a growing chorus of instruments playing just snatches of Cripple Creek when then suddenly everyone is on the same phrase. The song comes back, strong and joyful. What has happened is that the mood was too good; no one wanted to let it flow away. The re-energized song continues on for was while, longer than I had tape. When the tape runs out, the song is still filled with energy and exploration.

Writing this to you all made me think that I hope that someday when the people who care about me look back at the life I've led, they'll be able to say that I played with full enjoyment and a sense of exploration right up to the time I ran out of tape.

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Peter T.
Date: 31 Jul 99 - 10:09 AM

Amen, amen, AMEN.
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: katlaughing
Date: 31 Jul 99 - 05:45 PM

SOurdough: WRITE THE BOOK!! Your stories and writing are engaging and heartwarming. Just do it!:-)

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Peter T.
Date: 31 Jul 99 - 05:57 PM

Yeah, come on Sourdough. You write like a soured angel on wheels. It would be a perfect travel book, with a map of your travels, and stories of the music associated with each place, and what you found when you got there. You have the format already. Any sensible travel books editor would grab it up. We don't mean to curse you with expectation, but hell, you'd sell two copies anyway.
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Sourdough
Date: 31 Jul 99 - 07:33 PM

Peter and Kat,

I have a friend, he's my best friend, met him just as we were starting what we humorously refer to as our careers after college. Actually, Joe didn't finish college and he has kept a New York street kid accent and attitude despite work experiences in museums, public broadcasting, and advertising agencies.

Joe is a writer. He did start a book about a trip we took across country together but I guess he got sidetracked. He started writing a movie script about two women pirate leaders (true story), the Spanish Armada, and the Irish alliance at the time of the Armada. Somehow, motorcycling got lost.

More recently he has asked me to help him with a book of stories which we would collect from longtime riders, stories a lot like what some of the people here post on Mudcat, warm, human stories about human intereaction. I don't know whether it will come off.

Your talking about a book reminded me of Joe, (Rainmaker as he calls himself on his CB)made me go looking for anything I wrote about our trip. I found a fragment, about ten pages, which I'll e-mail if you will send me an address. Sourdough and Rainmaker - we make quite a pair. Joe is cynical, quick, and funny. He is a knee-jerk conservative with a sense of humor and a sense of proportion. My knee jerks in almost the opposite direction, I speak slower and, I think, more thoughtfully. If you've read, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", Joe is clearly and compulsively Appolonian while I am Dionesian in my attitude toward motorcycles yet we have driven to Florida, to Canada and then on this trip, through America's Heartland, together, kind of the Odd Couple of Motorcycling.

Kat,

Does your husband or S.O. know Hilda Mae Wetherbee from Wayne Green's operation? I used to spend a lot of time in Peterboro and at the McDowell Colony. Peterboro's one of my favorite places, not jut Our Town, My Town.

Sourdough

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: LEJ
Date: 01 Aug 99 - 06:18 PM

Good thread, Rex!

Just a thought about Peter's comments. Why is it that music is becoming more and more an event? What I mean is that there seems to be more and more space developing between the musician and the audience, to the detriment of both.. I may have once thought that the essential music experience was gained by either playing music in a large room to a crowd of listeners, or by becoming one of those listeners. I now think that that basic experience, the one yielding the greatest joy and satisfaction, is the intimate one born out of sharing.The one that glorifies a common impulse of love of one another and of the music, and not the posturings of the ego. Maybe that is why, as I mature, I find myself drawn back to acoustic and traditional music; music that has little to do with idolatry, and much to do with friendship. Music that breaks down the barriers between performer and audience.

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Rincon Roy
Date: 02 Aug 99 - 09:47 AM

Subject: For Peter T.
From: Sourdough
Date: 05 Aug 99 - 02:10 PM

I've been meaning to write to you:

When you read that piece I wrote a few messages back and said I wrote "like a soured angel". I've been puzzling over that.

Anyway, I have sort of taken your advice. I've collected the stories so I at least have them in one file. I was amazed to see that it ran about 25 pages. Now I have to figure out what to do with it. (Stuff it where?)

