Adieu, Sweet Lovely Nancy

I've decided to make some videos of songs that I enjoy playing and singing.  Here's my first offering, an a capella version of Adieu, Sweet Lovely Nancy, which I often sing at chantey sings at the Rowayton Arts Center or at Boys in Hats concerts.

July into August

Rumor has it that there's a whole month that falls between June and August.  Here's what happened in my life.

I worked at Norwalk Hospital for the Summer Intensive Unit (June 29-August 3) of Clinical Pastoral Education, finishing up my second unit.  This was an extremely intense program, which is probably why I didn't manage to get any blog posts done.  I covered inpatient psychiatry, telemetry and the ICU/CCU units, as well as leading a spirituality group for the outpatient psychiatry program.  One of the high points was spending a day riding with one of the ambulance crews that operate out of the hospital.

From July 6-8, I crewed on Amistad for OpSail 2012 in New London, CT, which was the first time that she has been under sail since her mishap on the way back from Cuba two years ago.  It was REALLY good to be able to do that!  We tied up at the same dock as the USCG Barque Eagle and the Brazilian Navy's full-rigged ship Cisne Branco (White Swan).  I spent much of the time speaking with the public dockside, as Amistad was still preparing to finish uprigging for her trip to Canada.

I preached three weeks (July 1, 15 & 22) at the Monroe Congregational Church, while the pastor, Rev. Jenn Gingras, was away. During this time, I put in one office day a week, making pastoral visits, putting together the bulletin, and doing other clergish sorts of things.  The July 22 service was held on the town green and was a joint endeavor between Monroe Congregational Church and St. Peter's Episcopal Church.  These sermons are on my YouTube channel.

Eric Anderson and I performed at the Marlborough Arts Center (Article here) for a second time on July 27.  Return engagements are always good and this one certainly was, with the crowd singing along and having a great time.  Of course, we sang the "old favorites," but we also included some new ones including the English folk song "Pleasant and Delightful" (with somewhat updated lyrics) and "General Taylor."  I played "John Hardy" on my gourd banjo.


Ian and I continued to sail on our friend Bob McGregor's boat, Scotch Flyer,on Wednesday nights and have continued to have a winning season in the Norwalk Yacht Club races.  We've managed to win the last several races, going undefeated in the second series of races, so there should be a nice trophy for Bob when the awards banquet rolls around.  Of course, we have our own awards banquet every Wednesday night when we go to Partners' Pizza.

Then, somehow, it became August and...

On August 5, I preached at St. James Missionary Baptist Church, a small African-American congregation that I've gotten to know over the past three years of being part of Norwalk's Interdenominational Ministers' Fellowship.  I was filling in for my friend, the Rev. Ken DuBose, who was celebrating his birthday, but who was also present because he was filling in for the church's organist and choir director who was on vacation.

Ian and I marched with the Nash Drum Corps in the South Salem NY Firefighters' Parade on August 8.  This was our second parade with the group, which has brought in a few more new members.  You can see Ian holding a rifle on the left (from your perspective) side of the flag and I'm two rows behind him with my trumpet.  We're both enjoying being able to march together.

On August 6, I interviewed for and, on August 9, was accepted into, a serial internship program at the Westchester Medical Center, which will allow me to complete all of the requirements to become a Board Certified Chaplain with the Association of Professional Chaplains and will allow me to pursue full-time employment in that field.  WMC is a Level 1 Trauma Center and also has a large burn unit, as well as an associated children's hospital, so I'll be able to have learning opportunities that were not available at Norwalk.

So, what did you do with your summer?

Carolina Chocolate Drops in New Haven

Carolina Chocolate Drops on stage at New Haven's
International Festival of Arts and Ideas
Photo by my old shipmate and friend, Wojtek Wacowski.

It is no secret that I'm a traditional music junkie.  Past posts about Pete Seeger, Peggy Seeger, and John McCutcheon testify to that.  I've been getting banjo notables to sign my banjo for a good while now and I've got a list of people that I'd like to track down and have them sign my banjo.  The members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops have been at the top of my list for some time, but their tour schedule rarely brings them to the northeast.

A few weeks ago, Kimberly the Ever Vigilant happened to see that the Drops were scheduled to appear at a free concert on the New Haven green as part of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas so, this past Saturday, Kimberly, Ian and I packed our trusty orange picnic blanket and a variety of yummy munchies and made our way for an evening of musical bliss.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops had their beginnings at the Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, NC, and honed their traditional Afro-Appalachian string-band music playing with then-90-year-old African-American fiddler, Joe Thompson (1918-2012).  Their set-list includes a lot more than string band music from the 1920s, though, incorporating disparate influences such as the music of minstrel shows, and Celtic "mouth music" as well as hip-hop and rhythm and blues, sometimes all at the same time.

Dom plays my banjo, with Hubby and Leyla.
Rhiannon is obscured by glare and my poorly placed body.

Last Saturday, the Drops put on a fine show, performing favorites like "Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad," and "Cornbread and Butterbeans," as well as a traditional Haitian song about a musician whose romantic prospects are limited because he has no friends and no family, and the title track to the band's latest album, "Leaving Eden," a song about the sorrows of leaving home in the hopes of finding work elsewhere.

