THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT: Last weekend I spent a fair chunk of change to go to the symphony and hear the violin and the cello and the harp....this weekend, for free, I heard the fiddle, the base (fiddle) and the (mouth) harp. I also heard the mandolin, the hammer dulcimer, the concertina, the banjo, the guitar and the flute. Guess where I was?
I'll give you another hint-instead of tuxes the musicians wore blue jeans, flannel shirts, hiking boots, the women tended toward long skirts...there was more hair in the pony tails the men wore than there was on top of their heads and the women mostly wore long hair parted in the middle or buns.....Yep, you guessed it:
I was at the 18th annual Anchorage Folk Music Festival!!!!!! It lasts all week with music on stage in the evening and workshops the rest of the time.
Sounds mostly different? One thing was the same-the music was fabulous in both instances.
But, I will admit I really enjoyed the laid back, folksey atmosphere of tonight's venue.
There was no way I could sit still in my seat-I found my feet tapping or my hands clapping all night! And no one cared because they were tapping and clapping too!
We started with an acoustic set-Joe Page and friends. Talk about some fine mandolin playing-there were times when this guys hands were a blur! "Friends" brought along a guitar, steel guitar and the ever present base fiddle.
Lynn Marie and The Wobbly Boy with Dawn Lindsey-now that's a name to fit the group. Actually, Lynn Marie was the central figure and she was a fire ball. Little bitty thing, played the accordion and the piano and belted out music with this voice that should have come from a lumber jack! Interestingly, I heard Dawn Lindsey play last week in the symphony-only there her instrument was a violin and tonight it is called a fiddle. The wobbly boy-that's a long story-but he plays a mean guitar and has a fine singing voice.
We had two dance groups-one was a group of young people doing Irish Dancing along the line of Lord of the Dance. GREAT! The second was a group of, shall we say, mature women who were the Anchortown Cloggers-now these ladies were having themselves on good time!!!
Oh, and I have to mention Midnight Starlight-what beautiful, smooth classic jazz!! And the young woman from the University that sang with them easily moved from a sultry Latin number into a voice that reminded me of the great Ella Fitzgerald!!!
Denise Martin performed with the concertina-I have never seen one played. She made it look like the easiest thing in the world. She has a CD coming out called "Laptop"-a play on the fact the concertina is played with keys on a keyboard and held in the lap. Her busband accompanied her on the guitar for most of the reels she did but one included a fiddle and was really lively.
They both appeared later in the night and she was playing the hammer dulcimer-I had never seen one and thought it was a xylophone (sp?) for a minute.
Lost Riders may have been my favorite if I hadn't have liked them all so well! They were Traditional Bluegrass. A woman with a voice to die for on guitar, a mandolin player/singer, banjo player/singer and, once again, the big base fiddle. This group has been asked to go on tour to entertain the troops in Iraq-those guys are in for a real treat.
There was a couple that usually perform independently-she plays "claw banjo" (I think that's what they called it) and he is a singer/song writer on guitar. However, she has a wonderful voice that sounds like it came right out of someplace like West Virginia!
The guest artists were a group of guys, The Improbabillies-one from New York on the banjo (a rather small, slender guy with New York clothes, streaked purplish/red hair and a deep bass voice that is really startling out of that small body!), the main singer who played the mouth harp and was from somewhere in the lower 48, three guys from Anchorage that played the fiddle, the guitar and, of course, the bass. They were really, really good!
So, it was a great night!!!! A welcome end to a rather grueling week that saw me getting home every night at about 8:30!
So, how's the weather you ask??? I have interesting news-it is NOT snowing. In fact, in addition to being beautiful today it got up into the high 30s. Not, actually, something I am excited about. It melts the upper layer of ice and snow on the sidewalks and roads...turns them to slush and guess what-yep, freezes. Tonight will get back down below freezing and I don't believe it is expected to get above freezing the rest of the week.
But, we are supposed to have another nice day and, depending on the roads, I may go out to Eagle River to the Nature Center....it's time for pictures-don't you think?
I'm off to bed to read the program for the Folk Festival and see what else I may want to attend before it's over!