So where to begin? First, let me say many, many, many thanks to Kimberly and
Doc Grauzer. They were kind enough to let me crash in their hotel room for the weekend which allowed me to get my first taste of everything I've heard about about the the
North Texas Irish Festival.
What had I heard? Well, the shows a great, but you also don't want to miss the sessions at the host hotel after hours. The craic is grand! And it was.
Quick highlights for the festival:
Brother,
Jed Marum,
Onya,
The Tea Merchants, the session, and hanging out with Kimberly and
Doc Grauzer.
Friday ArrivalI drove up rather late on Friday. Arrived in Dallas around 8pm and drove over to visit my friend Donna Duncan from faire. She now has a business called
Costumes in Time that does period costumes. I was thinking of augmenting my outfit. A lot of it will depend on money though. Meantime, she sized me and we caught up.
Then I was off to the hotel. I arrived and found Doc and Kimberly in the lounge, relaxing with
Sarah Dinan and her friends. I said hi to a bunch of other folks in the community and then went up stairs to unpack my autoharp and bodhran.
Downstairs we found a nice session down one of the halls with a dozen folks or so. A couple months ago, I was briefly shown how to play the bodhran so I bounced between the two instruments. I'm still no where near up to speed for playing melody on the autoharp. And there are some chords which I am limited by for sessions. So the bodhran balanced that out rather well.
Saturday at the North Texas Irish FestivalWe jammed until 2:30ish which Doc said was a slow night for sessions. That's okay though because we got up at 8am ate breakfast and took a shuttle to the festival. We were first in line for the gate.
Reason #2 that I was able to go to
NTIF this year was I didn't have to pay for entry. I went as "media". I spent much of Saturday recording Station IDs for my
Irish & Celtic Music Podcast from as many bands as I possibly could. I had over 40 by the end of the weekend.
The very first band I caught was
Paisley Close. I met Cid at the
House of Dra at the Texas Ren Fest, and she was sweet enough to give me a copy of her band's new CD,
All On A Day. Excellent CD. I even added them to
The Secret World of Celtic Rock compilation CD.
From Paisley Close, I raced over to
Seamus Stout. Their show was over, but I did catch them for some promos at least. Then on to see
Jed Marum.
Jed was a pleasant surprise this year. He submitted a CD for my
Celtic MP3s Music Magazine about three years ago. But I never really listened to it. So when I did my Irish & Celtic Music Podcast last week I listened to the CD and found out what a great voice he has. I was even more pleased because I kept running into him at just about every show I went to. He's really nice and genuine guy. A folk musician of the truest sort.
After Jed's show, I met up with Clan Gunn and walked arond a bit. I made my way over to the other building and said, "hi" to Lanora of
Things Celtic. That's when it occurred to me I made a big mistake.
I paid for an ad in the NTIF program for my
Irish Drinking Songs for Cat Lovers CD. If I was REALLY smart, I would've said, "Go over to the Things Celtic booth and purchase a copy." And of course, worked it out so they had copies of the CD there. Drats! Well maybe next time... Though I'm not sure it was financially feasible. Ah well.
At 2 o'clock, I saw
Ed Miller perform with John Taylor and Rich Brotherton. The sound at the beginning of the show was a bit messed up by the songs as usual were wonderful.
Next up was
Beth Patterson. I had heard about her from a lot of friends in Louisiana. She was okay. Admittedly, I wasn't too impressed with the electronic drum kit. I might've enjoyed her show more if she just stayed acoustic. So I didn't stick around long for that show. So instead, I went over to see
John Williams & Dean Magraw. Some great tunes from them.
At four o'clock, there was a bodhran workshop. Since I know virtually nothing about the bodhran, I decided to go. Lo and behold, I ran into Michelle Hedden over there. Michelle recorded on my
cat CD and also plays backup drums for us just about whenever where in Missouri. On the downside, Albert Alphonso was one of the teachers. While
Mark Stone did his best to educate us in a useful workshop, Alphonso did his best to Waste our time. I'm still rather pissed about that. I sent NTIF a letter about it too.
Lesson to be learned, if you ever hear of a workshop with Alphonso, don't bother!
There was one other downside about having a bodhran workshop at 4'o'clock. Two Austin groups, The Tea Merchants and Sarah Dinan, were playing at the same time. So they would wait till Sunday.
After the bodhran workshop, Michelle and I hung out and she showed me a few more tips on how to play the bodhran. Then we jammed with a couple songs. I have a way with rhythms now and then. Our recording of "
Whiskey in the Jar" is one such example. So I showed her the rhythm I play with it.
At 6:00, I went to see
Robbie O'Connell and
Aoife Clancy. That was kinda weird. Aoife seemed to have her own band. And Robbie was sorta smacked into the center of it all. So it was rather disjointed as they swapped back and forth singing songs.
Next up was a band I've heard occasionally, but never spent much time listening to--
Brother. I caught their 7:15pm show. And it was amazing! The band fuses Australian tribal with original songwriting, bagpipes and didgeridoo. The put on a powerhouse of a show. Great performance. It left me with a major high when I went back in to find out when Doc and Kimberly planned to head back to the hotel. But I was stopped short with something more out of the ordinary than Brother. That was
Onya.
The stage was Star & Harp Pub Stage was filled with three guitarists singing basically acoustic alternative rock. Onya was center stage. She's a singer/songwriter who recently won Ireland's version of "American Idol", I think. She had an amazing voice... and was pretty damn hot too.