Sourdough

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Peter T.
Date: 05 Aug 99 - 02:57 PM

Sourdough,
The great moment for angels occurs in Milton's Paradise Lost, the great shifting moment in Western culture during the 17th century, the moment when Satan becomes more interesting than God. From that moment on -- reaching something of an apotheosis in the "Wings of Desire" or in any doomed poet of our acquaintance -- the idea of heaven as the holy place is replaced by the idea of the earth as the potential holy place, and the fall of angels -- angels flying too close to the ground, angels choosing earth life over heavenly stillness and barely surviving the crash -- becomes the centre of the desire to transform the everyday into the eternal, while not losing the everyday -- the aching of never, the bitterness of failed hope, the joy of food after hunger (all those things that God cannot understand). Dark experience, the voyage into and out of hell on earth becomes the journey to enlightenment. Wilderness and desert replace paradise and the golden city. Therefore, "soured angel on wheels".

My advice: Don't stuff it. Get a map, or make a map of where you have been, about the size of your biggest floor. Put the written fragments of your journey on the places where you have been. Sit and look at it for a few hours. Add the trinkets, photos of all the rest of the places. Then fill in the lines and spaces you haven't written about with more writing fragments. Put it all together and a condensed version of the map into a binder. Then sell it for large amounts of reward, like Mudcat adoration.
yours, Peter T.
P.S. Please remember I am joking about something serious.

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: katlaughing
Date: 05 Aug 99 - 03:00 PM

And good stuff, it is, SD. There are a lot of publications you could submit it to, either in short installments or all together.

Hey, Max, maybe along with a Mudcat book, we could do one of Mudcatters' writings, not necessarily those they post to the threads. Sort of a compliation of our best literary, to do with music or not??? Whaddaya'll think?

kat

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: SkylarkOne
Date: 05 Aug 99 - 04:09 PM

What a beautiful story. I'm crying.

Subject: THe Soured Angel and the Blind Poet
From: Sourdough
Date: 06 Aug 99 - 12:03 AM

If I wasn't so attached to "Sourdough", I think I would switch over to "Soured Angel". Although I have met a few soiled angels, I had never run across a soured one.

No wonder I feel at home here. The subjects can range from traditional music to motorcycles, Milton, and Possum parts, all within a few sentences.

Sourdough

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Lady McMoo
Date: 06 Aug 99 - 05:48 AM

Fine stories! This reminds me of a trip to Ireland on the Fishguard-Rosslare ferry about 10 years ago. Unfortunately, on the outbound leg a severe storm struck and the boat was unable to dock at either harbour and had to rough it out for about 10 hours. As this is polite thread I will not try to describe the state of the boat or its passengers! We had a cabin and although Patricia managed to sleep, the "Poseidon Adventure" kept drifting into my mind every time I tried to nod off help by some very loud kind of resonating cluncky sound from the bowels of the ship! It was dismal.

Then someone said "A session's started up in what's left of the bar!". Needless to say my heels were not seen for dust and I was down in a flash to the "prohibited" car deck to fetch my instruments! The session was a great one...spectacular in the extreme...as we tried to stay on our seats...and took everyone's mind of the ongoing problems. Eventually, the wind died down and we docked but that day will stick out in my memory for a long time!

Not the airport...but I hope of amusement anyway!

mcmoo

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Willie-O
Date: 05 Mar 03 - 09:27 PM

Another great old thread.

I am consciously looking for evidence that in spite of everything, it's a wonderful world.

W-O

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Amos
Date: 05 Mar 03 - 09:53 PM

Willie-O,

Hell you don't have to trawl the back-track of the Mudcat to do that. Try making a snowman or starting a round of Cripple Creek in your nearest airport!! Plenty of evidence lying around, bud!!

For that natter, I get that feeling just listening to your MP3s.

So there!

A

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Ebbie
Date: 05 Mar 03 - 10:01 PM

Bless you, Willie-O. Just what I needed- but I want more of the same! Maybe if we concentrate on the really glorious things of life, the world itself will get better? There are several threads, including this one, that are wonderful.

