July 2008

St. Anthony and the Fishes (mp3)(pdf)
Woodhaven (mp3)(pdf)

I came across a reference to St. Anthony and his sermon to the fishes in Alberto Manguel's wonderful book The Library at Night (p.216) during the time that this four part tune was looking for a title. The mention of Anthony reminded me of my "St. Francis and the Birds" tune which has a similar form. This is another of those tunes that I almost didn't write down because much of it is so clearly derivative of other, better, tunes. In spite of that, I did pick up the pen and then I enjoyed playing it over and over. So here it is.

I think of Woodhaven as a medieval tune, a ductia maybe? In any event I've had it around a long time. I think it would also work nicely as an S/A recorder duet if the alto player transposes the bottom line.

June 2008

Quarry Hill Road (mp3) (pdf)
Our Own Way (mp3) (pdf)
Off to Minnesota (mp3) (pdf)

It's been quite a month. The above photo (taken by Paul Scott of decorahnews.com) is a view from the levee less than a hundred yards from our house, probably on the day (June 9) that we were ordered to evacuate our neighborhood. All ended well for us but many of our neighbors suffered substantial basement flooding during this unprecedented event. Many more photos of the swollen Upper Iowa River can be found at the decorahnews site and some of the best shots are to be found at the Inspire(d) Media blog.

I've been assured that my One Hundred Year Flood tune had nothing to do with this 500 year flood but I don't think I'll be using that kind of title anytime soon.

This month's first tune is titled for the road that leads up to the local quarry if you cross the bridge in the distance in the photo above. For a couple of days it was the only way for regular folks (non-emergency personnel) to get from the east side of Decorah to the west side. It's not a very good road, made of gravel and steep, but it was the only way to head North from our side of town.

The second tune is a simple waltz that I finally got around to recording and the third is a relative (pale imitation, etc.) of the venerable "Off to California." I think of it as a hornpipe but Erik and I have used it successfully as a schottische more than once.

Hope you enjoy them.

May 2008

Friday Night Tailgate (mp3) (pdf)
Goslings Afloat (mp3) (pdf)
Fifty-Three (mp3) (pdf)



Sometimes after the Glen Echo Friday night contra dance a small tailgate party can be found at the edge of the park. Snacks, beverages and good conversation are shared and this tune came into being shortly after Contratopia enjoyed the party on a cool November night in 2006.

Just this afternoon, while walking along the mighty Upper Iowa River, I spied two geese and a gaggle of goslings floating by. The tune itself is from last summer but waited until today for a title.

I celebrated a birthday a few days ago which reminded me of this four part tune that I wrote on my 53rd birthday a while back. I think of this one as another in a long line of attempts to emulate the great mandolin tunes of Norman and Nancy Blake. "Attempt" is the key word in that sentence.

As usual these were all recorded using my now trusty Zoom H4 recorder.

April 2008

(Photo by Pat O'Loughlin, Shepherdstown, WV, with one of my favorite authors.)

All Fall Down (mp3) (pdf)
Bob's Angels (mp3) (pdf)
Sand Island (mp3) (pdf)

This posting has more of a Contratopia theme than most. Partly because we've had a pretty active month of playing and touring.

Bob's Angels is a waltz titled for our friend and Tapestry
board member Bob Anholt and all of his "angels" who helped make it possible for us to play a Mostly Waltz afternoon at Tapestry back in March. The band played the tune that day but this recording is the home demo that I recorded and sent to Erik, Pat and Patrice a few days before the gig. It probably should go a little faster.

The other two tunes were recorded by Erik, Pat and myself at Patrice's house on a Saturday afternoon while she was off earning a living.

Sand Island is possibly the first fiddle tune I ever wrote. I remember my old friend and excellent guitarist Henry Austin complimenting me on the tune back in Louisville sometime in the 80s. That bit of encouragement really meant a lot to me at the time. I see, thanks to Google, that he's currently playing with an Irish band called My Darling Asleep.

Contratopia has been playing this tune for a number of years and I almost never play guitar on it, but the guitar was in my hands that afternoon. If we ever officially record Sand Island it will certainly be more polished than this version (especially with Patrice adding her talents) but this is a good example of how the basic tune might go.

This version of All Fall Down is really Erik and I playing through the tune so Pat can work out an approach on the banjo. Pat would say he didn't really know the piece at this point but I think he sounds just fine. The band has just recently added this tune into a new medley and we played it a couple of times on the tour out east.

I wrote the music the day after travelling a fair distance to hear the brilliant Liz Carroll and John Doyle play at Wisconsin's Folklore Village. If only I could write a tune half as good as anything they played that night....

