Lavender's Blue, dilly-dilly...

We were out performing at Happy Valley Herb Farm today. It's been a few years since we were last there. What a treat it was to visit again! My former neighbour, Maggie, was married there today and hired Banquo to be wandering minstrels. It was a lovely time (how can it not in that space?!).

It was just three of us (Jude, Eric and I) performing instrumental music. We played a fair amount of O'Carolan, which is always a good choice. Everyone was happy with the music and loved our costuming. They even fed us, which was awesome.. the fare was really good. :)

We played for about 4hrs in total. After spending the afternoon in the sun and lavender fields, I'm ready for bed and it's only 8:30 pm as I write this.

Lavender's blue, dilly dilly,
Lavender's green
When you are King, dilly dilly,
I shall be Queen

Who told you so, dilly dilly,
Who told you so?
'Twas my own heart, dilly dilly,
That told me so

Call up your friends, dilly, dilly
Set them to work
Some to the plough, dilly dilly,
Some to the fork

Some to the hay, dilly dilly,
Some to thresh corn
Whilst you and I, dilly dilly,
Keep ourselves warm

Lavender's blue, dilly dilly,
Lavender's green
When you are King, dilly dilly,
I shall be Queen

Who told you so, dilly dilly,
Who told you so?
'Twas my own heart, dilly dilly,
That told me so

Me = Bad blogger

Wow. I've truly been a slacker on here. I've no excuse, really. I'll try to catch everyone up in brief..

Folkfest on July 2nd was an amazing experience for the band. What a treat it was to work with such dedicated professionals! Stage management had everything under control and I could go on for paragraphs about how fabulous the sound crew were. In a nutshell, they made it easy for us and made us sound awesome. They used a subwoofer on the dumbek which was literally a real stage shaker. That was fun. Weeeeeeeeee! *grin*

The performance itself went really well. We recycled our set from Fernfest, which has a lot of our up-tempo pieces and works well for a festival performance (less instrument changes, too!). It was really great to look out into the crowd and see people grooving. We closed the show with "a la mode de France" (aka Nonesuch) and people started dancing... it's just one of those songs.

One of Adam's friends was taking pictures using a professional digital camera, but I have yet to receive copies. I hope he does soon, as some of the pictures looked great..

Back to work at Elections BC on Monday morning. I received a call from them this morning offering me another full-time temp position until September 15th (the day before my birthday). There's a possibility of an extension so that would be a good birthday present. :P

I've been designing and building the new Belfry Theatre website and it's looking good! We're aiming to launch it on August 3rd.. I'm going to be a busy lad for the next few weeks. :-/

Nectar of the Gods coming to Alberta

Nectar of the Gods coming to Alberta

Bloody 'ell! Mead!! From Alberta of all places...

I think I'll be getting my family to ship me some if it doesn't make it to BC stores.

Canned Haggis

A wee present I received from one of my co-workers at the Belfry today. He recently returned from directing a play in Glasgow, Scotland. I realize that haggis is very much a part of my Scottish heritage, but I have absolutely no intentions of ever eating it. blech!

FernFest - A success

Yesterday's performance at FernFest went very well, despite a few relatively minor problems.. mostly technical related stuff; a much later start than planned (6:15!), a stage that was far too small (we had to set up in two rows) and a sound person that kept disappearing. Regardless, we made it work and did so successfully.

The audience was incredibly receptive -- more so than they were for any of the other groups I saw perform earlier in the day. We even got an encore which was pretty cool. After the performance we got a lot of great feedback from folks who watched. An acquaintance who has been familiar with Banquo from the start was pleasantly surprised by how good we sound these days (not that we ever sounded bad.. our sound has evolved a lot). As a group we came out of it very proud of our work and excited about the upcoming performances we have booked over the next while. :)

After the concert we all came back here to my place for dinner (the traditional Banquo potluck stir-fry!) and to consume beer. It was great to be able to spend some social time with the bandmates - we don't get to do that often enough!

CBC News: Clawless kitty chases bear up tree

CBC News: Clawless kitty chases bear up tree

That's one tough cat!

Banquo album: getting there!

I received the rough mixes of all of the tracks we recorded for the new Banquo album yesterday. Now begins the ardous task of listening to all 34 takes with a critical ear to determine which ones are the best. No small task -- that's over 3hrs of listening! Our production meeting is scheduled for next Wednesday when we decide our next steps to complete the album. It's been a lot of work and will continue to be for some time yet, but it's going to be so worth it in the end! :)

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FernFest is on Sunday. Amazing how fast that has come up.. time is just slipping right by it seems. I'm looking forward to the gig -- I get to wear my new tricorn (aka pirate) hat for the first time in public. :P

We've got a great set planned. We decided to aim for our livelier material for the event and it's surprising how much we actually have in our repertoire now. The way it's worked out I'm mostly playing percussion at this gig, but I don't mind.. it's less to carry to the event!