Mikie Smyth, Part Deux (Revenge of the Kiwis)
Mikie will be back in Southern California the weekend of June 24-26, with workshops and a house concert chéz No E. See details:
http://www.uilleannobsession.com/scupc.html or e-mail me at larry@socalpipers.com for more info.
Space is limited, so please RSVP is you plan on attending.
Cheers,
Larry
I plan to be there. My wife will just have to celebrate our anniversary by herself. Just kidding, our 10th isn’t till September (feels like 30th).
Douglas
WAY TOO much detail, next slide!!
Fel 
Check out some photos from when Mikie was here last time:
http://www.socalpipers.com/tionol_2005.html
Patrick.
With all those beautiful flat sets, concert sets, concertinas, guitars, etc., on show, this might sound like a strange question but what is that sticking out of the left side of the piper’s chair? More to the point, what’s its purpose?
… it’s a place to set your pint.
NZUPA was lucky enough to have him over in New Zealand for a little more than a week. We all had an excellent time (myself included). No E you should change the title of he post to “Revenge of the Californian”. Mikie is truly a great player of the pipes and an excellent player of the regulators.
I’m rather enviouse of his C# set. Which he very generously allowed me to play. The Woof chanter was incredibly easy to play. I particularly like the G base drone. Unfortunatly it means that he can only play in the key of G (or minor equivilant).
Cheers L42B 
Revenge of the Californians (i.e. BUMP)
Oh my poor liver!
Brilliant week/weekend with Mikie. Great guy, great music, great fun. Keep an eye out for Mikie’s new CD… amazing stuff!
Some photos and comments available at:
Gob Less,
Patrick.
couldnt but stop bumping into him at milltown. He was in roarin form. Just been listening to his cd. Wow the foxchase!!! 
Mikie is from Stoneybatter, Co. Dublin. Stoneybatter was also the name of an old slip jig, here is some verse:
Hi for Bob and Joan
Hi for Stoneybatter
Leave your wife at home
Or surely I’ll be at her.
Sung to the first part of the Butterfly. Think of these verses while you play it! Tommy Potts assembled the Butterfly from a couple of his father John’s tunes. John was great grandfather to the current Sean Og Potts.
Kevin- evil-evil- I can’t get the butterfly out of my head nor your “verse”. Almost as bad as having “its a small world” playing when you pick up your luggage at the airport. Yes, it really did happen
mas later
repeat
Glad I could ruin your tune, Fel! That business about the airports is really wrong, somehow. Sounds like something from the movie Brazil…
A friend of mine was talking about when she first heard the Kesh jig, it was great for the first 30 times or so and then became a bit…old. This is the mid-late 70s, so she’s been playing this tune for about 30 years. Ack. So I told her about how on old 78s made in New York that tune’s sometimes called Kerrigan’s jig, after Tom Kerrigan, the Taylor Brothers’ first customer in America. Tom played the pipes, and the…coffeepot. This was an old fashioned metal coffee pot with a tin whistle soldered onto the inside, with the holes punched through the outside of the pot. So you’d blow into the spout, and finger the outside like usual.
So now my friend, instead of just sleeping through the Kesh jig for the ten thousandth time, can picture this bushy mustachioed gent in 1890s New York, playing whistle music on a coffee pot. In his establishment, Kerrigan’s Pleasant Hour, where the waiters all can dance and sing a song, play instruments!
… great, now I can’t get ‘It’s a Small World’ out of my head… thanks a lot! 
edited for spelling.
Wasn’t this the birth of the ocarina?
djm
Nah, that was the song by Los Del Rio wasn’t it?
[ http://www.ambassdj.com/audio/macarenn.wav ]