Irish Music Concert at a Library

Last night Travalon and I voyaged down to Mount Horeb (or, as bikers call it, Mount Horrible because it is uphill the whole way to get there) to see the Irish fiddler Liz Carroll and the Irish singer and guitarist Daithi Sproule play at the public library. I have no idea how they got two such renowned musicians to play at a little village library, and honestly I wouldn’t even have known about it except that one of my Irish language classmates was doing the sound for the concert. He and my teacher were supposedly both there, but I didn’t see either one. However, the place was quite packed, so that is no great surprise. Liz and Daithi (pronounced Dah-hee) were fabulous musicians, and Daithi said he tuned his guitar to D-A-D-D-A-D instead of the standard tuning of E-B-G-D-A-E. He said it was something a guy he knew learned to do for Mideastern music, and then they realized “dad dad” worked well for Irish music too. Funny – my bouzouki is tuned DD-AA-DD. I hadn’t had time to grab more than an apple for dinner before we had to head to the concert, since it is quite a way southwest of town, and we live on the northeast side, so afterwards we went to the Grumpy Troll, a brewpub and restaurant in Mount Horeb. We saw quite a few people there I recognized from the audience of the concert… and then the two musicians walked in! They were with a crowd of people, so I was too self-conscious to go over and tell them how wonderful they were. It’s funny – when you are renowned in certain circles, like those two or the early music performers who come to town for our festival every summer, you can walk around town without the general public hassling you, yet you have adoring fans. It seems like an ideal existence.

Famous Hat