I spent all day Saturday at the Celtic Music Festival about an hour north of me in Sebastopol, Calif. It was hot and sunny. I spent an hour listening to Kevin Crawford at a workshop talk about playing flute and listening to him play. I sat about 10 feet from him, trying to osmose some skill. I also sat in the front and heard a one hour performance by Paddy Keenan and a local guitar player. They were both phenomenal. The guitar player, Jonji Shuroto(?), a Japanese fellow who played in a bluegrass band in Japan, then started hanging out in the elite session pub in San Francisco, Star and Ploughs, has become the primier Celtic guitar accompanist around here. I’ve never heard better. He also played some bluegrass 5-string guitar and sounded like the great Earl Scruggs. He also sung a traditional Japanese song without accompaniment, and Keenan played the tune on low whistle inbetween verses. Cool. We went out to dinner (my wife, me, and a fellow from our session group and his 13yr old daughter) and then returned for the evening concert, which featured Cherish the Ladies and Lunasa. The concert ran from 845pm to 130am. At the end of the concert, both bands plus Martin Hayes and Kevin Burke were on stage playing some lightning fast reels. Pretty powerful and loud. Boy, the level of technical expertise on stage was unbelievable. Three of the Lunasa performers played whistle or low whistle at various times. And it turns out that Joannie Madden, spokesperson for CTL, and Kevin Crawford, announcing for Lunasa, were both very funny, entertaining performers. My wife slept on the way home while I drove fast, squinting at the road and fighting to stay awake.
There was an open session tent in the middle of the grass field (no walls, just roof), but I didn’t hang out there much. There were a few people I knew from our own session group there. They seemed to be introducing a number of the tunes, but it seemed too much like being in the regular session, so I didn’t feel like doing that when there were novelties afoot. The session players did seem like nice people and the atmosphere was relaxed. I think the highlight for me was the hour listening to Paddy Keenan and Jonji (not to take anything away from the main concert. By then, we were beat from a day in the sun and dehydrated. Had one of the best beers of my life there.) Was anyone else there?
Tony