Up River Road on YouTube

My old friend Joe Burch in Louisville has recently uploaded this video to YouTube. It's taken from a concert titled "Mando Magnificat" that we were involved in as members of the Louisville Mandolin Orchestra back in the summer of 1989. The concert was part of the Lonesome Pine Special series and was a sequel to a similar concert that we had been a part of in 1988.

That earlier concert had been the public debut of the LMO and led to us being invited to perform, along with many of the finest mandolinists in the country, in a second "Magnificat", this time to be filmed for public television.

Shortly after the LMO began rehearsing in 1988 I brought in a short piece that I had attempted to arrange for mandolin orchestra instruments. Conductor Jim Bates looked it over and offered a couple of suggestions. I returned with an improved version that I called "Up River Road". The members of the LMO enthusiastically made the piece something special for all of us.

I have a videotape of the original TV broadcast which I haven't seen in a long time. This YouTube clip reveals that the group really had the piece ready to perform. Everybody in the group, especially Mike Schroeder in the first chair, is playing like a pro.

With the encouragement of the LMO and, especially, Jim Bates and Keith Harris "Up River Road" became the first part of my "Louisville Suite". The suite was published by Trekel Musik Verlag in Hamburg and has been performed by many mandolin orchestras around the world.

Since moving to Iowa in 1994 I've greatly missed playing in the LMO but they are still going strong. Along with their original website, linked above, you can also find them on MySpace and, now, on YouTube as well.

I've made a couple of small changes to this blog this week. One that might be of use to you is the addition of the Feedblitz email subscription widget in the Links sidebar. If you don't use a feed reader but you'd like to know when I add new entries, you can sign up to receive an email notification this way. It seems to work well but let me know if you have any problems.

March 2008

One Hundred Year Flood (mp3) (pdf)
Alice's Garden (mp3) (pdf)
Last Call at Hawley-Cooke (mp3) (pdf)
Spring Forward (mp3) (pdf)

Three waltzes and a reel.

The snow is finally melting around here and thoughts turn to flooding. Above is a photo from Louisville, Kentucky during the 1937 flood. My folks both remembered that flood well.

Alice's Garden was a roadside produce stand that was located up Highway 52 near the Minnesota state line when we first moved to northeast Iowa. The stand is still there but hasn't been open for many years.

The Hawley-Cooke bookstores were the best bookstores in the Louisville area for over 25 years. I was frequently there at closing time still trying to decide which bargain to buy.

Spring Forward refers to last week's time change. It's a really simple tune but it works for me.

All three waltzes are fairly recent and "Flood" only dates back to last May. Contratopia tried out "Alice's" and "Last Call" at Tapestry a couple of weeks ago. I imagine we'll play them again at our mostly waltz afternoon this weekend along with a couple more new ones. Try them yourself and see what you think.

February 2008

March 12, 2005 (slow reel) (mp3)(pdf)
January 22, 2005 (duo in 3/4) (mp3) (pdf) (retitled "Halfway Home" in Midwestern Mandolin Duos)
May 30, 2007 (slow duo) (mp3)(pdf)

Well a few weeks turned into a couple of months. Busy, cold, snowy months. Walking with the dog up on the trails that overlook Decorah I have thought of this painting many times.

Three pieces of music with dates for titles. Titles are often the hardest part for me. If you have suggestions let me know.

Contratopia has played the first tune once or twice as part of our half-speed set that is built around Pat O'Loughlin's great tune "Cement Donkey". It was even slower in that context but we've since dropped it from the set.

"January 22" is a waltz of sorts but I thought it would be fun to add a moving second part. Inspired partly, I guess, by long hours that I've spent recently transcribing some minuets by Telemann.

"May 30, 2007" was actually performed by myself and Luther College's extraordinary flautist Carol Hester in June of 2007 at a kind of faculty variety show for students attending one of the Dorian Music Camps sponsored by the College. It sounds especially nice when the top line is played by someone as good as Carol.

These three pieces were all recorded this morning with cold winds blowing outside. The sun was shining but the wind chills were in the -30 Farenheit range. The temperature should rise above zero tomorrow but there's some more snow on the way.

My thinking at this point is to aim for posting at least one entry per month in 2008. We'll see how that goes. Hope you enjoy the music.

G for Gordy

G for Gordy (mp3) (pdf)

The annual Burning Bright holiday concert occurred last Saturday at the Decorah United Methodist Church. Two performances of lovely and unusual seasonal music were presented by a wonderfully talented cast of local musicians under the direction of Kathy Reed-Maxfield and Otter Dreaming. Erik Sessions and I are usually invited to perform a set of tunes and this year we played a medley of two tunes that have appeared in this blog, Harvest Stomp and Raccoon in the Bird Feeder.

