Great Acoustics

Jingalo Gypsy is a warm, enveloping, well-thought-out recording of four traditional and nine contemporary compositions rooted in the folk tradition.  Seven of the cuts are instrumentals and range from a delicate, sparkling guitar solo, “Emerald Necklace”, penned and performed by Bennett Hammond, to a fine guitar/harp/mandolin/whistle rendition of Turlough O’Carolon’s “She Beag She Mor” to a solid, fiddle-free duet interpretation of the fiddle tune “Rye Whiskey”, spotlighting the Hammonds playing their primary instruments, Bennett on guitar and Lorraine on Appalachian dulcimer.

Songs include Bennett’s cowboy version of “Gypsy Davy”, here titled “Her Husband, Gypsy Dave.” and Lorraine’s title track, which is her take on the same classic.  It’s a lengthy and intriguing chronicle sporting a full but not busy accompaniment with Lorraine playing both banjo and harp, plus three backing vocalists, fiddle, whistle and mandolin.

Most selections feature two to five instrumentalists.  Two other original songs, “My Mother’s Face” by Lorraine and Bennett’s “No Eyes So Clear”, both about parents and generations, are of a more contemporary nature, yet fit hand-in-glove within the traditional folk setting of this beautiful CD.

-Al Reiss, Buffalo, NY

Well, we have ‘em, but except for the Minuteman benefit, all our gigs this month are private affairs, not open to the general public, so I won’t tantalize you  with descriptions. There are corporate gigs where our real job is to look good in an atrium, dressed to the nines in velvet smoking jackets and lacy gowns, and one or two special gigs at parties ‘n’ stuff. We’ll do  Welsh  Christmas music here and Irish Christmas music there, and generally carry on with the wass’ling and feasting, picking and singing until the Season grinds mercifully to a close on Old Christmas, 12th Night, January sixth.

You know how at Camp for a whole week we gaze in grateful joy upon the glorious surrounding  countryside, with SAMW standing proudly in the middle of it, wishing we would never have to leave.  Bury me here!

But leaving time inevitably comes. At the close of Week II this year  I asked Dick where he was headed first and he says Jojo’s for coffee and I’m like they have French roast at the Irving station  on 25 in Moultonboro where I’m going for gas, and he says the lighter roast is what he wants anyway so we all say ‘bye and thanks and stuff and drive away. Sigh.

While I was filling ’er up at the pump, along came Dick to get his gas – and some coffee! – and it was a very pleasance, as we used to say,  to see him. But all of a sudden, somehow in a blur of confusion, Lorraine and I got locked out of our car. There’s this stupid lock button on the driver’s side door handle that is easy to push without being aware of it, and I must have brushed it – that’s all it needs – when I got back out of the car for some now forgotten purpose.

So my keys are in the ignition, Lorraine’s are in her bag on the front seat, next to the cell phone, and all our instruments, along with  the left-over snack foods, are beginning to bake at 400° in the back.  The doors won’t open. I’m standing there with a full thermos of hot coffee ( light roast after all, wouldn’t you know ), gaping idiotically at my mug in its little holder in the locked car. I’m acutely aware that I’m only  ten short minutes into the artificial nightmare that calls itself the real world, and already I’m a hapless, bumbling incompetent.

Anyway, thank God Dick was there! He lent us his cell phone, and he stayed there with us, too, holding our hand, for the entire ordeal. We called our emergency number,  and after losing the connection once or twice, we eventually talked to an agent ( in Calcutta, as it happens ), who guaranteed us a wrecker within the hour.

Oddly enough, exactly one metric hour, or approximately 96.3437   avoirdupois minutes later there was still no wrecker. After another long hold on Dick’s phone we were promised that help was truly on the way, but told they were stuck in traffic somewhere.  We found out later that in fact the Indian Office had sent ’em to the  wrong place: an Irving station on Route 25, all right, but down in Center Harbor, a little more than mile and a whole world away, where they had apparantly been  for a while. They can hardly have been looking for us all that time, so maybe they were waiting for us.

Seriously, the fellas in the wrecker were from Laconia, and if they hadn’t known that the convenience store and pizza shop in Moultonboro on 25 where we languished had  become an Irving station in the previous week, how could those folks in India have known it? Just because the client claims to be within sight of Moultonboro Neck Road it does not necessarily mean a thing. You know how unreliable the eye-witness can be.

But the wrecker did arrive, and having scolded us for giving them the wrong address the men did unlock our car – in about half a minute, using  a plastic wedge, a blood-pressure cuff and a long thin stick. Half a minute after that and we were back on the road. It was lunch time and beyond,  so we  drove straight to the Riverside creamie stand in Ashland, home of the world’s biggest and best lobster roll, and I’m not kidding about that.

If “ World Class ” means good enough to serve anyone anywhere, that’s what the Riverside’s lobster roll is.  Lorraine always gets her lobster roll there. Me, I usually have a coupla dogs, some fries (well done) and a root beer, followed by a waffle cone creamie ( Northcountry for soft-serve ice cream. ), and that’s good, too, if you like it.

From there we moseyed on, somewhat glassy-eyed but uneventfully to Concord for the traditional pit-stop at Borders and more coffee to fuel the last long haul home to Brookline. The car unloaded, I went right to  my desk to begin writing this account, trying to recall in the sweet cool of the evening how it felt for a while in the brutal midday  sun when we were refugees waiting for rescue, like some land-bound boat-people aground on a storm-stern rock in a sea of trees.

And trying to recall how for a while I had glared in dreadful gloom upon the glorious surrounding countryside, with my car standing sheepishly in the middle of it, impatient to get the Hell out of there,  six miles  from where I had  so recently wanted  never  to leave.

Our very first CD, Jonah’s Dream has out of print until now! Re-issued with new graphics, it is available today.

Spring has sprung, the grass is riz

I wonder where the birdies is

You’ve heard the bird is on the wing

We sing the wing is on the bird…

        Ah Spring is here and Festival Season has begun. There was Neffa, dear old Neffa, so much like a Disneyworld for real people, with outdoor jamming and Morris teams jingling, indoor workshops and concerts and crafts and dancing dancing dancing. Delicious world food and good looking young people in colorful costumes everywhere – it is just about the most fun to be had in and around a Highschool building.

Our 29th annual Dulcimer Festival at the Blacksmith House had good weather, too, so we could set some of it  up outside, beneath the iron image of a spreading chestnut tree recalling the famous poem. There was jamming – which is a regular feature of anything we organize – and workshops all day Saturday. On the Sunday, as part of the Harvard Square Mayfair, was our usual instrument petting zoo cum family concert. One very little girl got up and danced to our first tune, accepting the audience’s applause at the end with a modest and graceful bow.

Banjo Camp last week-end was heaven-on-Earth, as always, there’s a wedding next week (Lorraine wrote the Bridal March and  it is lovely), in June the UMB Guitar Clinic and Concert, a concert in N.Falmouth and the Collegium at the end of the month for Lorraine, SAMW I in July, August Dulcimer Daze and SAMW II in August. I can’t think any farther ahead or in any greater detail right now…