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Sorcha
Date: 05 Mar 03 - 11:06 PM

I don't think I've ever told this one here. Back in 1989 when my dad died we borrowed a motor home to drive back to Winfield, KS for his memorial service. It's about a 14 hr drive from here, but Dad grew up, married and raised us kids there and Mom wanted to have a memorial service for him there.

Nebraska has these wonderful, huge rest areas on the Interstate 4 lane. Trees, grass, ponds, geese in early spring and late fall. Beautiful places. We stopped at one to stretch our legs. As we parked I noticed a man sitting on the hood of his car playing a Mossman (made in Winfield)guitar. I grabbed Maggie the fiddle and hollered "be right back!" We sat and played about an hour for my family and the rest stop patrons. Never got his name or anything else. I know my dad would have loved it.

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: open mike
Date: 06 Mar 03 - 01:00 AM

Sorcha-glad to hear a musical Nebraska story!
I was in Lincoln working on the program for a
memorial for both of my parents who had died a
few weeks before. I got up the nerve to contact
a philosphy professor who was still teaching at
the same university i went to 30 years ago. He
hosted a coffee house in the student union base-
ment. I played there. He has since become quite
well-known and I caught up with him between gigs,
one was a performance in honor of a poet who had
just published a book, or been granted some award,
or both, and the other was on the front steps of
a fraternity house in his neighborhood. I was
welcomed to join him on the steps and we played
for quite a while. I was inspired to play some
tunes at the momorial the next day. He retired
a few weeks later, and I might not have located
him at another time. I was able to let him know
how much his music meant to me. I also had the
opportunity a few years before to play music with
a mandolin player that i admired for the occasion
of my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary .

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: open mike
Date: 06 Mar 03 - 01:07 AM

oh and as another place that likes to lay claim to
William Cody (Buff. Bill) there is a Scout's Rest Ranch
in North Platte Nebraska boasting of his time spent there.

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Bullfrog Jones
Date: 06 Mar 03 - 04:18 AM

What a great thread __ thanks to Rex for starting it, to Willie-O for reviving it and to Sourdough for making it magical. Here's my 'unexpected' music story.
We were on our way to Hungary as part of a reciprocal arrangement that had brought some Hungarian singers and musicians to Stony Stratford. We were all (about a dozn of us) to meet up in Szombathely, and our contingent was The Bullfrogs plus Roddy Clenaghan, packed into a van, taking it in turns to drive and sleep (with Vicky the fiddler about six months pregnant, but we weren't worried -- we had plenty of gaffa tape and a Swiss Army knife). We've decided to stop somewhere in Germany, find a cheap hotel and get a bath and a decent night's sleep, so we come off the autobahn, take a few wrong turns and end up in a completely different town from the one we'd been headed for. We park the van and head for a late lunch at a nearby bar. We're all sitting outside in the sunshine, and one of our number comes back from the interior and says that it looks like they have music here in the evenings. So we persuade Vicky, who has a bit of the German, to go in and see if we might come back later and play a bit. Yes, no problem they say. So we go off and find a hotel (a bizarre hunting lodge-type scenario, with stuffed animals and little skulls everywhere), have a nap and a shower and head back to the bar in the evening. It's a cellar bar, and they've made space for us at one end, so we sit around session-style and do our stuff, a mix of band material and individual turns, which goes down well as the bar fills up. The beer is flowing and you couldn't put a glass down without it being filled up again. Then out comes a trayful of whiskies (Chivas Regal, no less) and the music goes on. The crowd is pretty knowledgable, and there's one guy who looks like Jerry Garcia's German cousin who's mad about Dick Gaughan, so Roddy's Burns songs go down a treat with him. About ten o'clock the barmaid comes over and says perhaps you'd like to stop for a while and have something to eat, and serves up a free meal! We carry on after that for another hour, more beers, another trayful of whiskies, and at the end of the night the barmaid comes back and says we had a collection and hands over the equivalent of seventy-odd English pounds! It was the most magical night of a great trip -- all the better for being totally unexpected, and we've kept a card from the place for next time we're in the area. In fact Jerry Garcia said that if we get in touch with him he'll fix us up in a few other venues, so we might just make a proper tour of it.
Oh, and two days after we got back to Blighty, Vicky went into premature labour!

