Water Flowing Under Ice

Water Flowing Under Ice (mp3) (pdf)

Earlier this month Luther College Campus Pastor Mike Blair invited Erik Sessions and me to play some music at a campus chapel service. Mike mentioned in an email that he might read a poem by Wendell Berry between hymns and tunes. I immediately thought of an older tune of mine that I titled "Water Flowing Under Ice", taken from a line in the great Berry poem "Zero." Mike decided to use Zero as his poem and we all played my little tune after it.

A few days ago I finally got around to recording it and here it is played on two mandolins. (Well actually just one mandolin, overdubbed.) I encourage you to seek out the poem and read it. It appears in Berry's collection The Country of Marriage and I believe that it's in his Collected Poems as well. It's a very fitting response to the kind of winter we experienced here in northeast Iowa this year.

In other news, I had a wonderful solo mandolin evening at Java John's a couple of days ago. Today's tune was included, along with a number of "world premieres", including the music from the last two blog posts here. The audience was extraordinary.

I also had a great time traveling with Contratopia to the Washington, DC region to play dances over the St. Patrick's Day weekend. We were grateful for enthusiastic dancers and great weather on Friday and Sunday at Glen Echo Park and on Saturday in Annapolis, MD.

I have a bunch of new tunes ready but not yet recorded, I hope to get to them soon.

I hope you enjoy today's tune.