Make Music Madison 2026

 

Today at Mass a family sitting ahead of us all left right before communion, which seemed like odd timing to me - most people leave right after communion if they're going to leave early - but maybe they had Father's Day brunch reservations. Then we went home, and I changed into my band T-shirt for my first Make Music Madison gig, with my band. We played in the driveway of the house where we usually practice, and Travalon and I were running a bit late to get there, but it didn't even matter because the group before us had just finished and there was a lot of confusion going on. We finally started about eight minutes late, but the audience seemed enthusiastic... and unfortunately, so did the mosquitos. It was a cold, gloomy day, and Travalon went to Leopold's and got not one but two coffees for himself, and an iced pandan latte for me after the gig. Then we went home so I could change again.

Our original plan was to go see Nauti Nauti, the yacht rock group we'd seen on the Monona Terrace rooftop a couple of weeks ago, at the East Side Club today. They started right after my gig ended, plus I wanted to put the mandolin away and change into a more tropical T-shirt and my hot pink captain's hat, so we were a bit late getting there. It was starting to drizzle, so we wondered if it would be called off, but the parking lot was packed, so we would have had to walk blocks in the rain to watch them play in the rain. (The band itself is under an overhang at the East Side Club, so they don't have to worry about their equipment getting wrecked by the rain. Only the audience gets wet.) I had brought my violin, so we went to the music club for the usual Slow Irish Session, which today was incorporated into Make Music Madison. They had acts all day at the club, mostly ukulele groups, but I couldn't have done that with my own band's gig. (Still, it would have been pretty sweet to play all three instruments in one day!) Travalon went to fight with Bald Bull at the arcade, while we only had half a dozen people playing and no audience when we started the session. More people joined, and some audience members wandered in, including a guy I work with who had just gotten back from Alaska. In the end I'd say it was a pretty successful gig!

Travalon and I went to Jiffy Lube, and we looked to see if there were any other Make Music Madison groups playing nearby. The big band was playing at the park near Hilldale again this year, and we thought about going, but then we found an open mic on Merry Street, which wasn't too far away. We went there and watched a couple of guys with guitars who had written mediocre songs (one about a pink moon), and some kids who were cuter than they were talented singing along with pop songs, and three guys named Dave reciting something by Dr. Seuss about too many Daves. It was in someone's backyard, and we got the distinct feeling everyone else there knew each other, but it was a publicly listed venue so we were free to attend. I think the big band might have been more fun to see, but this was entertaining in its own way. On the way home Travalon and I started writing a song about how we only wanted to hear songs about trains which may not be any better than what we heard at the open mic, but it certainly isn't any worse. Maybe sometime I'll record it and post it on this blog.

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The Lobster Truck, a Gig, and a Yellow Warbler

 

Yesterday I worked from home, and the only noteworthy things were that Travalon and I walked at Jackson's Landing over the lunch hour, and in the afternoon a male rose-breasted grosbeak peered in the window at me for several minutes. I wanted to take a picture but was afraid he'd fly away if I got up to get Travalon's good camera, or even held up my cellphone. In the evening I talked to Tiffy.

Today I was supposed to audit our local's finances, but just before we were going to leave, the guy who looks like a leprechaun called me to say forget it, the audit's off because his car had died and they couldn't get the financial information to the Labor Temple. He asked if I was still going to organizing training from 12-2, and I said no, I have a gig at 2. Also, didn't we have all that organizing training last summer? What was the point of that if we just have to do it all again? So Travalon and I were heading up to Waunakee to find the lobster truck in front of a wine bar when the Leprechaun called me again to say the audit was back on. Since it was scheduled to start in two minutes, I said, "I can't get there!" He said they could wait until noon, and I said, "What about the organizing training?" and he said they could delay that, but I was like, "No, we're on our way to somewhere else now." At first I felt a bit guilty about blowing them off, but once we were sitting outside in the shade, eating lobster and drinking cherry vodka lemonade as yacht rock played, I had no regrets. That drink made me happy in a way that usually only infused drinks do, but I do remember being happy other times I have done day drinking, so maybe I'm just someone who can't drink alcohol in the evening. One drink at noon, and I'm super happy. Then we took a walk at Jackson's Landing, and we saw some blooming swamp irises. Here's a good one.

