Reminder to Jamming group: Jam is ON on Sunday

For those of you on my jamming group’s mailing list, if you haven’t already seen the reminder I sent earlier this week, don’t forget that we are JAMMING on Sunday at the Murkworks! Be there or miss out on seeing my shiny new guitar. Not to mention nomming of tasty, tasty pie!

Please sing out if you haven’t already told me you’re coming, so I know how much tasty, tasty pie to get!

Jam Report #98–12/20/09: Special Solstice MurkJam Edition

In which Kelsey gets to join us since she’s on Christmas break from school; in which we have a special evening Jam just because it’s Longest Night; and in which we finish up with tasty homemade pita bread pizzas! Songs: “The Only Son”, “Goin’ Up”, “Old Black Rum”, “Pirate Bill and Squidly”, “Ferryland Sealer”, “Shout at the Desert”, “Elf Glade”, “Lukey”, “The Night Pat Murphy Died”.

Continue reading “Jam Report #98–12/20/09: Special Solstice MurkJam Edition”

Jam Report #95-96–10/18/09, 11/1/09: Double Afterthought Edition

I know I haven’t been properly keeping up with the last couple of Jam Reports, and this is me trying to get caught up on that! Since it’s been a while since the last couple of Jams, all I have to offer is brief notes on the actual songs we played, so I’ll go ahead and make notes of those here. We’re currently talking about when the next Jam will be, some time in December, and hopefully when that happens I’ll return to serious Jam reporting.

Songs for the 10/18/09 Jam: “Getting Away With It”, “Captain Kidd”, “Chickies in the House”, “The Last Saskatchewan Pirate”, “Elf Glade”, “Dancing With Mrs. White”, “Billy Peddle”, “Mari-Mac”, “Stars”

Songs for the 11/1/09 Jam: “Come to the Labyrinth”, “Pirate Bill”, “Elf Glade”, “Chickies in the House/Duncan’s Dance”, “Goin’ Up”, “The Last Saskatchewan Pirate”, “John Waits Polka”, “The Road to Lisdoonvarna”, “Brian Boru”, “Butterfly Jig”, “Nonesuch”

Some generally fun things to note here:

“Getting Away With It” is a newer one of userinfosolarbird‘s, and is a song about super-villainy! Which is of course appropriate, given that Dara is a super-villain.

“Come to the Labyrinth” was brought into rotation by request; it’s one of userinfos00j‘s, and turned out to be fairly easy once Dara found the chords for it online. The guitar line is dead simple–all the interest here is in the complex layering of the vocals. When the group’s at suitable strength, thankfully, we have more than adequate vocal power to pull this off. We’ll be coming back to this one, I suspect.

Y’all may notice quite a bit of instrumentals in the last couple of rotations. This has particularly appealed to userinfodoragoon, who asked me for pointers to the various bits of GBS instrumental goodness, and I am of course all over that. But we also broke out my mandolin fakebook to give Dara and Molly both a quick and dirty introduction to how to play “Nonesuch”. I really do need to remember to whip that fakebook out more often; it’s a handy resource. It’s also chock full of all kinds of instrumentals that would be fun to explore in Jam.

On a similar note we also tried to make a serious run at playing through not only “Chickies in the House”, but also its companion pieces, “Napoleon’s Rant” and “Duncan’s Dance”. My eventual goal here is of course to be able to play the whole trio through without stopping, but I think it’ll be a while before we catch up with Tricky Pixie in our ability to do that!

I can also note of course that the last Jam’s pie, in favor of the holiday season approaching, was pumpkin. And as I recall, it was pretty darned tasty.

Watch this space for further Jam goodness, and very possibly, a special Solstice edition of a Jam report! Also? Now that I can play it, I am totally going to be bringing in “Concerning Charlie Horse”!

Jam Report #94–9/6/09: Giant Reeses Cup Edition

In which I celebrate the hitting of a deadline by resuming Jam; in which we have a brand new Jammer and fellow GBS fan showing up to join us; in which we have a bit of an audience with my visiting friend from Norway; and in which we break in some stuff we’ve never played before, go us! Songs: “Ferryland Sealer”, “Mari-Mac”, “Cap in Hand”, “Skullcrusher Mountain”, “Goin’ Up”, “Dryad’s Promise”, “Captain Kidd”.

