Asheville

My resting place for the week is beautiful Asheville. After a few weeks in Austin and 9 days in California, one week of relaxing in Asheville doesn't quite seem to be enough. I have unloaded from the past trip and sorted it all.... now I'm packing for Silver Leaf Renaissance Festival in Michigan. I need to open the pop-up and take out some things I won't need for this trip, but overall, the packing doesn't look like it will be that tough.

My other project of the week has been to learn a couple of tunes on the "bombard" or "sopranino shawm". It's really a bombard (traditonal Breton double reed instrument - really loud), but it basically qualifies as a shawm. The only difference is that the bombard has a key for the low F. A high shawm would not. And the shawm would probably be made of a lighter brown wood. Whatever... I'm practicing on this because I need to gain and maintain the power to blow that hard, and I need to learn fingerings for an F shawm because I have a real F Alto shawm on order from Joel Robinson. I am very excited. My fingers become less retarded each day.

New video

Please visit my youtube page and check out the new video Michelle and I made... a comment and a nice rating would be nice too!!!

www.youtube.com/abigailgreen

Berkeley, CA

I'm staying with Michelle at her place in Berkeley while we rehearse and do two performances of "The Love Show". This is the view of the bay and the mountains from her back porch.

This is the same view today. And it's COLD!

Dog

This is "Flash" of Berkeley, CA.

Dog snugglin' in. Main objective: to look as cute as possible. Objective achieved.

Reason for objective: the REAL objective... lure human into thinking dog is harmless.... then maul human.

Today

Today I'm flying from Austin to San Francisco!! I am performing with Michelle Levy, Shira Kammen, and Tish Berlin for her vielle recital extravaganza. "The Love Show" will be Thursday evening and then we get to do a shortened version on Sunday night for the San Francisco Early Music Society's Med-Ren workshop. Michelle and I started the idea of "The Love Show" in 2007 when we were left to our own decisions one weekend at Texas Renaissance Festival. Our audience showered us with roses as we played songs of love and proclaimed our love for the world. There will be pictures, audio and video if everything works as planned!

June so far

I've been in Austin for a few weeks now. My fabulous host has been, well, fabulous. Ceridwyn and Joe have let me stay in their home, set up my mobile office, use their kitchen and Joe has made the most awesome meals... THANK you!!!!

This is my mobile office. The blue, clear and white bins are from the current organizing job. The last few weeks I scanned all the copies of music in these bins and created a database that tells which disc the pdf of the piece is located. Organizing Abby comes with all you see here: scanner, printer, computer, toolbox o' stuff and even a chair! Just add junk :-)

Middlefaire Fantasy Festival

This was a first year fair that will be fun to watch grow into a real live event. I and two other musical acts were scheduled for the pub stage. This is a good thing if for nothing else, the pub is a building and therefore not out in the sun! This is Texas in June after all. We all played and had a good time. Many fair fans and friends came out to partake in year one. As I began writing this, I realized I did not have one single picture, and I'm not remembering any being taken either.

A Guest Room fit for a Guest

I was asked to make curtains and a bed cover for this cozy guest room. The front with the long celtic knot work design and the top which you can see in the second photo are hand quilted. It took me a while, but I think it was worth it.

Shawm workshop

If you have any interest in Medieval/Renaissance wind instruments, look into this workshop. I am a total beginner. Bob Weimken and Joan Kimball of Piffaro lead the lessons and playing. They were amazing and inspiring. Each morning we had technique lessons that I'm pretty sure we each got something out of even though we were players of all levels. The group was small enough that we all got very individualized attention. I brought to the workshop a Cronin alto shawm in G. I was also able to play a Joel Robinson alto shawm in F. Everyone was willing to share and encourage.

Quiet month

It's been sort of a quiet month.  I left Arizona and drove as fast as my car and trailer would allow to get to Austin to pick up Michelle from the airport on Monday...  Yes, that's right.  Phoenix, AZ at 7PM Sunday night, Austin, TX 7PM Monday.  I was beyond exhausted, but Michelle, EJ, Ceridwyn and I went for Mexican food and margaritas.  Tuesday Michelle, EJ and I played a wine tasting evening in Round Top, TX.  That was fun and good to be with my bestest friends and favorite musicians. 