During the 2006 Burning Bright concert Erik and I, along with our friend Beth Rotto on piano, played a new waltz of mine that I titled "G for Gordy." The recording here is from that concert. Both the tune and the performance are dedicated to the memory of our friend Gordy MacMasters who passed away in 2006. I won't pretend to give Gordy his due here but there wasn't a nicer guy in the world and I suspect that no one has ever played the saw with more emotion than he did. The tune's title comes from Gordy's habit of calling out the key of a tune. "C for Charlie" he'd say with that big smile.

This entry will be the last one for 2007 and I plan on taking a few weeks off before starting to post in 2008. More tunes to come...

Jigs, pt. 1

Donaldson's Woods (mp3)
The Least Resistance (mp3)
Donaldson/Least (pdf)
Knee High in December (mp3) (pdf)


I've had some trouble trying to decide how to present jigs in this blog. I have a bunch that I like but I never seem to choose them for recording. This week, however, I purchased a copy of Paul Kelly's excellent collection 110 Irish Mandolin Tunes, vol. 1 and found a solution. Mr. Kelly presents recordings of all 110 tunes on two CDs that come with the book and each tune is played once through. Duh, what a concept! This simple idea got me over the hump with jigs and I recorded several today. Here are the first three.

Donaldson Woods Nature Preserve in Indiana's Spring Mill State Park contains a beautiful stand of virgin timber. This particular jig was written while staying at the park lodge in the summer of 2005.

"The Least Resistance" title is a mystery to me now. I probably had something in mind when I named the tune but no longer. "Knee High in December" is presented in pdf form along with its friend "Puddle Jumper" from the Contratopia Tunebook. The latter tune appears on our Smitten CD but "Knee High" has yet to be recorded, even though we've played it now for a number of years. We usually play it first as a jig and then as a reel and, if we have time, we'll sometimes go back and forth playing the A section in 4/4 and the B section in 6/8. The title, of course, refers to snowfall in northeast Iowa.

Harvest Stomp

Harvest Stomp (mp3) (pdf)

On Saturday, Sept. 29 Erik, Jim, Bill and I (as Bear Creek Bluegrass) played at our local food coop's harvest festival and barn dance. The dance was held in the Beard Barn, a beautiful old structure with a great dance floor. Next morning this tune popped up.

Two nights ago (that'd be Friday Oct. 26) Erik and I rejoined our Contratopia partners, Pat and Patrice, for our first dance in nearly six months. Held in the Armory at Northfield, MN it was aptly titled the Harvest Stomp!

Being a new tune for everyone but me we didn't play it for an official dance, but we did give it a good run down during what passed for a sound check. Recorded this morning on the now trusty Zoom H4.

St. Francis and the Birds

St. Francis and the Birds (mp3) (pdf)

October 4 is the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, one of my favorite people. This year I had the honor of being invited to play some music at a morning chapel service on the Luther College campus that included a "blessing of the animals" ceremony.

I was given the opportunity to play this tune of mine as part of the service with the excellent assistance of two of my mates in the Western Home String Band, pastor Mike Blair on guitar and Ehler Orngard on pennywhistle. The weather was perfect, the music was clear and the pets (several dogs and one fish) were very attentive.

The chapel talk that day was given by Robert Belá Wilhelm, a gifted storyteller with a real feeling for St. Francis. The actual story of Francis and the birds is nicely told here in this excerpt from Jorgensen's biography of the saint, freely available for download courtesy of Google Book Search.

My little tune was written down over 20 years ago and is rarely played, partly because of its AABCC format. The print version that I present here is taken from the Contratopia Tunebook, a collection of over 50 tunes written by myself and Erik Sessions, which is available from me for $11 postpaid. I recorded it last night using an old Gibson mandolin that was built around 1917, not long after Jorgensen's biography of Francis was written.

Old Clarksville

Old Clarksville (mp3) (pdf)

I grew up in Clarksville, Indiana long after Meriwether Lewis & William Clark met at the Clarksville cabin of George Rogers Clark to begin their expedition. In my youth "old" Clarksville was that part of town that had existed before World War II. The part where my father had lived in his youth and my parents had lived when they were newlyweds. The town swimming pool and Andy and John's grocery store were there.

Much later I learned of the even older Clarksville that had been founded in 1783 near the Falls of the Ohio and settled by George Rogers Clark and his former comrades in arms. In recent years much has been done to uncover some of that history and visitors can now visit the Falls of the Ohio State Park and the Old Clarksville Site for a glimpse of the past.

