Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"if you want someone dead, you should have to work for it." -- merde, 2005-09-22

I've got some political/economic/philosophical thoughts to try to organize, but I feel I should get some "what I've been up to" out of the way first, and try to find time to turn rambling musings into a coherent presentation of ideas later. This entry contains stuff that'll still work if left all rambly, so my words-per-minute will be higher.

So, the long-promised last-weekend weekend-before-last entry (I started writing this last week) ...

Saturday (2006-05-06) was a mix of frustrations and blessings. It started well enough, with silmaril and Breno arriving to give me a ride to the Spoutwood Fairie Festival where Thrir Venstri Foetr was to perform. I was going to be on guitar and recorder instead of double-bass and recorder, so fitting into Breno's car was actually possible. I hadn't eaten breakfast, gotten enough sleep, or been able to find my hat, but I didn't have to stay alert enough to drive. Which, ah, contributed to the first mishap. There's a lot to be said for nifty conversation that passes the time quickly, but its effects one the ability to spot road signs is not among those things. All three of us overlooked our exit and we wound up twenty miles too far north.

Easily enough remedied spatially, but damaging temporally. An 11:50 arrival at the parking lot for a 12:00 set -- not good. (It's a good thing we were already following the advice that maugorn so emphatically suggested at rehearsals afterward, and planning to arrive much earlier than our scheduled start time, so there was that bit of time for something to go wrong and still get there.) So we were walking rather quickly, threading the crowd, when we passed the poor, misguided protesters shouting Christian-inspired (I'll not credit their theology with being consistent enough to warrant the denominational label without a qualifier) slogans and catchphrases over a fence at all the attendees on the path to the front gate. Theology aside, there were flawed assumptions about the festival and the folks attending it, obvious even at the speed with wich we passed them by.

Oh no! Magical creatures! A mix of people who a) believe in magical creatures, b) believe they are magical creatures, c) want to believe in magical creatures, d) like the idea of magical creatures without believing in them, and e) just want to go enjoy music and a day in the sun while considering the magical creatures unimportant stage-decoration! They must all be Pagans! Oh no! Maybe shouting at them will make them abandon their debauched plans to attend a ... very family-oriented event? (I wish I'd been wearing my larger, more obvious cross, when I shouted back at the protesters, to make the error of one of their assumptions more obvious.) Let's take a moment to review, shall we? The Bible is actually quite clear on the appropriateness of magic, and it says the same thing several times in pretty much the same way each time: do not consult the fortune-tellers of the people you just conquered. I think most of us can follow that advice easily enough, whether we attend fun festivals or not, right?

We actually got to the stage, where maugorn and the dancers were waiting for us, by noon according to my watch (which is really my cell phone, which corrects itself to whatever Cingular's network clock says), but opening cases, plugging in, and tuning still meant starting the set five minutes late and not warmed up. I didn't play great the first few tunes, but there was also a problem getting enough signal from my pickup to the board, so I'm not sure anybody but maugorn heard me. The weather was wonderful for physical comfort and visual beauty, but the pleasant cross-stage breeze was stiff enough to stuff the notes right back into the recorders, and the recorder I used most was the bass, which is more susceptible to that effect than smaller ones are. I saw silmaril shielding her recorder from the wind; when I switched from guitar to recorder I sometimes had to turn my back to the rest of the band and the wind still stole some of my notes.

The stage was an especially good one for taking advantage of pre-gathered crowds -- across from the main group of food vendors and downhill from a bunch of canopy-shaded tables. We can usually gather a crowd to us easily enough, but here we had a head start. And they looked like they were enjoying the show.

The second set went better, due largely to not having just rushed in at the last minute. In between, we wandered around the festival a bit, ate yummy food, and found a place to sit and talk. There were a fair number of folks I knew there, to run into.

The three of us didn't hang around after our second set -- I had to save my spoons for the next day, and the other two had evening plans. We did grab a bite at the Paper Moon diner in north Baltimore on the way back. All in all, a good day. A tiring day, but I didn't use up all my energy.

