My therapist is sick and canceled. That upsets my coffee plan. I have none in the house but figured I’d stop at the Dunkin’ Donuts at the Harrison train station, get my free Dunkin’ Perks beverage of my choice, and buy coffee beans. Now what? I’ll make hot chocolate with my breakfast; I can live with that, but no way I’ll get myself out of the house early without the impetus of a scheduled appointment.
This is going to be a very busy musical weekend. It’s APAP, Association of Performing Arts Presenters and there are all kinds of showcases going on. It’s like NERFA but spread around the City. I know I’ll miss shows I want to go to. We’ll see what I have the time and energy for. Energy is still an issue for me. Now that I don’t have therapy there is likely to be a nap on today’s agenda. I’ll also watch The Good Place as I forgot it came back from hiatus last night. How did nobody tell me! Google feed fell down on the job. That’s rare.
I finally had success with the air fryer yesterday. I made country style sparerib and roasted potatoes. It made the rib much faster than in a conventional oven and the potatoes came out perfect. I’m a meat and potatoes man. As you are what you eat does that make me a meat head and Mr. Potato Head? Is Mr. Potato Head too much to aspire to?
That’s how far I got in blogging yesterday. I did watch The Good Place. Turns out that I think just like the show’s writers. It followed my prediction of where things were leading. I could write an entire entry on that as it’s really about the design of a fair afterlife. But I won’t. I went to APAP last night and can write about music.
While I’ve gone to APAP showcases in outside venues I never went to one in the host hotel. I thought you had to register to do so. Turns out I was wrong. I got an invitation from TAARKA to attend the Secret Agents Showcase and saw that many of my favorites were also there. Here’s the lineup.
Rini (6:40pm & 11pm)
American Patchwork Quartet (7pm)
w/Clay Ross, Falu, Clarence Penn, & Yasushi NakamuraTaarka (7:20pm)
Fire & Grace (7:40 & 10pm)
Jayme Stone (8pm)
Alasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas (8:20pm)
Michael Cleveland (8:40pm & 10:20)
Emerald Rae (9pm & 11:20pm)
Eleanor Dubinsky (9:20pm)
Bombadils (9:40pm)
Alphabet of Wrongdoing (10:40pm)
Kin Copaset (11:40pm)
Gino Castillo (12am)
Zach Brock (12:20am)
World Trad Orchestra (12:40am)
Who knows which artists I already knew and loved? All but one is easy as I’ve written about them here. The ones I knew are TAARKA, Alasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas, Emerald Rae, and The Bombadils. The only one that I hadn’t written about, because I hadn’t seen them, is Alasdair and Natalie. That’s ironic as I’ve known of them the longest and have listened to their music. Emerald has played the Budgiedome, and she and TAARKA have had a segment of Gord’s Gold about them.
All the ones I had previously seen I discovered at NERFA. I expected APAP to be like NERFA, in some ways it was and in others it wasn’t. The private showcases like I went to are not done acoustically in hotel rooms sitting on beds. This was in a conference room with a sound system, stage, and theater seating. For some of the acts I could have used my earplugs. APAP is not a folk conference, it features all kinds of music. The showcase I attended was heavy on folk but not exclusively.
This was the largest configuration I’ve seen of TAARKA, a four piece, the Enion on fiddle and David on mandolin and guitar, were joined by an upright bass and a bodhran. They will never not blow me away. They bring in whatever influences they love, unconstrained by genre and expectations.
I’m afraid I might be the entire target audience for Fire and Grace; they combine baroque with Celtic and Baltic folk. It’s a connection I see. I have often said that much Celtic and Appalachian music appeals to the Bach part of my brain. They share the effortless interweaving of musical parts. You have to listen to the individual threads not just the totality. Fire and Grace is the duo of guitarist William Coulter and violinist Edwin Huizinga. They were my first discovery of the evening.
As I said before Alasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas are not a discovery. Though I have not seen them before they are part of my world. They play traditional Scottish dance music, which features the fiddle and cello. For centuries that’s what a Scottish dance band looked like. Natalie is the sister of Brittany Haas who I have seen countless times in many configurations. She and Alasdair are part of the same community, the Scene. I’m pretty sure they’ve played at the Jenkins’ and perhaps the House of Love, yet I have always missed them. They were not a disappointment live. They were even better. I need to see them as often as possible. The only person in the audience I knew was Lily Henley, a friend and fiddler, who was there to see Alasdair and Natalie. I love when musicians I love, love musicians I love.
Michael Cleveland and Flamekiller was another discovery. They are a bluegrass band led by award winning fiddler, Michael Cleveland. He does not suffer from a big ego as it took me a while to figure out that this was his band. Everyone in the band shines but his star shines brighter.
I’ve written about Emerald many times in the few years I’ve known her. She became an instant old friend. She’s a solo fiddler and singer/songwriter that has carved out her own niche, a niche I love. She excels at all three skills, fiddling, singing, and songwriting. You need to know her.
The Bombadils are the band that I’ve seen that I’ve seen the least often. They live in Halifax and I think I’ve seen them only one time out of NERFA. When I said hello to Sarah Frank the fiddler she had to ask where I knew her from. Kudos to her for asking. I’m in that situation all the time, I know I know someone but not from where. Her partner is guitarist and mandolinist Luke Fraser. They too play Celtic combined with American and Canadian trad. Tom Bombadil is perhaps my favorite character in Lord of the Rings so I knew before I ever saw them that they were kindred spirits. I met Kaitlin Raitz from Oliver the Crow when she played with Bombadil at NERFA. It’s a small, incestuous, and wonderful world.
One big difference of APAP from NERFA is that I’m not staying at the hotel. I decided to call it a night after Fire & Graces’ second set. I’m sure there were some great music that I left on the table. I also missed out on going to Rockwood to see Bumper Jackson; that was also part of APAP. You can’t see everything I have lots more music this weekend. I might not be able to write tomorrow. It depends on what music I go to hear. A lot of this is about endurance. I potentially have a double header tonight and a triple header tomorrow.
Wise Madness 