Travalon dropped me off a little early at my gig at a retirement community, so I sat outside in the shade, playing Irish fiddle tunes until some of my band mates arrived, including an emerita one who was wearing a T-shirt that said: "The Walleye Street Journal." The gig went okay, although I felt a bit like our leader was talking to the audience like they were the fourth graders she used to teach. Then I noticed that my FitBit was back down to 20%. What the hey? I had just charged it up all the way on Wednesday! Maybe letting the battery get so low that day has really ruined it.

Travalon and I went home, and I charged my FitBit as a yellow warbler peered in the window at us and sang.

I am not sure why birds are looking in our window two days in a row, but it's also been two days in a row that the coyotes are howling outside after dark. Last night they went really crazy when an emergency vehicle went by with its sirens blaring. Then Travalon and I went to my future parking lot to check out train graffiti and a mural.

Tiffy called to say she was in town, so Travalon dropped me off downtown and went to a World War II movie, while Tiffy and I waited in her sister's apartment for our other college friend. (She's actually Tiffy's high school friend.) I saw a swirly cloud from the apartment.

When our friend came, we went to the nearby Indian restaurant for dinner and joked about how we should all dress as pirates for my dad's funeral, since my brother said you can find him where the pirates are. I actually am not sure what I'm going to wear, so it's probably time to wrap this up and figure that out.

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Return of the Pelicans

Today did not start off auspiciously. Travalon was going to drive me to work and then pick me up from Adoration, but we were halfway there when I realized I didn't have my work laptop with me. At least I didn't realize it after I'd gotten to work! We had to turn around, and then when I got in the house, I suddenly had to pee (shocker, right?), and I grabbed a Meyer lemon protein soda... only when I got to work, I'd grabbed a root beer one instead. (This is because last week I got a notice about a new protein soda that came in a sampler pack of three flavors, and I have a definite favorite. I ordered them because I don't seem to ever get enough protein with my new eating habits.) Also, my phone had promised me 60 F weather, just like last Thursday, and just like last Thursday I believed it, so I wore my light spring jacket and the hat I got in Puerto Rico. I've never posted a photo of it, so here goes:

This is not a particularly good photo of either me or the hat, but my second attempt was far worse, so this is what we're going with. When I went across the street to Hardingfele's building at lunchtime, it was very cold (felt like 41 F, per my phone), and so windy that I almost lost the hat. Hardingfele wanted to walk outside, but I talked her out of it, and as we walked by a window, we could see it pouring outside. 

"You were smart to insist we walk inside," she said. Fortunately the rain had let up by the time I headed back to my own building, since if there are tunnels between the two buildings, I have no knowledge of or access to them. The sun did come out later, so my afternoon walk was not unpleasant, and then I caught the bus downtown to get to Adoration.

Meanwhile, Travalon was out on our dock, and he saw pelicans!

Had I worked from home as usual, I could have seen them too, but I decided to work on campus because my coworker who is usually the only one around on Tuesdays is on vacation. Not that it really mattered, since this week is Spring Break and the place is a ghost town. Originally Hardingfele, her coworker that goes to my church, and I were going to play instruments for a singalong at some camp thing at the hospital, but then they canceled the singalong. The organizer said she hoped we would still stop by for treats and crafts, so I entertained that notion, but Hardingfele pointed out that the free campus bus barely runs during Spring Break so getting there would be a chore in bad weather. A grad student told me a few weeks ago about the "free food alert" on campus, so I signed up for it then, and this afternoon I got a free food alert about hot dogs, chips, and soda at the hospital, so that was the "treats." I was more curious about the "crafts," but do I really need to make a friendship bracelet or keychain? It would have been one thing to be there to perform, but to just wander over there without Hardingfele sounded like too much work, and since there's no "free craft alert" on campus, I have no idea what the projects actually were.

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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?

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Gig at Bad Art

 

Yesterday I worked from home, and at lunch Travalon and I walked on Governor's Island. The water was very blue.

He had the day off of work, so he went to Watertown and took a walk on Tivoli Island.

I took a walk in our neighborhood on my afternoon break.

This is out of order, but in the morning Travalon was trying to get tickets to AC/DC, who are playing in town next summer, and while he was waiting to get into the site, this little man was walking as the green bar moved further to the right.

He said, "That little man is getting more exercise than I am today!" Then when he came home, we went on another walk after dark (I was wearing my high-vis vest), and then he went to see the Marshall Tucker band while I talked to Tiffy. I said I felt very uncharitable about not liking someone who annoyed me with little things, like saying, "Thus far" instead of "so far," but Tiffy totally understood. She said, "Do they say 'shan't' too?" Not that I've heard, but I wouldn't be surprised! And when I found out this person's politics, because they totally brought it up, then I didn't feel guilty at all about not liking them.