I came in when she started singing an original song called "Pass the Bottle" that had the audience singing along. She had a few of those killer sing-a-longs. And I was just totally mesmerized.
Seeing as how her musical style was completely different from everything else at the festival, I went up and talked to them after the show to find out if they were heading to
South By Southwest. No, but they were heading to Austin on Monday to play at
Mother Egan's. Sweet!
From there, I caught the shuttle back to the hotel. On it were The Makem and Spain Brothers. I recorded a quick promo and chatted with them a little. Then back at the hotel, I joined several sessions until the wee hours of the morning. Yes, it was a marathon... sort of. But what a blast. My finger was sore from playing the bodhran too. Especially since I was able to try out a couple bodhrans, but local
bodhran-maker, Rob Forkner. Now I'm aching to get a new bodhran. Man! Those drums sound good! One step at a time though.
Sunday at the North Texas Irish FestivalI think it was like 4am when I finally went to bed. I did NOT want to wake up Sunday morning. Doc is definitely a morning person, but neither Kimberly or I are "perky" in the morning (inside joke).
We joined a bunch of others to catch a shuttle to the festival before the gates opened. And I was pleasantly surprised to find that Brother was on the shuttle. I planned the day before to do an interview of them. We had 20 minutes to drive. So I interviewed them on the bus, asked other riders if they had any questions for the band, and Angus video taped a part of the interview.
The interview was a high, but my exhaustion took it's toll after taht. I caught a few minutes of
Threadneedle Street. Their stage still had sound issues, sounding too "airy". Combined with the fact that I was fighting to stay awake, I decided to wander off. Then I watched a few minutes of
Trinity River Whalers, but I was also still anxious to see Brother again. So I did. But while I sat still much more on Sunday, I was stilll so wiped, I finally went to the Clan Gunn tent. Sat down for a moment, and within minutes, I was passed out.
I woke up thirty minutes later feeling MUCH refereshed. So I caught a little bit of
Michael William Harrison's show before heading over to catch
The Makem and Spain Brothers.
That was pretty cool to see. I never really listened to Tommy Makem outside of a CD I have with him and The Clancy Brothers. But they all had a very similar style. Nice powerful vocals. I understand why those groups did so well. And they definitely have that Makem sense of humor.
At five, I caught Paisley Close again and afterward headed over to the Austin lineup. Sarah Dinan and The Tea Merchants were playing the last two sets on the Star & Harp Pub Stage. Sarah had a new band and a whole new band lineup and consequently new songs. Her vocals were gorgeous as usual.
But the highlight for me was
The Tea Merchants. I gotta say, NTIF made a big mistake putting them at such a poor time because they blew away many of the other trad bands I heard. They were amazing. Now to festival's credit, I understand The Tea Merchants were a last minute addition and filled the slot of another band. So a big Congrats to the festival for booking them. Hopefully, next year they will realize that this is the #1 Irish music group in Texas at present!
I finished off the festival with Brother again, joining the throngs of dancers as Eileen Ivers joined them on stage and they just jammed on stage. It was one heck of a festival. I caught the shuttle with The Makems and Tea Merchants back to the hotel. I was about ready to drive home, just feeling wiped from a long weekend. But Doc and Kimberly talked me into going downstairs for dinner. After that, I was ready to play music. The sessions started breaking out, so I joined them and a brilliant time before heading upstairs for a little quiet time and some sleep.
Monday After the North Texas Irish FestivalThe next morning, we awoke leisurely and I drove home listening to
Slice of Sci Fi and
The Signal podcasts. Time flew by and I barely noticed it.
I got home and went for a walk with a friend around 6pm. Then I rememberd that
Onya was playing at Mother Egan's. So I raced over there and caught that show. Fantastic. The only downside was she didn't play enough of her original songs. Though I did hear a stunning performance of "Piece of My Heart" by Janis Joplin.
It was also Áine's 25th birthday. So I was fortunate enough to share that experience. I also went outside with Niamh. As she smoked, I talked to her about
online music marketing. Then offered to take them on the town.
On Saturday night, I jammed for a few minutes with Onya, Niamh and Rory in the hotel bar. It made an interesting change from the traditional music we were playing the rest of the evening. Rory also found the autoharp to be quite fascinating. So Monday night when I found out he was researching autoharps on the net to buy one, I decided to help grow the number of autoharp performers in the world. I gave him my first autoharp which I retired a couple years ago due to wear on it. He was rather blown away by that.
After Mother Egan's, I decided to show them the town. I took them to Antone's where Onya was challenged by Niamh to sing a song on stage with the Blue Monday Band on stage. So she took the challenge. Once again performed Janis Joplin's "Piece of My Heart" and turned a LOT of heads. After that, we went to Fado's for an hour and another bar on Sixth Street then I finally left them and my weekend AT LAST came to an end.
Whew! I'm exhausted.
Buy CDs: North Texas Irish Festival 2006
The Brobdingnagian Bards excel in entertaining. The simple, yet skilled musical arrangements for each tune give the songs the Celtic Renaissance flavor that they are famous for. Just two men, Marc Gunn and Andrew Mckee make up this band, and they play, and play off of each other well. (Oh, and just in case you weren't sure, it is brAHb'ding-näg-EE-en Bards.)
