Spring Green Gig and Bach Around the Clock

 

Yesterday Travalon got some photos of northern shovelers from our dock.

He also saw goldeneyes and hooded mergansers, but those shots aren't as clear. My uncle in Chicago saw a possum in his yard.

Today Travalon and I drove out to Spring Green so that I could play at the General Store, as our band does on a somewhat annual basis. We got there in time to have lunch and my free latté, and we split a "chocolate therapy" brownie. The Dairyman's Daughter came out to hear us, and so did our superfan who is our leader's neighbor and also Hardingfele's feral cat trapping buddy, and they both tipped us, as well as a family who listened to us the whole time and even waltzed to one of our tunes. We got a whopping $5 in tips each. To be fair, that is probably all that we deserved, because one of our fiddles and our guitar player got confused and dropped out a lot. The accordion player and I kept it going with the chords, but when the fiddler dropped out, we had no melody because Hardingfele insists on playing the harmony. I love harmony as much as the next person, but it's really more important to have the melody. Several husbands were there who made videos, so I can see that I bop my head while playing. That is one advantage of playing the fiddle - it's harder to bop my head.

Today was both Bach Around the Clock and the International Festival at the Overture Center just like last year, but this year I didn't have to choose because I couldn't really attend either, since I spent most of the day in Spring Green. We did get back to town in time for me to see Just Bach (the group that does the lunchtime concerts at the Lutheran church where I used to sing) perform a cantata, and then there was cake afterwards for Bach's birthday. Travalon was a little bummed because he didn't enjoy his trip out to Spring Green that much, since there weren't really any birds around. He did take a few photos.

These couple of photos show some Frank Lloyd Wright visitor center, or, as Pa Hat calls him, Frank Lloyd Wrong.

While I was at Bach Around the Clock, Travalon went to Leopold's, but then it got too crowded so he went to the Arboretum. He took a photo of a wild turkey, but it wasn't really in focus. I asked if there was anything I could do to help redeem his day, so when we went home, I played "The Battle of Evermore" on the mandolin along with the video on YouTube, then I played along with "Mandolin Wind" by Rod Stewart, and then I got out the ukulele and played along with "Ram On" by Paul McCartney, "Yer So Bad" by Tom Petty, and "Good Company" by Queen. The ukulele songs had the chords online; I didn't look to see if the mandolin songs did - I just tried to play them by ear. Travalon said that cheered him up quite a bit. It reminds us of the late, lamented rock jam at the East Side Club and also jamming with my uncle from Colorado. We decided we should do more of this. Travalon was singing along as I tried to play.

A funny thing did happen at Bach Around the Clock: I saw two former choir members, and I talked to the one we call Two Canoes, after a person the bartender at a bar in Jefferson told us about: if you say you have one canoe, this person will say they have two canoes. I know the expression "one-upped" already exists, but Travalon and I made this into a verb: "She two-canoed us again!" Two Canoes was talking about her amazing trip to France, and then she was saying she got to sing with the guy who leads Just Bach, and he has an amazing voice, like she thought I'd never heard him sing before. When he arrived, he asked me how my gig went, since he had seen me walking around the neighborhood earlier this week and we had chatted. So now it looks like I know him so much better than she does, and I didn't even try to make it look that way. Whether she knows him well, I can't say. He just sort of said hi to her, maybe like he knew her, or maybe just like she was a person who was there and he was being polite. Did I two-canoe her?

Famous Hat