Time for Old-Time Music

The last couple of weeks have been filled with visits and music. A couple of days after playing music with friends at Isle au Haut, our friend Art came to the island and stayed for a couple of days, and we played music much of the time. Art is a multi-instrumentalist, on stringed instruments; but with us he usually plays guitar--unless there is another fine guitarist with us, and then he'll play mandolin or something else. But as there were just the three of us, the same lineup when we recorded music here for our Bound to Have a Little Fun CD which Marta still sells on the internet, he played guitar, Marta played banjo, and I fiddled. He'd just come out of a week at the Maine Fiddle Camp, where he was an instructor; we had plenty of time to visit and talk and share tunes. He had his recorder out and seemed especially to like some of the newer ones such as "Newt Payne's Tune" and "Granny Went to Meeting with Her Old Shoes On." After listening to Bruce Greene and then his source, John Salyer, play a tune Salyer called "Shady Grove," I fashioned a somewhat different setting that I've been enjoying playing a great deal. (It bears no resemblance at all to the folksong revival tune "Shady Grove"; it's close in one of its parts to "Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss.") Then a day or two later Nathan came over and he and Marta and I played music for an hour or two. And then again last Sunday Nathan came over, with Fred, and the four of us played, getting ready for our public appearance at the Common Ground Fair at the end of September. So, much music and visiting. Meanwhile I'm getting ready for the start of school in September, and trying to get the fields mowed.