This tune was written in March of 2003 as a solo mandolin piece and that's how it is presented, warts and all, here. I could pretend that the missed bass note near the end of the piece was an artistic choice but, really, I just missed it. Contratopia has also played this piece, without a title, a couple of times as a waltz at dances.

The Company You Keep

The Company You Keep (mp3) (pdf)

Here's a waltz I wrote in 2002 and recorded in 2003 on a Korg D1600 machine. Both the electric guitar (my old Hagstrom) and my Rigel mandolin were recorded direct. You might have noticed I'm a big fan of wooden instruments recorded by microphones but, as time goes by, this particular electric recording continues to sound better to me. I hope you enjoy it.

Graveyard Owl

Graveyard Owl (mp3) (pdf)

Early in August we visited Ocracoke Island for the first time. I hope there will be many more visits to come. There are a number of small family cemeteries on the island and we heard more than one owl hooting as we walked from one end of the village to the other.

The tune itself was mostly written on a fine old Gibson oval hole mandolin in Carrboro, NC the night before we drove to Swan Quarter to catch the ferry to Ocracoke. Recorded here in Decorah on a very warm night last week.

I lifted this graveyard photo from Philip Howard's excellent Ocracoke Island Journal blog. We stopped at his Village Craftsmen shop during our visit and came away with a first rate CD by the island's house band, Molasses Creek.

Open Church / Dunn Meadow

Open Church (mp3) (pdf)
Dunn Meadow (mp3) (pdf)

A busy summer so far. Here are a couple of older tunes titled for places real and imaginary.

On a recent trip back from a visit to the old homestead we stopped for a couple of hours at one of my favorite places, New Harmony, Indiana. A place full of history and spirit, I always find it inspiring.

I rarely wake from a dream with a tune in my head but Open Church was an exception. It even had its title in the dream. Later I remembered the Roofless Church in New Harmony. It's a slightly quirky waltz because the first strain has only six measures.



Dunn Meadow on the Indiana University campus in Bloomington is where I spent many happy hours in the 1970s. I heard a lot of great music there in the meadow and even more in the IU Memorial Union that sits next to it. Amazing local musicians like Mark Bingham, Caroline Peyton, Bill Schwartz and Bob Lucas played frequently. I heard the original New Grass Revival in 1972 in the Union and I'm pretty sure I heard Ali Akbar Khan in the same room a few years later. Woody Shaw played a great concert there sometime in the 80s as well.

I hesitated to call this tune Dunn Meadow because I was sure someone must have already written a really great tune with this title. I confess I didn't write the tune while actually sitting near the tiny creek known as the Jordan River. Instead I was in a motel room out on the bypass but this title came immediately to mind. To me it seems like a very English tune.

Wedding March Set

Wedding March Set (mp3) (pdf scores and parts)

I heard on the radio a week or so ago that July 7, 2007 is supposed to be an especially auspicious day for a wedding. Something to do with 07-07-07 I think. That report led me to dust off this piece for mandolin quartet (or mandolin orchestra) that I put together in 2002 by combining two short wedding marches that I had written long ago. See the score and parts webpage for a little more background.

It's a potentially fun piece for mandolin ensemble and I encourage you to give it a try. It can be played by full mandolin orchestra or mandolin quartet. The first mandolin part can even be played solo or with simple guitar chord accompaniment.

The recording leaves much room for improvement but I settled for getting most of the notes correct. I just tried to give a reasonable idea of how the piece might sound. I played guitar for the bass line and octave mandolin for the mandola part. I tried capoing the octave at the 7th fret but the mental gymnastics presented by the capo were more difficult than the physical gymnastics of playing the part without it.

I don't recommend this arrangement for use as an actual wedding march because it would be too long for all but the larger cathedrals. It would work fine as pre or post ceremony music and could certainly fit into a program of background music at a reception. Let me know if you find an interesting use for the piece.

Raccoon in the Bird Feeder

Raccoon in the Bird Feeder (mp3) (pdf)

Had a fun time playing for "John's Send-off Shindig" at the River Bend Nature Center in Faribault, MN a couple of weeks ago. Near the end of the event some of the kids pointed out to us that there was an apparently ravenous raccoon happily sitting in the large bird feeder behind us. Knowing that I'm always on the lookout for tune titles, several of my band-mates suggested I could do something with this. I've failed to come up with anything clever or poetic and have settled on this literal title.

The tune itself appeared a day or two later. Clearly, at least to me, a relative of the "Red-Haired Boy" I almost didn't write it down. I recorded it while still fresh using my old black Gibson A model, melody first and then the backup.