Continuing the long-promised last-weekend weekend-before-last entry (I started writing this last week) ...

Sunday (2006-05-07) was a lower-key, lower-stress gig: about half of The Homespun Ceilidh Band playing more-ambiance-than-concert at a Children's Day at Riversdale, one of the historic house-museums in Prince George's County. The weather was even a tad nicer than the day before, and we set up under a canopy on the lawn. Because we were planning to mix in some English Country Dance tunes in addition to our usual lively Scottish & Irish dance music, I brought along the double-bass. So I was armed for bear: 6-string and 12-string guitars, rifle-case full or recorders, and the doghouse bass. I found a parking spot near the band, and since there were no stairs or curbs to deal with and the lawn looked fairly smooth, I screwed the wheel onto the endpin to move the bass from the car, instead of carrying it on my head.

So we played a couple of relaxed sets, sometimes with a small audience directly in front of us, sometimes with a few people at various distances turning to listen. And we were asked to play for the maypole, a short distance away.

And that's where one of the amusing bits comes in. We were asked to try to lead an audience over to the maypole, and I asked whether the schtick-value of playing the bass while walking was worth more than what it would cost in playing-accuracy. The consensus seemed to be that the cuteness factor would be a win, so I put the wheel back on the endpin and rolled it along behind the others as we walked over to the maypole playing the Furry Day Carol. A simple enough tune that the minor irregularities in the turf didn't throw me off enough for anyone else to notice. And now I can say that I've played marching double-bass. So there!

Because it was an explicitly children-oriented history event, with games and toys of the period when the house was built, I wasn't surprised that a number of kids were interested in the big instrument. So there was a bit of "instrument petting zoo" to the afternoon as I let a few children try dragging the bow across the strings, and played a few notes on the bass recorder for them.

Felicia had her bass viola da gamba there, of course. While she mostly played recorder when I was playing double bass, on a few tunes we did have both bass and double-bass going at the same time. Apparently I wasn't the only one who liked that sound, because at least one other member of the band commented on it.

A low-key, low-stress day, except for the bit where the nut^[1] of my 6-string guitar broke while I was playing it! We were playing Morrisson's Jig, which I do in dropped-D, and suddenly my tuning was off and my low string was buzzing like mad. Looking down, I saw that Something Was Wrong with my low string, so I wrapped my left thumb over it and played on. When we finished, I looked closer and realized what had happened. I made a joke about how instead of breaking a string this time, I'd broken my guitar, and switched to the 12-string for the rest of the performance. (Fortunately it was late in the day.) Of course I immediately broke a string on the 12-string -- go figure.

What was that about my luck? (A nut is not something that usually breaks on a guitar.)

So I wound up with bragging points for playing marching double bass, but also with a broken guitar. (And I think that's where I lost a pair of sunglasses, as well.) A mixed bag. Since I was already in PG County, I decided to go visit my mother in Bowie before heading back to Baltimore.

The week went to hell the following morning, with the illness I described in earlier journal entries, so it wasn't until Thursday or Friday that I finally got out to a music store to buy a new nut. Having a luthier carve a nut and fit it exactly to my guitar costs about $50 -- not a huge chunk of change for a repair, nor excessive for the kind of detailed job it is, but a major bite out of my budget. A bone nut blank -- just a piece of material roughly the right size and shape but without any grooves in it and no curve to match the fingerboard radius -- is only a few dollars, a plastic one being a little less. I should be able to carve a correct nut for my guitar from the bone blank that I bought, but it's a tedious process (probably a bit less so if I'd done it enough times to be good at it; I've only ever done it once before), and will be a pain to get exactly right. I've started shaping it but my number-one guitar is going to be out of commision for a bit longer. maugorn suggested that since Yamaha guitars are mass-produced, and it seems everyone and his brother has an FG-300 series axe in a closet (this is an FG-331 purchased in 1980), maybe Yamaha could sell me a nut already exactly shaped to my guitar as a stock replacement part. I've sent email to Yamaha but have not heard back yet. In theory, replacing the plastic factory nut with a bone one should change the tone of my guitar slightly, and in a way pretty much guaranteed to be an improvement according to nearly everyone's tastes (I considered carving one out of brass, but the sheet brass stock I've got is just a wee bit thinner than the old nut), but y'know, if I can get an exact replacement in plastic for only a couple dollars and save myself a week of fitting, measuting, removing, filing, refitting, ad nauseum, I'll take it. Until I hear back from Yamaha, I'm going to be working painstakingly with the needle files and the Dremmel.

For the record, bone dust smells wretched.

Next up: gig announcement for the coming weekend, and a writeup of the weekend just past.

[1] For anyone not familiar with guitar terminology: the nut is the [plastic, bone, or brass] thingie at the very top of the fingerboard, with grooves in it, that the strings pass over. So when it broke at the groove for the sixth string, there was no longer anything holding that string off the fingerboard or keeping it from sliding around.

Continuing the long-promised last-weekend weekend-before-last entry (I'm actually up to last-weekend at this point (and it's only Thursday) ...)

I had thought that Monday-last-week's illness was a stomach was a stomach virus, but when I mentioned my symptoms and how those symptoms responded to my reverting to the drug regimen of the previous week to the doc^[1] at the free clinic, her reaction made me wonder whether the whole thing was an adverse drug reaction instead of just being the drugs slowing my recovery from something else. Anyhow, we're trying something different instead of putting me back on the drug that seemed to cause-or-exacerbate the nausea and diarrhea. And I'm staying on the beta blocker until I get some sort of pharmacy assistance that'll pay for a more expensive, migraine-specific drug.

By Friday, I was feeling a lot more functional again; the improvement was slow enough that I wasn't sure until then that I'd be able to play on Saturday. But I got better, so joining the rest of The Homespun Ceilidh Band Saturday (at the Greenbelt Green Man Festival) was on.

Except that I hadn't begun to carve the replacement nut for my broken guitar yet, and the microphone I use in my 12-string needed repair but was not in my hands, so I had to borrow an axe (justgus37 brought his 6-string for me; he hadn't played it in ages because he pretty much sticks to bouzouki, flute, and whistle these days) and I lugged the toolbox and soldering iron with me. I wanted to get there nice and early, to fix that mic.

So, as noted in a post from my cell phone when it happened, I lost a tire on the way to the gig. Flying down the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, a bang, a change in the road noise, slightly mushier handling, and I knew I had a problem. Feh.

Actually, it only cost me 23 minutes: fifteen to change it, and the rest for slowing down to accomodate the "toy spare". (I hate those things. When I have a spare $40, I'll buy a used rim and a used tire and have a full-size spare.) So it did more damage to my blood pressure^[2] than my schedule. I started trying to figure out where to plug in the soldering iron, and before I sorted that out justgus had the thing open and was poking at its innards. We couldn't see the bad spot (at a previous gig it had developed a hum, as though the shield of the cable from the element to the battery pack had developed an intermittent break at the battery-pack end), nor could we find the problem with an ohmmeter, so we put it back together and figured maybe it had fixed itself. Fortunately we also found ourselves with a backup plan: the borrowed guitar had a pickup un it, so if needed I could use my soundhole pickup in my 12-string. (I don'y like the sound of it as much on the 12-string, but it'll do in a pinch.)

