Festival of American Fiddle Tunes 2008, Day Two...

This was my first full day of classes at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes. I decided to try out the Cape Breton fiddling this morning. I was fiddling around (oops) with my new recorder this morning trying to figure it out, so I was late to my first class, at 9:30 a.m. No harm done. I slipped into the back row of the north dance hall upstairs in the 204 Building, got out my fiddle, and jumped right into a jig being played by David MacIsaac along with about 20 students, accompanied by Paul MacDonald. Without my recorder...




I liked the way David played the tune parts over and over again. He provided a page of sheet music for us with three tunes that he taught. Paul accompanied David, and then Wendy, with piano or guitar accompaniment. Wendy also sat in to accompany on piano. We got an hour and a quarter with each fiddling MacIsaac this morning (2 classes). They are marvelous masters of the Cape Breton style of music, which is based on Scottish fiddling. Please don't ask me the difference! I'm eager to see Wendy step dance as well as play more fiddle. She has happy feet. I'm surprised they aren't a blur of motion in this photo. It's a rule that you must always tap your feet to the music.




That was it for the morning, so I decided to head home for a lunch break. I returned at 2 p.m. for the Cajun band lab. We were split up into three groups--the accordions and guitars went outside, and we fiddlers stayed upstairs in 205. Young Cedric Watson of the Pine Leaf Boys gave us fiddlers training on tuning down our strings and playing chords for "Valse a Eunice." He had different groups of us play separately so he could better hear whether we got it right. Tomorrow he will teach us the melody. I forgot to take a picture of our "band," but here is a photo of "Cajun Central":



When the guitar players and accordionists returned from their tutorials, we were offered the words to the waltz. Some of the band members are brave and bold enough to try singing in Cajun French. Well, okay, some of them already know how to. Chaos reigned for a few moments before the teachers got the students organized all together. I felt kind of overwhelmed and left a bit early, beating a path out the door and down the stairs. I wondered over to the Fiddle Tunes store looking for my son T-Dawg, to see if he had gone to the bass class. According to storekeeper John, he had indeed gone. I resolved to head home for another break. Thanks, John, for employing and feeding my son this week!

After some leftovers for dinner, I decided to take a walk to the beach and skip the evening concert. This is the sight I saw:



I am pretty sure it's the schooner Adventuress, returning to Port Townsend after being grounded in the San Juan Islands. She was fortunate to escape major damage. And to the west, I saw a para-skier for the first time ever:



Then, back to the Fort for some dancing. Here is group two of the Cajun Dance (oh no, I missed my friends Claudette and Tami playing with my hubby)!  This is a group of musicians from Seattle, accompanied by my hubby on guitar. A little Zydeco was played, too. The dance halls are nicely decorated, don't you think? I had some trouble with taking pictures in the darkened room...



Not enough men to dance with? No problem. We women know how to shake our booties! Here are some happy dancers doing a kind of line dance to Cajun music:




And the orbs danced along, too.....



I tried to take a picture out the window of this wing of the building toward the opposite side, where Fred Parks was calling square dancing, but unfortunately the photos all turned out too dark. More studying needed to do a better job.

On my way out, I was happy to run into my fiddling friend Laurel from Port Orchard. She's learning some Irish tunes with Paul Bradley, and partaking of the Quebecois band lab with De Temps Antan. We're going to agitate for a Scandinavian jam some night.....

And so concludes my first full day at Fiddle Tunes. I met up with T-Dawg after this dance, who was hanging with his group of lovely ladies from Seattle. We stuffed his bike into the car and headed home.