The Great Northern Irish Pipers’ Club 2004 was a tremendous success! We had two days of great piping and great teaching delivered by Isaac Alderson. What a wonderful, patient teacher. Turnout was very good (15 pipers). Weather was great too (no furry hats this time around). Perfect piping weather. We had a special surprise treat in having Patrick Cannady at the event. What a piper! His flat set renderings had us all transported to far-off places and times. Definitely a piper to watch and one who should go pro (in my perfect world where the arts and culture are fully funded and supported). Look for our club’s tionol this time next year (no more winter tionols for us anymore!).
Look for a full report in this summer’s Pipers’ Review.
Tom, glad to hear it went well up there for you guys. Again, sorry I could not attend but I am definitely going to schedule it in for next year…let’s hope my course schedule will be such that I won’t have to skip too many important classes.
Will there be pictures posted on the GNIPC’s web site?
Or in my perfect world where good musicians and artists just get paid a half-decent wage in exchange for their work because the citizenry is eager and willing to pay for it directly to the artist, rather than relegate the entire so-called “arts” to a permanent beggar class dependent on the government to filter thousands of dollars of extorted tax money through an entire permanent bureaucratic class of governmental paper shufflers and leftist, institutionalized arts-community, grants-committeefied dabblers and liberal-arts college, degreed-wannabees just to get one dollar to the artist.
But I don’t really have any strong opinions on it though.
Having been a professional musician for over thirty years, I can honestly say that I have never relied on government handouts to stay alive. I don’t think I recall ever feeling like I fit into the ‘beggar class’. I have had the honor and the privilage to work with some of the best in the business. I have worked hard and got paid very well for that work, and there really isn’t anything I regret about the experience so far. I have seen a great deal of this country (the United States of America) than most people ever will thoughout their entire life times and the citizens of every place that I have played were more than generous with their hospitality, time and money, without any governmental prompting, assistance or entanglements. Royce, have times really become that bad for musicians back in balmy old Minnesota? Yikes!
The work and good pay is out there a plenty, ready and waiting for anyone who wishes to exert a little initiative and reap it in. And there are grants a plenty for those who want them…and contrary to those who believe otherwise, there really isn’t an awful lot of work involved with getting ones fingers on all that free money…that is, until tax time rolls around.
Hmmm… all the info I have about those grants had have mentioned matching money (usually in the neighborhood of $2K) being needed. Anybody have any matching funds that they would like to use for a tax writeoff?
It seems as if my medicare won’t quite hack it.
Our gigs and CD sales directly to the audience are much easier and even if we don’t get rich at it, it’s much more fun and will occasionally buy another whistle.
Where is it and for whom do you perform/play?. My last gig ( The Irish Cottage in Galena Illinois, August 2003) paid me 2k for 2 weeks work, 4 nights a week. Not too bad and I am happy with the sum. Of course, I did play as a solo act and a duo or trio would have to split that total up…but the point being that there are great gigs out there, but you have to go out and get them…they will not knock down your door.
When you earn this kind of money, save a good portion of it and not squander it away, it is amazing what grants you can match. The difficult thing is abstaining from consuming vast quantities of delicious libations…among other cash sucking practices (which includes buying instruments that aren’t absolutely necessary). I can attest to this from personal experience…boy, and how!
Although, it would be kinda cool if medicare allowed for matching grants.
Medicare disability (what I am on) does’t allow me to make any money. I don’t think I actually make money but just cover gas and perhaps an instrument once in a while.
Remember where you live and where I do. North Carolina has had some very hard times since the government went after “big tobacco” and won.
I think there is a performance link in my sig, so you can see the area (VA & NC mountains and western piedmont) we play.
I don’t think I would enjoy doing many solo gigs, even though I have taken a couple.
There are 6 in the band, so if we all show up, it’s a 6 way split + some slush fund for broken equipment.
Yup, wages get a little thinner as the band gets a little thicker. I really hate solo work, and have really cut back on gigging altogether in the last two years or so. One reason is I moved from Saint Paul Minnesota about four years ago and do not have a good grip on local pubs within the rural area in which I live. Many years ago I played at the Harp and Thistle pub in Saint Petersburg, but I have long been out of that loop. Secondly, I am in college for veterinary technology and I barely have time for bodily functions let alone hitting the road and playing gigs across the country.
Yes, I imagine NC has been hit pretty badly since “big Tobacco” took it in the breadbasket. To be perfectly honest, I haven’t followed the news much at all for the last year and a half…school again. What news I do get, is usually weeks old.
I wish I could go to school again. I think that was all I learned in school was how to go to school.
Don’t forget the textile industry is disappearing as well, and now there are rumors of the furniture industry having troubles. That is (used to be?) the 3 biggest industries of NC.
We haven’t been booked for a pig pickin’ (my favorite type of gig) since 2000.
Some of those gigs, I would almost have paid to go to as they were almost as much fun as the pig pickin’s at which I first learned to play Irish music.
I just wish I had the energy to do all the things I want to do now that I have the time. When I did have the energy, I was busy raising kids and trying to please and keep a wife.
I think I did a pretty good and a great job with the kids, but the wife left me for a manic-depressive pot head. She just left him a few months ago and went to England (she was Scottish from Kilmarnock) for some strange reason. :roll:
One son showed me that I was hopeless on guitar while my youngest is just now in harm’s way in South Korea after being deployed to Quatar.
They don’t get to get nearly as much stateside duty as I did when I was in the USN.