This was the first Jam we had in some time, although not quite as long as it’s been since my last Jam Report post–because I was a lame-o and never did post a proper report for the last one. This is me attempting to do better this time, especially since this was a particularly fine Jam!

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Jam Report #92–5/10/09: Dear Gods the Cake Edition

In which we have a tiny Jam but a huge Jam’s worth of tasty snacks; in which we expand our musical horizons by breaking out a little Queen; and in which we celebrate the new Trek flick by breaking out the most infamous filk song there is. Songs: “By and By”, “Captain Kidd”, “Goin’ Up”, “Elf Glade, “’39”, “Outbirds”, “Stars”, “Banned from Argo”.

Continue reading “Jam Report #92–5/10/09: Dear Gods the Cake Edition”

Site update

I have officially removed the SAS page from my site, on the grounds that I no longer have time to maintain it. I’ve put up a farewell message in its place, with a couple links off to Dart and Crescent sites, for any Strongbow fans who might still wander by. Also, I have begun work on turning the Three Good Measures page into what it really is at this point, i.e., an archive. The TGM MP3s will remain up, but I’m going to move all the Jam Reports over to archived entries on my Livejournal. So far, I’ve moved Jam Reports 1-5. The sitemap has been updated to reflect this stuff, too.

Site update

OKAY so I know I said I was going to try to get caught up around here, but a few things got in the way big time, folks. First and foremost, the group has had major difficulty with not one, not two, but three of us smacked hard with major medical issues. Cyn has been spending all summer receiving surgery and a lot of other treatment for a brain tumor. Dara has undergone surgery as well and is still recovering from that. And me, I broke my arm and have been recovering from that for the last eight weeks.

That said, this website has not been abandoned even though our group is on hiatus for the time being. Once we are all healthy again we hope to resume playing — and in the meantime, if any of you folks out there are musicians in the Puget Sound area who are looking for a relaxed jamming environment, drop us a line! We need more guitarists!

Lastly, the look has changed around here as part of my overall major overhaul to my site; see my What’s New page there for details. Hope y’all like it.

Site update

Once again, y’all may notice, the group has sort of fallen silent for a while! Unfortunately Real Life has continued to interfere with the ability of several of us to get together and make music — so at least for the time being two out of the three members of the guitar section are on a sabbatical of indefinite length. But both Patrick and Monica have expressed their desires to rejoin us when they’re ready!

In the meantime there is still one Jam Report I am behind on… and this past Sunday we did in fact have another Jam, during which we had the pleasure of playing with three songs we hadn’t played with before. Watch this space for these reports to come soon, as your faithful albeit desperately behind Jam Reporter endeavors to get caught up.

In the meantime, Fred has reported the link for McSpadden Dulcimers, the makers of both of his dulcimers, which I have added to the Links page, and he has also given me a new haiku!

Site update

And in this episode of I Really Ought to Answer My Email More Regularly Theater, a new friend of one of our number (HI FRED) actually used our Contact Form to let us know he’d heard some of our stuff. And another reader who actually originally wrote me late last year told me that he’d been inspired by our Jam Reports to keep his own musical journal; thanks Hobbit! It’s these sorts of things which perk up a girl’s heart and let her know that she’s not just babbling into the ether. Well, in this case, she is babbling into the ether, but it seems at least a couple people are listening!

If there are folks still out there waiting for new Jam Reports, I do have another on the way, though our Jams have continued to be erratic as of late. This is what happens when Life gets in the way of folks’ ability to make music! Your friendly neighborhood Jam Reporter, at least, has continued to commune with her guitar and is having adventures in learning wacky chords such as Em7, Am7, D6, Cdim, and D7-9. And every so often making Ragamuffin make some noises which could arguably be described as ‘expressive’.

Oh, and in the meantime, since I can, I am going to put in a shameless plug for my brother Donnie’s band’s forthcoming album. He is the drummer for the band Outspoken, and they’re about to put out their debut album Bitter Shovel; check out the details on their official web site. I’m just a competent amateur, but hey, my brother’s a pro. ;)

But anyway. Just remember, folks: Feedback = Good. Inspire me to post something else, and let me know you’re waiting!