This morning I met my Union peep who looks like a leprechaun at the bank so we could close out our Union bank account, since we merged with another local, then Travalon and I took a walk on Governor's Island. On the way there we saw this pretty tree with a cute Little Free Library in front of it.

Here's a photo from Governor's Island itself.

Then we hung out at home for a bit. I was really doing well at DuoLingo today.

We checked out a trail not too far from our house in the afternoon.

Travalon's Premier League team the Wolves were on in the afternoon, not the morning like usual, and for the first half they held Chelsea to no score, but in the second half, as we drove to my gig at Bad Art in Oregon, Chelsea scored three goals. The poor Wolves - I don't see how they won't be relegated. But miracles can happen in sports, as we would discover later in the day...

The gig was to celebrate our fearless leader having an art show. Her thing is making chickens out of return address labels, and there were some cool ones (I particularly liked "Rainbow Rooster"), but did I think to take a photo of any of them? No. Travalon did take a couple of photos of Bad Art.

We were supposed to play for an hour, but our leader spent the first twelve or so minutes talking about her art, some of it interesting like how her whole family were artists and they were featured in Life magazine, and some of it maybe not so interesting. Then we were supposed to finish at five, but she wanted to keep playing because she had talked so much, and she thought we should play for a full hour. My regular readers will be stunned to learn that I had to recycle some water fiercely, so I said, "I'm done!" and ran to the back room where my mandolin case was. As I was putting the mandolin away, some older guy said, "Before you put that away, can I see it?" I said, "Let me go pee, and then we can talk." As promised, I showed him Mandy, but he grabbed her away and I kind of thought he wasn't going to give her back. I am pretty generous about letting fellow musicians try her out, but I didn't know this guy. He was saying he had checked out another round-back mandolin, but it was only fit for hanging on the wall for decoration, and it was surprising to see one as old as mine in playable condition. Then he asked me a million questions about what kind of pick I used. Meanwhile, Travalon was waiting for me to get ready to leave. This was supposed to be an unpaid gig, but we did get one drink at the bar, so I let Travalon have it. He got a delicious pumpkin concoction, and when I had a couple sips just before the gig, our leader's partner wondered if it was a good idea to drink before playing, as if many of the most famous musicians weren't three sheets to the wind most of the time they were onstage. Our leader gave Hardingfele $2.50 from the tips when they had played there the previous weekend, so Hardingfele gave it to me, since I wasn't getting paid (they were paid $25 each last weekend), but then we each made $8 in tips, plus the venue did decide to give us each $10, so I actually made $20.50 at an "unpaid" gig. Not bad. My big disappointment is that I put my FitBit on my right wrist to get my steps for the hour, and by the second song I'd gotten them, but my playing didn't register as a workout. I was curious to see what FitBit would have thought I was doing.

Travalon and I went to a newish Mexican restaurant not far from home that we'd been meaning to check out, and I got a huitlacoche quesadilla and a thing I thought would be a sweet corn cake, but it was a strange yet aesthetically pleasing crust with salsa and cheese on it.

(I should have thought to take this picture before taking the first bite.) I know what you are wondering: "So Sombrero Famoso, which salsa is the hot one, the green or the red? La verde o la roja?" and I would say, "Yes. Si." Notice how it's the colors of the Mexican flag. Then I had to use the bathroom, and when I passed the bar, there were these sad balloons spelling out: "Viva Mexic."

I asked the bartender, "Donde está el O?" and she said, "El explotó." I feel like there's a story there, but my Spanish isn't good enough to find out que pasó. Meanwhile, Travalon was looking at his phone, as he is wont to do when I go to the restroom, and he was stunned to see that the Badgers were beating the Washington Huskies. What?? They can barely score, never mind win!! We came home and watched the final minutes of the game, and they won!!! Everyone was so excited that they rushed the field!

I was excited for a completely different reason too - my new license plates finally arrived!

I did get my first choice of personalized license plate! Travalon says he will get the Crane Foundation one next May, when he needs to get new stickers, so maybe he can get a clever personalized one at that time. Feel free to leave suggestions in the comments. I'm thinking TRVLON. Or TRAVLN.

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