I've always loved the sound of two mandolin family instruments playing together. One of my absolute favorite examples is found on the Norman Blake/Peter Ostroushko CD Meeting On Southern Soil where they play "Muddy Creek" on mando and mandola. I only wish they had repeated the tune four or five more times.

Smitten (for mandolin orchestra)

Smitten (YouTube performance) (pdf score and parts)

I was delighted today to receive a link to a video of The Fretful Federation Mandolin Orchestra performing my mandolin orchestra arrangement of Smitten a few days ago at the Shoreham Airport as part of the Adur Festival 2007.

Granted that the recorded sound is fairly lo-fi it still sounds great to me. The performance is excellent and the audience (except for the ones who seem to be nodding off) seem to be enjoying it. This mando orchestra version was premiered at the 2006 Classical Mandolin Society of America convention by the Atlanta Mandolin Orchestra and I was able to join them in that performance. The AMO did a great job as well, despite my presence on stage.

The tune has been played as a waltz many, many times by Contratopia and is the title track of our third CD. We attempted to record it on our first CD as part of an overly complicated medley and gave up. We intended for it to be an important number on our second CD, the all-waltz collection Ballroom Echoes and succeeded in recording a now-legendary "perfect first take". Unfortunately, at the end of a long day, one of us (no need to name names) made the fatal mistake of unplugging our digital audio workstation before the track was saved.

We finally captured a lovely version of the tune at the sessions for our third CD although I nearly ruined that one by bringing the tune to an end a little earlier than everyone expected. Thanks to Matthew Zimmerman (owner/operator of Wild Sound in Minneapolis) and the magic of digital editing the track survived that small train wreck and finally made it onto disc.

Let me offer my heartfelt thanks to Jacky, Ian and all the gang from the Fretful Federation for producing such a beautiful performance of my piece and for sharing their performance via YouTube.

Clifty Falls, Stonehead

Clifty Falls (mp3) (pdf)
Stonehead (mp3) (pdf)

Here are two simple duets for two mandolins (or any other instruments with similar ranges) that I wrote down sometime around 1980. Clifty Falls is a lovely Indiana state park not far from my hometown. Stonehead gets its title from the memorable stone marker that you will encounter at the juncture of Ind. 135 and Bellesville Pike if you turn south off of Ind. highway 46 between Nashville and Columbus.

Both of these pieces were written during one of the two summers that I spent living in southeastern Brown County, IN, allegedly helping out at a Catholic summer camp. One of those summers I was a part time dishwasher at Rudi's Country Kitchen in Nashville and my route back to camp involved a left turn at the Stonehead intersection.



The recordings were done a few years ago for the second volume of the CoMando Sessions project of the CoMando listserv and this version of Clifty Falls appears on the second disc of that set.

The challenge in playing these short tunes is to keep them from sounding mechanical and to allow them to breathe a little. Both pieces are also suitable for recorder with soprano playing the top line and alto (transposed up an octave) playing the bottom.

Highlandville, May 14, 2004

Highlandville, May 14, 2004 (mp3) (pdf)

The photograph above was taken by Pat O'Loughlin in early May 2006 but May 14, 2004 was a night very much like it. I had driven out to the Highlandville schoolhouse to sit in with my friends in the wonderful Norwegian-American old-time band Foot-Notes at one of their regular dances.

The dance was well underway and I parked just where the cars are in the right hand side of the photo. I thought I would tune my old Flatiron octave mandolin in the car before I went into the noisy hall but a little snatch of melody fell out in the process. I decided to see where it led and I closed the car up so that I could see the dancers inside but couldn't hear the music from the band.

After a minute I thought (as you might when you hear the tune) "oh, it's just another pale imitation of Soldier's Joy" but I put that devil behind me. Before the band took their break I packed up the octave and went in and spent the rest of the night playing the wonderful polkas, schottisches, waltzes and two steps that are the soundtrack to the Highlandville Dance.

A day or two later I went back to this tune and decided I liked it, pale imitation that it is. It's been played off and on by Contratopia and I've arranged it for mandolin orchestra also as part of my piece Another Late Spring in Iowa, which has been performed by both the Minnesota Mandolin Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Mandolin Orchestra.

The recording here was hastily done last Saturday morning while preparing to play a contra dance at the schoolhouse with Contratopia. I used the Flatiron octave (early 80's, pre-Gibson) and my Pomeroy.

If you haven't been to Highlandville it's well worth a visit. Especially if you can make it when Foot-Notes is holding court at a Saturday night dance.