Tag Archives: irish

Dueling Mandolins

21 Wednesday Dec 2011

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We had a great set on Monday night, and mandolin sensation Painless Parker joined us on stage for most of the 3-hour show of Irish, Scottish, and popular tunes. Dueling mandolins–that’s a pretty awesome thing.

We got through almost three hours of material that night. Lessons learned:

  • While we’re happy with how the trio is gelling, the band has discussed some future directions for rehearsal. We think we’ll consolidate our set a little and tighten up in general.
  • Neil also discovered that he really, really likes having two guitars on stage. We were afraid that the additional guitar would be clunky and in the way, but since Millicent is small, having the additional guitar really isn’t a big deal, space-wise. And trading off to a guitar that has lighter strings and a smaller fretboard is a nice relief from Kate’s monster-heavy strings.
  • Always bring along extra mic stands and microphones. Roger again had no mic for vocals, since the house only had three. It also would have been nice to have a mic for Painless; he and Neil had to share a mic.
  • Playing Mondays sucks. The crowd was awesome—thanks, guys!—but tiny. More people means more tips, which means more Baroque, less Hungry.

Don’t forget that there’s still time to win a free home concert from us. Just buy our CD on Bandcamp and we’ll automagically enter you in the drawing.

You’ll find more pictures on the band’s Facebook page. We’ll see you back at the Way Station in January, for another jam session!

Apropos of nothing, here’s Matt’s rendition of “Silent Night” on the wire-string harp: