Courage – Live Recordings

The last two weekends have been a flurry of action as the workshop production of Couragewas underway, first at Chief Ike’s Mambo Room in Adam’s Morgan and then in the blackbox at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop.
It was a trippy way to reenter the performance scene, and I had a blast working with the band, jamming [...]

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Baking Something New

Hey all,
So I dropped off the face of the blogging earth, huh? Sorry to those who were checking this page out with any regularity. But it makes me laugh a little when I look at the date of my last post — October 29, 2008 — because just a week later I learned I had [...]

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Echoes

It’s been a billion years since I last posted, and so for all six of you paying attention, I apologize.
I feel I have a good excuse, though: We’re buying a house. I have been advised it is not all like giving birth. You do not forget the agony of delivery the moment your eyes rest [...]

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Hit Dupont Circle for Morning Music

This is just a quick-dash post to let anyone riding the DC metro this morning know that there’s a fantastic violin and electric bass duo playing at the south exit of the Dupont Circle metro stop. To hear “If I Were A Rich Man” trilling along and unscored by the bom-bom-bom of the bass as [...]

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More Graves Mountain Pics

I have a few more pictures from the weekend at the Graves Mountain Festival of Music that I thought I’d throw onto the screen for you. In other music-making news, I’m working on “the chop” and lamenting that I did not inherit my mother’s long fingers.
These folks had the right idea. The stream ran right [...]

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Graves Mounatin Breakdown

I turn to my friend in the lawn chair beside me, give him a blissed-out smile that is equal parts sunburn and warm wine, and with my generally dormant mountain accent turned up to thick and dripping, sigh, “Lord, I love the smell of honeysuckle on the night air.”
And, in agreement, the band on stage [...]

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Lord, What a High…

Woohoo! I got to sing with the band!!! (Excess of exclamation points is totally acceptable here.)
Last Saturday night, my musical cohort Kevin and I went to hear The Fox Hunt play at a bar in Leesburg. Two words: Hell yeah!
I’d only seen them play live while busking at the Vienna metro, so their show was [...]

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Sometimes all you gotta do is ask.

In my quest to learn the mandolin, I’ve been playing my favorite bluegrassy, folksy, old-school country bands on the stereo, and trying to ferret out the chords along with the music.
Johnny Cash (of course), Hackensaw Boys (my home-mountain band), Nickel Creek, Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson, Dixie Chicks, Greg Brown, Gram Parsons and my newest addiction: [...]

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A “Noble” Attempt

I went cabin-camping last week with some friends (I note “cabin-camping” because it’s important to distinguish when one is camping with or without walls, as that has a great impact on one’s mindset at the outset), and my dear friend Bryce brought along his guitar. I brought my mandolin. He’s been taking lessons for [...]

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Mando-Madness

After several months of learning on my $30 eBay special which has served me well as an intro instrument, I took the plunge: I bought myself a shiny new mandolin:

It’s an Ibanez M510. Low on price in the grand scheme of things, but good parts and better for the sum of them.
I would like to [...]

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