BJ

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Dead Horse
Date: 06 Mar 03 - 07:50 AM

Small world McMoo, I was on that bloody ferry from Fishguard to Rosslare. Outward trip spent in the gents, evacuating both ends at once. I was so knackered that I missed the session completely, but I do remember this Irish truck driver, complete with cowboy hat. He was telling "Kerryman" jokes, non stop.
Pity we never met on that trip.

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Willie-O
Date: 06 Mar 03 - 09:31 AM

Bullfrog, that pub sounds like the real Fiddler's Green.
Jerry Garcia's got a German cousin who's mad for Dick Gaughan? And this guy looked just like him? There's one for the books.

When I was a young fella of 20, a guitar addict just starting on the fiddle, I undertook a hitchhiking expedition to the west in the early summer of 1977. For reasons of portability, and a certain je ne sais quoi, I took my fiddle along (although I could barely play it) and left my guitar at home. The first leg of the journey was the lengthy slog from Ottawa to Winnipeg, my first time going to the Winnipeg Folk Festival.

On my first western journey a few years earlier, it took me five full days just to get through Ontario. This time I had better luck, and my last ride of the first long day was with an older guy who was going to Blind River. Blind River We got there about midnight, and he offered to buy me a beer in the hotel ("hotel" being Ontarian for "bar" in the 70's), so in we went.   

As I was starting on my second Molsen, an old gent nearby asked the inevitable question "is that a fiddle ya got in there?", pointing at my funky denim-covered case. I agreed that it was a fiddle in the fiddle case. I think he might have asked me to play a tune, and I don't remember whether I tried to play something or not.

This could have been a tricky situation. If you are in the hotel bar in Blind River after midnight and have a fiddle that you can't really play worth a shit, and one guy asks you to play something, you don't want to offend him, but you might not want to irritate the other Blind Riverians present by acceding to the request.

So I asked the old gent if he played, and when he said he used to, I handed him my fiddle. It's the same one I play today, my grandfather's, a very good instrument, a Pietro Vareni. Made in France by an Italian for import by the Williams & Sons company of Toronto in 1911. Has a great sound but it wasn't till many years later that I found someone who could set it up properly; it was always hard to play. The bow came with the fiddle; a good stick but very lightweight, not really a fiddle bow   

Now, you need to understand that "Maple Sugar" is the essential Ontario fiddle tune. Composed by the legendary Ward Allen, who died young in the mid-60's, it is the standard; at a fiddle contest, it's the tune that they'll get every single fiddler in the house to play on, along with St Anne's Reel, when they need to perk things up.

This fellow takes my fiddle and bow, and plays "Maple Sugar" like a contest winner, with all the fancy double stops and vibratos. The bar was silent. He was some good. He went through it two or three times, then finished to some applause, and put the fiddle back in its case.

"I used to play with Ward Allen," he remarked offhandedly, "but I haven't picked up a fiddle in fifteen years."   

I finished my beer, said good night and thanks, picked up my fiddle and backpack, and started into the warm summer night, walking west on Highway 17, thinking that I really wanted to learn to play like that.

I learned some stuff about how memory works in school this year. The shortest type of memory is "sensory memory" which is retained for only a couple of seconds. But twenty-five years later, I can still recall vividly the sensations I felt in that chance encounter.

Willie-O

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: GUEST,Peter T.
Date: 06 Mar 03 - 11:35 AM

To repeat: Amen. yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Walking Eagle
Date: 06 Mar 03 - 12:46 PM

What a great thread. I wish a had a bodasious story to add, but I don't. I just know that when I go somewhere and have my little dulcimer with me, I'll play a little bit and everyone wants to know about the insturment.

I don't know. People are glued to their cells and Walkmen walking down the streets these days. Forget anyone singing, they don't even talk to you anymore!

