Northern Illinois Steelband

Boy, so much has been happening I haven't been able to keep up with the blog at all.

Here's a short thing, though.

Tonight at went to a concert by the Northern Illinois Steelband at the Old Town School of Folk Music.

Check out this picture (Courtesy of Pat).  I have never in my live heard anything like all these steel drums coming in loud right at the same time.  Like a symphony of falling icicles.

I made a quick count from the balcony (where I could only see 2/3 of the group) and I think there were about 30 musicians.  Imagine - some of them were playing between two and six drums.   What a sound!

I've been spending a lot of time editing more video of Frank and putting together a video of The Gather-All.  Stay tuned!  Thanks for reading!

Jason

Slide Whistles, E Huli, and the Barehand Jugband

Another full day of teaching.  I love passing the tune Old Joe Clark on to young people.  What is it about that tune? Also, Skip came and played harmonica with my Kids Guitar 1 class.  We worked on This Land is Your Land.  I want to have Skip visit all my classes now.  He was great!  They really loved the kazoo and slide whistle demonstrations.

I was teaching so I only caught the last 5 minutes of the Old Town School "Town Hall Meeting" to discuss the new strategic plan.  I was there just long enough to help everyone sing "E Huli".  I was quite honored.  Lani, you are an inspiration.  Ann Maria, so are you.  "You've got to sing when the spirit says SING!"

Then Lindsay and I headed down to the Hideout to hear a happy hour set by the Barehand Jugband.  They were great as always.  I was honored to play a couple of tunes with them.  Pamela's washboard sounds great and Clay, as always, was a master jug player.  I like how he's started teaching some post-gig jug lessons on the empty beer bottles.

"That's Irish music - Chicago Style." - The Irish Music School of Chicago at the Old Town School of Folk Music

Just got home from the World Music Wednesday concert at the Old Town School.  This week's performer was the The Irish Music School of Chicago, directed by Sean Cleland.  I only stayed for the first set, but I loved it.

The beginning was all teen-agers.  There were (as I remember) four fiddles, flute, bodhran, and octave mandolin.  They played with great energy.  They said that they were nervous, but you wouldn't know it.  They played into the mics, called out the names and stories about some stories about the tunes, and counted the tunes off with a lot of power.  Then they sounded great when they played.  Very impressive.

About half way through the first set,  Sean invited "The Irish Music School of Chicago community" onto stage.  That was awesome.  There where about five rows of ten people per row on the Old Town stage.   I knew a bunch of the adults, which was very cool.  They played a bunch of tunes, together.  Sean said some of the people had only been studying for a short period of time.  But obviously a bunch of the musicians had more training.  Great to see a moment of "everyone together" to get such a prime spot in the set instead of the end of the second set.

As for my life, it was a good day of teaching.  RPMS and Strummers and Kids Guitar at the Old Town School.  My Wednesday kids guitar class is particularly hungary, and they did a great job today when we split into smaller groups to work on the chorus of This Land is Your Land.