Hasn’t the textile industry been fading out for quite a few decades now? Sad to think about. There is a great song I used to play/sing that I learned from listening to Planxty years ago called ‘Aragon Mill’. It is a pretty, but poignant song regarding the closure of textile mills. I haven’t heard or played it in many moons, but I think I will relearn it someday.
At 40+, I am finding out how much I truly like school, but also how much energy it takes just to keep focused on any one particular course…and pulling down 18 credits per semester gets a little wearying to say the least. But I have always wanted to be involved in veterinary medicine so I am determined to see this college thing through to its fruition.
You probably would call it barbeque, in the south, it’s a pig pickin’ because you pick the meat off the bones by hand.
Dig pit in ground and cut some hickory and oak firewood
Barbeque a pig according to the temp schedule, dousing with secret sauces and turning as needed, starting about 3 pm on Fri.
Saturday, pick the meat off the pig and pile on plates, put on table with lots of home made bread, vegies, deserts, etc, ring bell, pray and pile it on.
Stuff your face silly, and when you can finally move, light a great big bonfire and play Irish music and (possibly) drink yourself silly (I use coffee myself with a little Irish cream) until you pass out.
You know what you get when someone drinks Irish Coffee, don’t you? A drunk that can’t pass out!
Sun: Have great big pots of coffee, biscuits and gravy the next morning, when eyes finally fully, open play music until hungry, then have pig leftovers, play a little more music, some hugs and promises for next year.
I went to one in Tenneessee for 12 years that was like that. They were awesome and so much fun, it should have been illegal! I really miss them, but the ownership of the farm changed hands and the gang couldn’t find another place for them. I think there may have been too many freeloaders showing up and not putting anything in the kitty when they went through the line as well, so it was getting costly (and it ain’t easy work either, cooking all night).
We actually got 3 paid pig pickin’s in VA and NC a few years ago.
That’s when I found out that Clydesdale horses love pipe music.
Everytime I would crank then up, they would come charging up and stick their necks over the fence and listen intensly.
pulled pork- I guess that what Mississippi folks call it. Its the best, bar none. I don’t know how you could play music at all after having supper, greens, biscuits and creamed corn.
In NC, all I have heard it called is “eastern style” barbeque (my favorite style that my dad used) which uses a vinegar based sauce, and “western style” barbeque which uses a tomato based sauce.
In Tenn, they basted with a vinegar sauce with a tomato based hot sauce on the side, the best of both of the NC styles.
I had to make two piles, one for the plain, one for the hot tomato sauce, which was different each year and made by a different person. I never could decide which pile was better except for one tomato sauce that had caraway seeds in it which I cannot stand.
I used to work at Historic Fort Snelling in St. Paul Minnesota as a ‘living historian’/site guide. Every year we hosted a ‘Rendezvous’ for another historical group of fur traders. The fort employees were responsible for roasting two pigs for the event. I partcicpated in this event every year that I was employed there and roasting them oinkers went pretty much the same way as you described…minus the secret spices.
They were the best parties that I can recall ever being involved with…and they usually got pretty wild. Beyond the playing of music there were tomahawk tosses (single and doubled headed), musket reliability contests, skinny dipping excursions down the bluff to the Mississippi River, wenching, arm and leg wrestling, wild card games (strip whist for one), stuffing a three pounder cannon with month old hard bread and firing it off, drinkingdrinkingdrinking and much, much more than I have the memory to relate. No freeloaders ever turned up as this all took place within the Fort Snelling State Park and we were all wearing period attire of the 1820s (including muzzle loading firearms and ammunition…yikes) so if a straggler would have stumbled among our midst…they wouldn’t have gone unnoticed.
Yup, more fun than mere mortals ought to be allowed. I don’t know if they hold them any more, but they were great while they lasted.
…this is an amazing coincidence! The GNIPC Tionol featured a fish pickin’ (pulled eelpout), and everyone was in period attire!
how do these threads go soooo astray?
I dunno, conversation always seems to pop up and spoil everyone’s party I guess. It is possible that not enough attendees have contributed to the thread yet…uh…and this stuff is really the warm-up act…yeah…that’s the ticket.
All this talk is getting me hungry. I love “pulled Pork” (that is what I call it too). You guys should come to our SCUPC Tionol in October. There are a few of us that home brew. We could dig a big pit in Gaby’s backyard and roast a pig. I don’t think his wife would mind. (She would kill me if she ever found out I said this)
I have enjoyed reading this thread, but I am still curious about the Tionol. It sounded like it was going to be a good one.
Has anybody tried pulled octopus or is that meat able to be cooked tender? It’s the toughest meat I have ever tried.
I remember a discussion in Tenn (you know, one of those campfire things after a few bites, tunes, and drinks) about why they called it a pig picking, and they always joked that it was because they picked a pig to cook.
Since there were people from several states there, (the Texans would not call it barbeque, though, it had to be beef for that) most of them also called the resultant meat pulled pig. Later, when the pig farmer went out of business, they had to get 3 hog shoulders to fit where the pig did in the pit. The last 3 years we had it and although the party was still called “the pig pickin’”, the resultant meat was called pulled pork.
The pigs were much more fun. The kids would freak out when we would ask them if they wanted the best part and found out it was the eye. Big Ed and I would snatch them up when the kids said nay to the idea. I loved watching their exressions of disgust when we would lick our lips over them! Some would actually have some heaves.
You had to remember never pet a dog after the pulling as they were all grease heads…
