Gig Recap & Two Songs

It's been almost a month since my last post. I'm currently balancing work, writing, and wedding planning (not necessarily in that order) and so music events have not been copious. I did, however, play at the Elk's Club as I mentioned in my last entry.

It went wonderfully. We played for about 50 minutes and the songs followed the set list we worked out minus "The Streets of London". The one problem that arose for me was the volume for my bouzouki. I played this on a number of songs and it really wasn't loud enough. I was set up with a condenser mic that really didn't do the job. The other vocals and guitar drowned out my picking quite a bit. That said, it sounded pretty good on stage. A couple friends of Gary recorded the whole show on digital camera. The sound quality was a little off and, I think, it is here that the bouzouki didn't come off all the well. I guess I'll need a pickup! Our singing was good and everything else went off without a hitch.

I'll see if I can geta clip or two from the show to post. In the meantime, here are two songs I recorded a couple days ago with the webcam. The first is "The Leaving of Liverpool", and the second "Free in the Harbour" by Stan Rogers. Enjoy.

Paddy's Day

Even though Paddy's Day is not until Monday there are, of course, parties occuring everywhere this weekend in celebration of being Irish (or not being Irish, whichever you prefer). Here it is no different. Tonight I happen to be playing with two other guys (Gary and Dave) at the Elks Club here. I've never been in the building before, but I'm sure it will be fun. We've had a couple practices and have a set list lined up. Here's what we are doing:

1. Botany Bay
2. Foggy Shores of Home
3. Fiddler's Green
4. Big Strong Man
5. Excursion Around the Bay
6. Will You Go Lassie Go
7. Walk in the Irish Rain
8. Tickle Cove Pond
9. The Streets of London
10. Catch the Wind

We have a couple back up tunes ready in case there's a situation where filler will be required, either for us or any of the other performers. In an hour I have to leave to do a sound check and final practice run of a couple songs. I've been looking forward to this, but am only now starting to get a tiny bit nervous. Nerves are funny like that.

I'll be on guitar, bouzouki, tin whistle, and bodhran tonight. I'll be switching between these the whole time. Should be fun as long as I remember what I'm playing! Hopefully I'll have pictures or a video or two to put up later. We shall see.

Fill 'er Up!

I've been working on the bouzouki regularly. I'm no Andy Irvine, but I'm at the stage where I want to use fills to make the inbetween singing parts of songs more interesting. Right now I'm looking at a melody sequence as a fill. Later I'll probably want to spruce it up a bit and make things a little more original.

The first song I've done this with is "Catch the Wind" by Donovan. This song has always been a favourite of mine. It's heartfelt, direct and has a touch of poetry about it. Anyway, I modified the fill I've heard in the Irish Descendant's version of the song and came up with this:



The next one I'll put up is "The Boys of the Old Brigade". This song has a lovely lilt to it. The fill is the last two lines of the chorus. Not difficult and leaves some room to spice it up a bit too.

An Original from Me

I usually post my own versions of other songs here, but I've decided this time to put up an original of mine called "Long Shore". This is inspired by people in Newfoundland who have had to move thousands of miles to get work. It's a situation the Irish are used to and we are used to it here as well. Numerous people I grew up with have moved away and often end up raising their families away from the place that many still call home. It's something that many of them detest and I have to agree. The ones who stay often give the better paying jobs and opportunity to remain here.

Long Shore is a place in Heart's Content, NL where I'm from. The images of the power house, etc come from my experience.

A little something of home...

First Steps

Since Christmas I've been spending a lot of time working on the bouzouki. The first thing I did was do a google search to find bouzouki chords. There are a lot of different tunings. I prefer the standard Irish bouzouki tuning - GDAD. I will, no doubt, experiment more with others as time progresses. Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, here is the site that I got them from:

Brian's Huge Chordlist Collection

There is so much I want to do with this thing that I'm almost boggled by it. It's the perfect instrument for me since it has a full enough sound to accompany singing, while being well suited to picking tunes. At the moment I'm learning some tunes I've always played on guitar and trying to work out some fills for them. I'm mainly concerned at the moment with becoming familiar with chord fingerings and keys. So far I haven't had to play much outside of D, G, or C. I can use a capo for other changes, but I'd like to go beyond this with time.

In the meantime, this is the first song I learned on the bouzouki.