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Naemanson
Date: 06 Mar 03 - 02:54 PM

Two Sundays back, as I was waiting for my delayed flight to take off, I wandered down past the restaurant at the Portland (Maine) Jetport and ran into Christine Lavin coming out. Her flight was delayed too. I was carrying my Taylor Backpacker and she had a guitar case. We talked about insturments for a bit. She told me of losing and then recovering her Backpacker on the subway in New York. She showed me her new guitar made for her by Grit Laskin and let me play it a bit. That is one pretty instrument. The neck is inlaid with the solar system and the upper back curve has been relieved so you don't get the edge cutting into your arm. And it plays very nicely.

We had a lovely time.

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Marion
Date: 06 Mar 03 - 05:40 PM

Great thread.

Willie-O, did you ever come across my Maple Sugar story in this post?

Marion

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: GUEST, Dale
Date: 06 Mar 03 - 05:57 PM

Not on a par with some of the stories above, but today at the school where I volunteer (volleyball coach) a couple of the high school boys brought their guitars to lunch, and after eating, they and some others sat around singing and playing until time to go back to class. I was far enough away that I could not tell WHAT they were singing, but the playing was pleasant enough, and definitely something to encourage. I hope they do it again, maybe even make it a regular session. Forty years connection with schools, and this was the first time I had ever seen this sort of thing done.

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Marion
Date: 06 Mar 03 - 06:11 PM

When getting on the train from Halifax to Montreal, I met another person travelling with a guitar and said to him, "I'll meet you in the observation car after they take tickets."

We jammed a bit, nothing extraordinary, but what I remember is the story he told me. He was on the way to Montreal to see his fiance, who he had only met in person once before: they met and fell in love over the phone. The way they met was that he was jamming at a house party and she phoned the hosts, and they put on the speaker phone so she could listen to a bit of the music. At that time he led a country romantic song and she fell in love hearing him sing it, and asked the hosts, "Who is that?" So they put him on the phone, and the rest is history.

Marion

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: GUEST,Dale
Date: 06 Mar 03 - 06:17 PM

A problem. You know how somebody or something can be gone while you manage not to notice it until long after? Anyway, I see Sourdough's last posts were in Feb/Mar 02, just days before setting out on a 10 day trip to Ireland. Since then, NOTHING.   Any news, new name, ????? Maybe he never came back from Ireland . . .

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: GUEST, Dale
Date: 06 Mar 03 - 06:29 PM

Marion, your story reminds me a bit of Lynn Shaw, a Northern boy as I recall, Wisconsin maybe.   Anyhow he went to an Old Time festival and though he was an accomplished violinist, he wanted to learn the old time style of playing. So he asked someone for help in finding someone to teach him how. The person he asked said something to the effect of, "Go over there and ask that girl."   That girl was Liz Smathers of the Dutch Cove Old Time String Band, who eventually became Liz Shaw. That's the way I heard it, perhaps someone knows more or better details of the event.

I guess the stories are not all THAT similar, but both show how much pure chance affects your life decisions.

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 06 Mar 03 - 07:34 PM

I don't want to thread drift away from the beautiful stories above, but "fun at the airport" in the thread title reminded me of "the goodbye game." Where else but at an airport can you kiss in public without a lot of stares, thus "the goodbye game." I remember it mentioned in a TV movie (with Bruce Boxleitner), possibly Picasso Summer??? (with beautiful Mancini background music)

Subject: RE: how to meet musicians or fun at the airport
From: open mike
Date: 07 Mar 03 - 04:29 PM

as for falling in love over the phone..isn't there a mud cat
who was asking for advice about this? perhaps they are the
person in the story??!!

and as for maple sugar, some folks sing maple sugar,
and some maple syrup, in the chorus of the song Hot Buttered Rum.
is that song avaiolable anywhere in notation, or wave file format?

and in Ireland you can access mud cat-so how does that explain
the disappearance of sour dough ?

and Dale, if you can find a way to encourage those students,
they might do it more! maybe the school music teacher could
feture them in a review/revue of some sort? or they could
start a music club at school.

And one of the songs i enjoy the most lately, by Anne Hills
done on Tom Paxton's album American Skies, was written at a
song writing retreat at Christine Lavin's place...