For the next two weeks, I organized for people in Austin.  It was great.  I scanned, I shredded, I even crawled into an oven-like attic and pulled down stuff that clearly did not need to be saved.  Then I stopped for a weekend of organizing in Houston and then made my way to the beautiful springtime Asheville, NC.

Asheville is such a glorious place to rest between works.  The mountains and river and greenness really help me recharge my energy.  Plus I get to play tunes every evening and experiment on new accompaniment patterns...  I love it!

Next is a trip to Indiana for a SHAWM workshop.  I'm really excited!

Arizona wrap up

Arizona Renaissance Festival is over. It was exactly the experience I wanted. The fair itself and the people involved exceeded my expectations in just about every way I could have imagined. I found a few photos of my performing.

Jason Parker of the Yellow Pages took this cute stage photo.

Raven took these two performance photos.

Thank you to everyone who made me feel so at home and made me laugh and fed me and everything else.  I hope to see you all again next year!!

Look what I found

I almost stepped on this little guy. He held still long enough for a picture and away he went.

Experimentation

Life is a journey for learning. That's one of the reasons I love music so much. The journey will never be over. There's always something to learn, either within music itself or with the act of performing and/or seemingly unrelated things like fixing a flat tire on the way to a gig.
The last five weeks here at Arizona Ren Fest, I have had a safety set of songs ready to be performed especially for those times when I have a full audience. Even with my safe set of songs (songs that I know so well that even a screaming child covered in bells hanging from the rafters of my stage couldn't mess me up) I still experiment. Performance is more than just singing a song. It would be a pretty boring show if I stood on the stage, sang eight songs carefully and then went away. Many of my songs are not in English. I translate them with some liberty and lots of energy. It's actually the songs in English that I have a harder time finding something funny or at least interesting to say. Over these five weeks I have been slowly collecting the lines and jokes that work. I have also introduced a few new songs to my stage performing. This has been such a great time.
I realized this morning that I could summarize all if this as my goal for how I want to perform. I want to present real music with an entertaining sense of humor. I don't want to do the same ol' stuff. I don't want to talk down to peoples' intelligence. I just want to be able to be entertaining enough to give people something real and let them enjoy it.

Top of the World

Some friends and I climbed the Peralta Trail. It is a pretty well established path, but it's not a piece of cake. The path is very rocky, some spots are very steep and it's about two miles to the destination.
The great part about this trail is that at every rest spot (which seem to make themselves known without signs or benches) we would turn around toward where we had been and a new layer to the view had been added. It was really spectacular.








The destination: Weaver's Needle.

A story

I wish that I had a photograph to go with this story, but all I have is an amazing moment that I hope I can describe to you.

Saturday at the fair went well in spite of my runny nose and watery eyes. I ate fantastic barbeque at a friend's place and made it back to my bed just after 10. One dog WAILED in a shrill barky howly way until about 11:30. After that, my sinuses and weird dreams kept me from sleeping much. I decided that I would give myself a break and promised to take it easy on Sunday. I prepared myself for a crummy day.

I sang a couple of songs at my first set when a dad carrying his three year old red haired daughter came in to take a seat. I always take a second to say hi to the young kids. Dad said she saw me and wanted to come listen. I told her we must be sisters because of our matching hair. I sang another song and at the end I heard the dad chuckle and tell the little girl "I don't know, you'll have to ask her." I looked at her and asked what her question was. Dad answered that she wondered if I would sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I told her that I would if she would come sing it with me. She ran up and stepped onto the stage as if I was someone she had always known. I knelt down to her level and she latched onto my right arm. I asked her how the song starts. She shyly mumbled that she didn't know so I suggested that I would start it. She remained glued to my arm while I sang to her. When I finished I told her that that was great. I love that song. She was delighted and went back to her dad and they listened some more.

Those are the moments that make a clogged head and howling dog worth it.