Old Town School – On The Road
Dispatches from the road from our wayfaring travelers.
Tunes from Across the Sea
Wow! What a trip! As Jason said, we have a ton of stories and joys to share with you!
Here are a couple of tunes we played at a pub called the Tap and Spile at the end of the Hexham Gathering. The session and conversations were the perfect ending to a wonderful festival!
Jaime Allen is a really popular tune, we heard it all throughout the week! I think it’s kind of like our Angeline the Baker (which they also play! 
Some say that Jaime Allen was the last man to be hung in Durham – whoa!
Here is Jaime Allen with Salmon Tails Up the Water
Here is Reed House Rant, a tune a thought just bounced up to the sun!
These tunes are also being added to the Tune Archive if you wan to check out some other tunes, too!
We’re playing Boil Em Cabbage Down today with some teachers students and friends as part of a free concert today @ Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln in the Concert Hall. Those of you in Chicago, come on down! To our friends across the sea, we love you!
Maria
Filed under: England,Newcastle,Notes from Maria by Maria | May 31, 2011 | Comments (0)
Day 3- Continued
Here are some more recordings and video from yesterday’s adventures!
We were at the Cumberland Arms last night. We started some Old Time tunes with our fiddler/rapper dancer friend Thomas. Another man named Tom joined us on the mandolin and after playing Over the Waterfall, asked us if we knew the Volo Bogtrotters! I said, “They’re our mentors!”
Next we played some Soldier’s Joy:
Here are some more recordings from the Bob Dylan jam with Tom, he was really nice to us
YouAintGoingNowhereCumberland Arms
We went upstairs to the Rapper Dance rehearsal led by Tom Besford, and were even given a lesson ourselves by Chris and Don. Don has been part of the King’s Men for 33 years! I was able to chat with Tom Cronin who I had met on my last trip. Here’s a sample of their rehearsal.
Don gave us a ride to the station after rehearsal, he was full of great stories…
We’re off to a rehearsal of students from Broomley First School!
More soon!
Maria
Filed under: England,Newcastle,Notes from Maria by Maria | May 26, 2011 | Comments (1)
This Land is Your Land, Also
Oh man! What a couple of days. I have so much to write. But I do want to share this.
Long story short – we went to have dinner before we were going to attend a practice of some Rapper Dancers that Maria had met on her previous trip.
We stumbled into an Irish Session that wasn’t. Turns out the session was reschedule to make way for a Bob Dylan 70th birthday sing-a-long jam.
This is our new friend Tom.
Tom, host of the Bob Dylan 70th Birthday Celebration at The Cumberland Arms
This is us singing This Land is Your Land with him and some friends. He called the song as the first tune of the Bob Dylan sing-a-long.
This Land is Your Land – Cumberland Arms
My love of Bob Dylan in high school slowly but surely lead me to the Old Town School of Folk Music.
We also sang I Am a Pilgrim and You Ain’t Goin’ No Where. I think Maria has recordings of those.
Then we were off to the Rapper Dance rehearsal. There’s at least two other great stories from this one evening. Those will have to wait.
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Today was the official kick-off the The Hexham Gathering, although we’ll be checking it out for the first time tomorrow (Thursday). We’ve got 15 minutes on a bill with Hannah James on Friday. The days are going by quickly.
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Tomorrow (Thursday, May 26) is the Thursday Night Open Jam – 7:00 until 10:30 or so – every Thursday night at the Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln Ave. Go sing those songs!
JMac
Filed under: England,Newcastle,Notes from Jason by Jason | May 25, 2011 | Comments (2)
Day 2
Wow! We saw and played so much music yesterday! We began our day with a train ride from Stocksfield to Newcastle.
We sat in the lobby of the Sage Gateshead and played some tunes and made some new friends. After lunch we headed downstairs to some classrooms.
The Sage Gateshead is host to classes for a folk degree program for Newcastle University Students. We saw a recital of 2nd year folk degree music students. Each band had it’s own flavor and style, it was really neat to see them play traditional folk tunes, mixed with contemporary music, mixed with original compositions.
We headed over to the the Free Trade Inn afterwards where the students could let out a deep breathe. They are so nice to us and really welcoming showing us around! Some folks started playing Gypsy Jazz tunes, neat! I had a little exchange with our new friend Natalie who is a vocal major. I played her an Old Time tune and sang her a song from Mexico and she sang me a beautiful Odetta tune, her voice was so deep and soulful, what a treat!
JMac discovered everyone new a bunch of Old Time tunes and gathered a list of tunes everyone knows here so that we can bring back a few!
We headed over to the Sage Gateshead for the evening Adult classes. From 7-8pm have beginning classes for fiddle, guitar, whistle, and accordian. Later in the evening they also have choir and Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced Ensembles. I saw that Ruth Ball was teaching fiddle. She’s a musician I met several years ago. I was fun to have the opportunity to see her teach! I followed her over to the Beginning Ensemble, and we played from French dance tunes! A group of folks grabbed my hands to dance to the tune first, they had to be sure I new the dance, I loved it!
Here’s a recording of the French Set:
Breton, france set
I went to the choir group and sang a song in Zulu called Wajikele. I sat next to woman from Poland and we had great fun! Next we sang Wild Mountain Thyme, pretty awesome!
After class, our friend Matt led us to some fish and chips and then we headed to Bob Trollop’s for a super jam of fiddles, electric bass, whistle, guitar, cello, clogging, dancing and energy! It was so exciting to sit and play tunes from England, Ireland, Scotland, the U.S. and Mexico. The group was very welcoming to us really up for swapping some tunes!
More fun adventures to come, the Hexham Gathering begins tonight!
Filed under: England,Newcastle,Notes from Maria by Maria | May 25, 2011 | Comments (2)
And we’re off!
Hi friends!
We arrived safely in England yesterday and we’re having a great adventure. We’re staying with Chris Pentney who is a Folkworks Programme Manager at The Sage Gatehead. Chris came to visit us at the Old Town School of Folk Music last year, she’s taking very good care of us and three of us sang and jammed into the night!
We landed in London yesterday and then took the tube to King’ Cross and then a beautiful train ride to Newcastle. This is the same train I rode several years ago with Bau Graves, Robert Tenges, Barbara Silverman, Boogie McClarin, Joe Filisko and Steve Levitt. That’s how we all got to know each other, traveling with music is such a great way to make friends!
We saw a great concert last night by an Irish group called Four Men and a Dog
http://www.4menandadog.com/
They were so fun! They showed great musicianship, showmanship and generosity! I giggled a lot, the music was really fun. We got to meet them after the show and shake their hands and share some stories.
We saw them in Hall two at The Sage Gateshead last night which is a 10-sided hall where chairs can be moved around to change the feeling of the space.
http://www.thesagegateshead.org/
More adventures, today!
Filed under: England,Newcastle,Notes from Maria by Maria | May 24, 2011 | Comments (1)
Traveling with an Old Friend
Hey everyone,
Our first moments outside of transportation stations on a blustery day in England.
We’ll be spending seven days in Newcastle Upon the Tyne in northern England; attending a music festival called The Hexham Gathering, with is produced by The Sage Gateshead, a huge organization that is home to a folk music school and three concert venues. Their web site says,
“The Hexham Gathering is perhaps the country’s leading folk festival aimed at providing performance opportunities for a host of hugely talented young singers, dancers and instrumentalists. Hundreds or performers converge on Hexham each year providing a vibrant kaleidoscope of music and spectacle throughout the town centre and at a variety of other venues across Tynedale.
I am thrilled to have this chance to travel to the Hexham Gathing with Maria. We became friends in 2002 when we were both teaching for an organization called Music House. It was my first teaching gig. We taught before-school violin and guitar classes to first through fifth graders at Decatur Elementary. Those where some early, cold mornings waiting for two buses to get to the school by 7:00am. We learned a lot together and I am very thankful that my first teaching experience was so positive.
We became fast friends and we were both soon teaching at The Old Town School of Folk Music. We schemed to get our guitar and fiddle classes to play together and I remember, in particular, one conversation very early in our tenure at OTSFM. We were sitting in the cafe at The Book Cellar, discussing our classes, until we realized the power that the song Pay Me My Money Down, could have in bringing musicians and singers of all abilities together.
That was a moment that lead, several years later, to The Gather-All and the Young Stracke All-Stars. Now, young musicians are learning to play together in several Kids Ensemble class and our teaching weeks are capped by an incredible full Saturday of teaching and jamming at the Armitage Building of the Old Town School of Folk Music. Our community has grown with us and we were able ask our community for help to make this trip possible. You can see the awesome pictures our our super-fun fundraising party here.
We’ve grown and found ourselves in the thick of the wonderful community of teaching-artists and students at The School. As we’ve grown, we’ve done stints in Paul Tyler’s Fantastic Toe-Tripper Orchestra, seen hundreds of concerts at The Old Town School of Folk Music, have met music legends like Roger McGuinn, and traveled north the play with Chirps Smith, south to visit with Old Town School of Folk Music founder Frank Hamilton and found a way to meet up in Cuernavaca, México to play with the wonderful Chucho Peredo Flores.
Jamming with Chucho Flores Cuernavaca, México, 2008.
In addition, Maria has been to The Sage Gateshead before. You can read and watch some videos about her previous adventure, here.
Maria is now Chair of the Kids’ Fiddle Program at The School and I and so proud of the work she has done to grow the program. Her patience, dedication and enthusiasm are one-of-a-kind.
Recently, Maria was also incredibly supportive in helping me and the Old Town School Community produce the School’s inaugural Family Barn Dance where dozens of young musicians provided the music as their families do-se-doed and shashayed to the kids’ wonderful melodies. Her work, her musicianship and her friendship have been the inspiration for so much and I am very glad to know that we’ll keep playing and teaching and growing our musical friendship for many, many years to come.
To me this trip feels like a “next step” in our journey. We’re visiting The Sage Gateshead at the invitation of Chris Pentney, who programs many of the concerts at The Sage Gateshead, hoping to glean some tunes, some teaching styles and some of Northumberland’s great folk music energy. I’m very glad to be sharing this experience with Maria.
As Maria often says, “That’s all.”
Filed under: England,Newcastle,Notes from Jason,Uncategorized by Jason | May 24, 2011 | Comments (3)
Jason Regresó a Cuernavaca para Continuar Estudiando Español.
Hola amigos,
Just wanted to write a quick note and say “Hola”.
I’m in the town of Cuernavaca during the two week that the Old Town School takes off from classes.
I’m here studying español at a school called Universidad Internacional. It’s a great place. I studied there for three weeks in 2008 and now I’m back to study for two more weeks.
I’m concentrating on español for this trip, but if you know me, you know that music follows me close behind.
Ismael y Jason cantando boleros en la calles de Cuernavaca.
Thanks for reading. If you want to follow my further travels, please visit my blog at jasonmcinnesmusic.com.
Hasta luego, amigos.
Filed under: Mexico,Notes from Jason by Jason | August 15, 2010 | Comments (0)
The show!
This past week, the entire trip, the months of planning and nervous energy about my adventure here all culminated in last night’s performance. We rocked the house!
It was a good turnout for a Wednesday, 150 people or so in the cabaret-style theater so it felt nice and filled. The night before someone had asked me if I was nervous, and I joked, “Nah. I won’t know anybody in the audience!” However, when I got to the theater that afternoon, my new friend Robert who owns Cafe L’Échaudé and who showed me around last week was buying tickets for himself and his wife. I also knew some people from Geneviève’s family who I met at Easter, and Cynthia’s girlfriend Valerie, and Philippe and Arnaud and the rest of the folks who work at the theater. When they were announcing our names before we came on stage, mine even got a pretty good response of cheers from the audience. It was an interesting sign that my trip has made its small mark here in Quebec.
The show was well-documented with two photographers and a videographer, so I’ll have proof of the performance itself soon enough. Until then, here’s some pre-show anxiety and post-show glow! The theme of the show being “Rebels,” we did a lot of defiant posing.
Fancy lights around the mirrors filled all of our hairspraying and eyelining and lip glossing and outfitting with extra intensity
The singers
Singer rebellion!
The band
Phillippe et moi après le spectacle
The show itself was a ton of fun. Everyone’s performances were awesome, and everyone got to show multiple facets of their performing abilities. I can’t wait to watch the video!! I was very pleased with my performances, whether singing, guitar playing or remembering/pronouncing French. I had one slipup in Un Canadien Errant when Pierre began singing the wrong words and I lost the right ones, but we were back on by the next phrase. I had 3 people tell me that my performance of that song made them cry, so I must have done something right! Although initially I was quite disappointed that I had to learn this new French song, and that I wouldn’t get to perform my originals, I’m so proud and pleased with the way it worked out. Coming from and representing the Old Town School of Folk Music, it was fitting that I should learn a song so entrenched in the hearts of the people here. Now I’ll always have it. Music makes connections.
Maggie’s Farm tore the house down.
I can’t believe I leave today. I am already excited to come back.
Big smiles at the end of a great night
Filed under: Canada,Notes from Lindsay,Quebec by Lindsay | April 8, 2010 | Comments (2)
C is for hot, F is for cold
Pierre Flynn, Lindsay Weinberg, Cynthia Veilleux, Héra Ménard, Geneviève Paré
Well, after two full days of rehearsal I can assure you that tomorrow’s show is going to be FANTASTIC.
I’ve got a nice clip from our rehearsal today and if it turns out I can post it on here I’ll have it up ASAP. Until then, know that everyone is talented and the music comes together easily, and then as happens in rehearsal, it stops and melts into groupspeak about how to change/fix/approve of what just happened. It’s been fun.
We have Rebel songs of all types, though the Francophone world is especially well represented. Songs about patriotism, exile, quitting your job, affairs, lying, stupidity, the world burning, television, society, God, moving on, and of course refusing to go to rehab.
Le Grand Incendie
Passer à l'ouest
It’s been a long few days of rehearsing. Time to get some rest; big show tomorrow, one night only! If you’re in Quebec, you will not want to miss it. À demain!
Filed under: Canada,Notes from Lindsay,Quebec by Lindsay | April 6, 2010 | Comments (0)
Joyeuses Pâques!
Easter weekend was a lot of fun. I got to know some of the girls from 5×5 a lot better.
Friday night, Cynthia and her girlfriend hosted a little dinner party for me, Geneviève, and Emilie. I loved seeing their place and being part of a group of friends close to my own age and situation. I also met Molly the cat, who is hilarious. She not only climbed the clothes-drying rack like a monkey, but also jumped inside the refrigerator to sit on the shelf, watching bottles she had knocked down from the bottom rack in the door rolling around everywhere. Along with my introduction to Ketchup-flavored Lays potato chips, we had tasty homemade pizzas on little square crispy crusts, salad and wine. Everyone was pretty nice about keeping me in the loop English-wise, and we shared much gossip and laughter and silliness. We also brought out some guitars and shared music… I am very excited to harmonize more with Geneviève and Cynthia this week!
After dinner and chocolate eggs we walked outside a little bit and then they wanted to take me out to see some nightlife. We tried to go to Sacrilège, a cool big dark bar which is apparently the place to be and which looked awesome, but it was packed so we left. We ended up at another nearby bar where we were going to have one drink and move on, but immediately after we sat down this guy came over to the table with a full pitcher of beer and glasses for all of us…. quickly followed by his five friends. This bar had regular sized pitchers, but also the biggest pitchers of beer I have ever seen in my life.
This is a GALLON of Maudite. Note that someone is filling a glass by submerging it in the pitcher.
What a crazy night. A little bit of dancing amidst the crowd and lights at Le Drague next door was the perfect way to end it.
The next morning was Easter and Genevieve invited me to come to Beauce with her to eat supper with her family. Beauce is small and beautiful, and it was a perfectly gorgeous day. I met her mom and her great, funny dog Jack. She showed me around, and took me to BOTH streets in the town. We visited this old bridge near an old railroad station where she used to work,
and then we had maple sundaes at this little place that used to be a maple syrup cabin. It is maple season, and maple is EVERYWHERE! And it is verrrrry good. This sundae had a vanilla custardy base, plus maple syrup and maple chip crunchy things and a stick with maple taffy like we had in the city.
Very tasty. Also tasty: dinner at Genevieve’s grandparents’ house. Her family was lovely and the food was good. Ham, turkey, stuffing, the usual kind of Easter meal…. plus fresh scallops, from her cousins in New Brunswick! I was so happy to be there with a family, and at the end of the night, I was BEAT!
Went to bed early to rest up for today’s first all-day full-band rehearsal at the Theatre. We met Pierre Flynn, the well-known Quebecois rocker who is in charge of this show, and started the morning just talking through each number and determining keys, backup vocals, arrangements, and the flow of the show. Then after a lunch break we rehearsed all afternoon.
Planning with Pierre
Cynthia helping me with my French. She speaks English the least of the 3, but she is the most thoughtful about my understanding!
The actual performance space in the theatre is very nice. The stage is a good size, they have a cool lighting system and the sound is awesome. The house band is also GREAT. When we first played Maggie’s Farm, I started out the first verse alone with guitar. But when everyone else came in for the second verse, WOW! It was so exciting and really revved up my performance. The other girls’ songs are good, strong performances. Funny, tender, fierce.
Un Canadien Errant is going to be pretty stripped down, just a duet with me on acoustic guitar and Pierre on piano and backups. The French is coming along and everyone says I speak with a good accent which sounds very charming, so I’m confident on that front. However, there are a few group numbers, and as it turns out, I’m singing in more French than I expected. Here’s one of the group numbers: Le Grand Incendie by Dumas. I sing a solo part with some English at 2:30, but check out the part at 3:30 that the four of us sing in unison.
!!!!!!!!
We’ll make it happen. I’m stoked after today’s rehearsal. It’s going to be a great show!
Filed under: Canada,Notes from Lindsay,Quebec by Lindsay | April 5, 2010 | Comments (1)
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