I'll get the bad points out of the way in a batch: The sound system was cranked up pretty loud, so conversation was difficult near the stage and tuning had to wait until the band before us finished. At least they were good (a 70s/80s cover band). The stage was rather small, and flimsy enough that the folks in our front row cautioned me against leaping about with my usual vigor. We'd been asked for a sound plan -- channel requirements etc. -- weeks earlier, but the folks who requested that never forwarded the info to the soundman, so our requirements were a compete surprise to him. (No, this is not the first festival to do that to us; some have been extremely formal about requiring documentation which never goes where it's needed.) We usually use thirteen or fourteen channels. They had eleven. If I'd known that, I could have trivially brought along an extra four or eight channels to be mixed either in the soundbooth (okay, tent) or on stage. I've had lots of practice patching boards to each other and making the combination straightforward to use. I wound up with one channel between two guitars with very different levels (a coil in the six, a condenser in the twelve) and a nasty *POP* every time I switched the cable from one to the other. The soundman compensated well on his end, but it was an f'ing mess for me on stage. The volume being high didn't bother me on stage, but being in that environment constantly the rest of the day was awfully draining despite the quality of the various bands.

There, got that out of my system.

Anyhow, we had a pretty good set despite the crowded conditions and not enough inputs. Despite starting late because an earlier band had been tardy, they gave us our full time. There was a little dancing. It all felt pretty good except for my frustration with the setup and a little discomfort from not getting the strap on the borrowed guitar adjusted quite right. There were a few familiar faces in the audience, including a few I hadn't seen in far too long. And apparently folks in parts of the festival clear out of sight from the stage could hear us clearly.

The festival itself was pretty cool, though I probably would have appreciated it more if I hadn't been too tired to move shortly after getting off stage. I spent a while catching up with old friends and meeting a few new people, seated behind the sound-tent. (I was still feeling drained from being sick, and playing a proper Homespun Ceilidh Band gig is exhausting at the best of times.) If I understood correctly, this was only the second year of this festival, and it had a very "together" feel to it.

I've been to a bunch of different events that featured a Green Man. At this festival, fittingly, there were several Green Men.

I stuck around a lot longer than I had planned to, so I could catch Kiva's performance. On the one hand, that was more spoons than I really should have spent, and I felt the ramifications of that extra time on Sunday and Monday; on the other hand, it'd been way too long since I'd gotten to hear them, and they're really really good. I took turns with someone else, manning their CD-sales table during their set; I also shot photos of them on stage.

All in all, I hope we're invited back to play that festival again. (And if we are, I'll bring along extra channels just in case.) And I really need to start keeping in touch with some nifty people I've drifted away from over the years.

I hope Mom will forgive me for not making it out to Bowie on Mothers Day; I was still recovering from Saturday and thus didn't get out early enough to try to buy a tire. I'd already gone sixty miles on the donut spare, which says not to exceed fifty miles (or go faster than 50 MPH) on it. (Have I mentioned how much I dislike toy-spares?)

Tuesday and yesterday I did make it to rehearsals -- both under my own power in the same week, and less tardy than usual (I can't call it a good thing until I start getting there on time, but at least it's less-bad; that's something). I started feeling headachy yesterday, but it feels different from the migrainey ones -- I suspect weather-related sinus issues. At least I'm more alert than I was before going on the beta blocker (though I spaced pretty badly on an old friend's name in Trader Joe's yesterday -- argh). It was a rather long couple of days, with a clinic appointment and finding a replacement tire (rather louder than the old one was, alas, but cost was my main criterion) and getting to rehearsal on Tuesday; then an unscheduled trip to the doctor with anniemal who woke up with something wrong with her lip, and the aforementioned trip to TJ's, and dragging myself to rehearsal last night. So I'm pretty drained today. But I can tell I'm doing better than most of the last several months, because as difficult as it was to drag myself through yesterday, it was possible despite having had such a long Tuesday. That's progress.

*whew* Nearly caught up.

[1] Not an MD, but still a primary medical practitioner; I didn't catch this one's title, so I don't know whether she's an NP or a PA or what. She answers to the NP I'd seen previously and checks with her before giving me drugs. Apparently, whom I'll be seen by depends on how busy the clinic is and how much paperwork the NP I saw the first time has to wade through.

[2] Probably not literally, as the beta blocker I'm taking as a migraine preventative is primarily used as a blood-pressure drug.

And now, the announcement I should have posted yesterday except that I wound up being too busy for LJ: