Boston

Andy was playing a contra dance at the Scout House in Concord, MA the night we were heading back to Boston, and he invited me to come along. This was an awesome dance. Many dancers both young and old attended and the band was fantastic; Andy Reiner, Julie Metcalf, Larry Ungar, Stewart Kenny, and caller Mary Wesley were all in good form.

The next day I researched sessions and other contra dances in the area. Since school was not in session there weren't any other contra dances, but there were three sessions I managed to make it to: The Brendan Behan Pub on Saturday Afternoon, The Green Briar on Monday Evenings, and The Druid on Tuesday Evenings.

I met three great players who were at both Brendan Behan's and The Druid: Emily and George Keith the married couple and both fine fiddle players, and James Hamilton, a fantastic flute player. These guys made both of these sessions a worthwhile venture. The session at the Green Briar was loud, large, and beginner friendly. They have a Comhaltas sponsored slow session before the faster session at 9pm. The whole vibe reminded of the Starry Plough back home.

On the way back from The Druid I had to wait till 1:30am for the last bus to arrive. A bus driver waiting for his shift ambled over to me with a slight limp. He was gaunt and roughly shaven, his uniform stained like he had eaten greasy food in haste, and he had a slightly menacing look on his face. I started to wonder whether I had been singled out as his his next murder victim when he said "Is that a violin on your back, because I was wondering how easy it is to learn," It turned out he was a jazz pianist who wanted to learn classical strings. We chatted about music until he headed back to his shift.

As the bus driver walked off, a confused lady asked me if I could help her figure out what bus to take. It turned out she was from California, and we not only stopped at the same bus stop, but were staying on the same street! We struck up a conversation about travel, and she told me about her life as a fight attendant and all the exotic places she's been. She was really excited for me and my travels abroad.

In between sessions I got a chance to write, play some tunes, and drink some of Andy's home-brew. I helped Andy keg a few Belgian Ales and got to taste them as they were being kegged. Both more fresh and alive than any beer I've had, and more flavorful to boot!

Just as I was starting to grow restless for my next adventure, Quena Crain called let me know that she was going to be calling a contra dance at Marlboro Collage on Wed August 29th, so we conspired to meet in Springfield and to spend the rest of my time on the East Coast in Vermont and Upstate New York.

The Rhode Island Red House

Christie, Brian, his Mother, and I all feasted on the rustic meal of meat and potatoes that Brian had just cooked over the fire. He proudly exclaimed how he had made the BBQ pit that day from bricks he had found around the yard.  While we ate Brian told us stories of his exploits fishing and kayaking around Maine, building various things with friends, camping and survival trips, and other tales that extolled the self-reliance of the average Mainer. After dinner we settled into some beautiful tunes. I've always played with Brian and Christie in a pub setting, but this was something completely different. We our instruments conversed with a subtle beauty, and our melodic poetry lasted well into the night.

As it turned out Brian was going a little stir crazy, and Christie and I had just the solution. Before we had left Rustic Roots, friends from the camp conspired to meet at a little house in Lincoln Park, so the next day the three of us headed out for Rhode Island.

Lincoln Park is big, so after a couple of loops around the park, we stopped and asked a ranger for directions. After bumbling through an awkward description of where we were trying to go, the ranger said, "Oh, you mean Winnie's house."  We went down another series of winding roads, praying that this latest set of instructions would lead us to our destination.  After passing by what seemed like our fifth duck pond, we arrived at a big red house. We stopped and poked our heads out and heard music coming from the back yard.

In the middle of the lawn an older man in a utili-kilt stood over the beginnings of an epic camp fire surrounded by a dozen varied lawn chairs occupied by a few playing musicians, a few more chatting.  A short, lithe, lady with long, grey streaked hair and a French accent greeted us warmly.  Christie pronounced her irresistibly huggable and embraced her.

The front  section of the house, with a greenhouse
attached to the middle section of the house

Our huggable host Winnie gave us a little tour of the property. The house started out as a small cottage with a barn in the back where livestock was kept. At some point the barn was converted to another small house. Sometime later someone had the bright idea that one big house was better than two little houses, and a maze of connecting architecture was haphazardly built between the two units. This had the effect of every room being on a slightly different level, and there being two-foot-tall flights of stairs between the many cute little rooms all over the house.

Many Rustic Rootians were there, and we played music late into the night. The next day I decided to go to Boston with Andy Reiner, and left Christie and Brian to head back to Maine.

Hunting for the elusive Brian Theriault

Christie and I have very similar tastes musically, so it's natural that one of our favorite musical haunts in the Bay Area is the Monday night session at O'Reilly's pub in North Beach. This is where the free-spirited Maine-born fiddler Brian Theriault plays his heart out. He takes Irish, Scottish, Cape Breton, American, and even Rock tunes and re-invents them into playful worlds of texture, mood, and color. This delicate balance of melody and improvisation is common to New England fiddle players, and Brian is one of my favorites!

Just before I left for the East Coast, Brian mysteriously disappeared. With a little poking around, Christie found out that Brian had gone back to Maine, and since that was only a few hours away from where we were in Connecticut, Christie and I hatched a plan to drive north in search of our friend.

After hours of driving, we stopped in South Portland at an Ihop and reminisced about Rustic Roots. This somehow lead to the idea that we both needed melodicas. It's a cheap, light keyboard that you can stuff anywhere; why didn't we think of this before? We were in a strip mall with a Guitar Center. No luck there, but they recommended we go to a little shop called Buckdancer's Choice Music Company. Like two silly teens drunk on life, we giggled our way to the local music store like it was the rock concert of the year.

Buckdancer's did not disappoint, with four flavors of melodica to choose from! By this time our enthusiasm over melodicas had waned, and we were now considering our choices carefully. Christie left without a melodica and I left with a copy of The Portland Collection. How could I resist buying The Portland Collection while in the other Portland? While leaving, we left a little trinket for a soon-to-be red-head at the front of the store.

We continued on north, stopping in Freeport for the night, then continued driving to the town of Brunswick. Brunswick is a very sweet town with a lovely natural foods store where we stopped for lunch, indulging in the mythically delicious wild blueberries of New England. Topsham (pronounced “Top-sum” by the locals) is a beautiful little town just to the north of Brunswick, and the town where Brian ran off to. Christie dropped me off at a Starbucks to do some computing while she went off to meet Brian and suss out the situation.

She called me a couple hours later to let me know that she was coming to pick me up and we were all going to have dinner at Brian's place. We pulled up to a quaint little red house with an attached garage, and walked around back. Strings of christmas lights hung around trees illuminating some lawn chairs and a fire in small brick fire pit. Hunched over the fire, fastidiously turning meat over the flames, was Brian Theriault.

Rustic Roots, and their symbiotic companions

Rustic Roots Camp

I decided to visit the East Coast during my weeks between Lark Camp and Ireland, so I reached out to people I've met from the area. Andy Reiner messaged me back with information about a music camp he was directing during my first five days on the East Coast. Part of traveling means accepting opportunities as they come, so I said why not!

After nine hours in airplanes and terminals, I walked outside the airport into the dark and rainy night. A hot, humid breeze immediately washed over my body and I felt my shirt dampen with sweat. John Booker to the rescue. John was a saint for picking me up, and a joy to know. His calm, quiet, and thoughtful ways immediately won me over, and we had some great tunes over a beer at his flat in Jamaica Plain.

Cantharellus cinnabarinus

The next day we picked up his friend Bryant and headed to the woods of north-eastern Connecticut. Rustic Roots was a refreshing change from what I was used to. Lark Camp and The Mill have attendees that number in the multiple hundreds, where Rustic roots had barely twenty.  It was more like a cool camp-out with workshops during the daytime and a campfire jam during the evening.

Andy's fiddle workshop was really useful. He has some interesting tunes, exercises for rhythmic dynamics, and a fabulous impromptu chopping workshop on Monday. I felt an immediate kinship with the other fiddle teacher, Rachael. Her approach to traditional music is similar to mine: find great music and learn it! Rachael's workshop was day after day of learning beautiful tunes.

Cantharellus c. everywhere!

The upside to the rain was that when I got out into the woods there were mushrooms.  I found a species of chanterelle that I had never seen before: Cantharellus cinnabarinus. The beautiful bright orange body of this mushroom make it the among the most beautiful mushrooms I've seen. It speckled the forest floor with it's fiery hues creating quite a scene! We cooked some up and it had a mild chanterelle flavor with peppery overtones.  I also saw a beautifuly green Russula virescens, a raggedy Strobilomyces floccopus, and some strikingly purple Tylopilus plumbeoviolaceus.

On the last day of camp my fondest flautist friend Christie arrived, and after an evening of tunes we whisked ourselves away for some more adventures.