Hey Asheville residents,
I know you’re out there. I posted awhile before. Freshmen aren’t allowed to have cars and so it makes it a bit difficult for me to get to sessions in Asheville, so I started one at Warren Wilson College.
The session will be inside the Bryson gym at 6:00 on Thursday evenings. If you go up Warren Wilson Rd. and go past the first entrance to the college on the right, drive into the second entrance up near Kittredge theatre. You can park in the parking lot behind the theatre, and then walk about a block down the path to Bryson Gym, which is a large brown building with construction going on. The gym has a piano and folding chairs, so pianists are welcome to come and play if you know the trad tunes.
The tunes will be pretty common tunes that most musicians and Irish music students know, at first. I promise, no Kesh Jig, Butterfly, or Morrison’s jig unless you REALLY want to play them (I am SOOO sick of those tunes). But I will want to play some common hornpipes and polkas in the sets. I like the rhythm variety that they give, as opposed to playing all jigs and reels.
I also want to include the occassional Scottish tune. I love the strathspey Loudon’s Bonnie Woods and Braes, as well as a Shetland tune called “Sleep in Da Morning”. I also love “Brenda Stubbert’s” by Jerry Holland. There are also a couple contemporary tunes, a waltz and a hornpipe, by William Taylor that you may not know, but could easily pick up by ear if you don’t. I also love “Catharsis”, but I don’t play fiddle and it’s a hard tune to play unless I have a fiddler playing with me.
Unlike most strictly traditional Irish sessions, participants will be welcome to throw in their own pseudo-Celtic compositions. I’ve written a couple reels which I would like to share. If enough people can learn by ear, this shouldn’t be a problem… Unless there’s someone who’s REALLY opposed to coloring outside of the lines.