After the concert, the members of the band were available for autographs and all seemed very happy to sign my banjo, looking at the other signatures.  "I'm going to sign next to Peggy!" said Rhiannon, excitedly.  Hubby signed/doodled his signature, with drawings standing in for letters.  Leyla, who isn't a regular performer with the Chocolate Drops, but who had played banjo beaufitully, asked, "Are you SURE you want ME to sign this?"  I did.  Dom's signature was small and careful and then he spent a minute or so playing my insturment, while the rest of the people in line watched in what I'd like to believe was pleasure.

My banjo head continues to fill up.
CCD signatures are transcribed for your reading pleasure.

Thanks to Charlie Barrett, for shooting video of Saturday's event and posting it to his YouTube channel!!

Getting My (Band) Geek (Back) On!

Me, at 15, in the Patrick Henry
High School Marching Band
uniform that my band wore for a
Valleydale Sausage commercial.
We used the proceeds from the
commercial to buy new uniforms.

When I was in high school, I was a band geek.  I played trumpet in the jazz band.  And the wind ensemble.  The marching band, too.  I was also in the regional band one year.  I loved it!

The Patrick Henry High School Marching Patriots were a competition band and attended (and won) numerous competitions.  Almost every year, we went on a major trip: Lakeland, FL; Gatlinburg, TN, and -- for my senior year -- Niagara Falls, Ontario, for the North American Music Festival, where my band won the grand champion trophy, despite the fact that we were competing against many larger bands.

Me, at 16, in my high school
marching band's new uniform,
complete with half cape and
1980s eyeglasses.

Years ago, when my then three-year-old son decided that he wanted to learn to play violin, I was happy, envisioning the day when Ian, Kimberly, and I would be able to make music together, on fiddle, mandolin, and guitar.  I was an "orchestra dad" when Ian was in the Fine Tuners in New Jersey, schlepping the official Boys in Hats sound system to Fine Tuners gigs and even providing narration for The Devil Went Down to Georgia in a series of concerts.

Ian in Norwalk's
Memorial Day Parade.

 When Ian started playing clarinet, I was happy about that, too.  In fact, I was band-geekily-giddy about it as I remembered my band experiences.  Kimberly (who used to play flute in the school band) and I suffered through those first years of school band, with squeaky clarinets and blatty trumpets.  It was, after all, karma; we were paying back all those band parents who "got to" listen to us play when we were beginning musicians.

When Ian made it to high school, I stepped up to the role of being a band dad, getting fingerprinted so I could chaperone the band on trips, attending all of the band parent association meetings, volunteering to be the announcer for the band's annual Celebration of Sound competition, and walking with the band during parades to help keep them hydrated and to help out if anything should go wrong.

My big problem with walking along with the band is that it tears up my head to be out of step with the marching cadence and it looks rather stupid if I march along with my water bottle.  For good or ill, once marching band gets in your blood, it is there to stay.

Over Memorial Day weekend, Ian's band, the Brien McMahon Marching Senators, had two parades: one on Sunday in Rowayton and one on Monday in Norwalk.  As the band was warming up on Sunday, I happened to notice some decidedly non-high-school-age people getting ready to march in another band.  One was a woman with a bit of gray in her hair.  Several of the guys sported facial hair that had more salt than pepper.  "Marching band for grown-ups!" I thought, "How can that be?" and I went over to ask some questions.

Ian and me after the Ketonah, NY,
Firefighters' Carnival Parade.  

It turned out that the group was the Nash Drum Corps.  Back in 1944, the Nash Engineering Company (headquartered in Norwalk) started an employees-only drum corps to march in local parades.  Though Nash Engineering is no longer in Norwalk, the drum corps continues with a variety of folks who have decided to keep the tradition alive.  I asked one of the trumpet players, Ron, what it took to join and he almost stuck me in a uniform then and there, but I had a commitment to Ian's band.  The next week, though, Ian and I went to Ron's house and got outfitted in uniforms so we could march in the Katonah, NY, Firefighters' Parade.  I spent the next week practicing the 2nd Trumpet part to several songs, and Ian brushed up on the Manual of Arms, since there's no place for a clarinet in the drum corps.

The parade on Wednesday was fantastic, with Ian anchoring the front line and me having a blast getting to play trumpet in a marching band for the first time in nearly a quarter century.  Really, it's just like riding a bike; you don't forget.  The marching was great, the music was under-rehearsed but good.  The best thing, though, was the fact that I was able to march with Ian.  That was cool beyond belief.  

Bringing Amistad Back to Life

Amistad returning to the water on April 23, 2012

Common wisdom has it that ships and sailors rot in port.  For the last two years, Amistad has been tied to a dock in Mystic, Connecticut, with her black paint aging to a charcoal color and her brightwork peeling and chipping.  Her topmasts, yards and gaffs were removed after she limped home following a rig failure during her return from her trip to Cuba.  Time and inactivity have not been kind to her.  Over the last few weeks, though, things have begun to turn around for the old girl and she's being rerigged to sail this summer and, two weeks ago, I traveled up to Mystic to be part of the process.

On April 22, shortly after the last "Amen" was said at Calvin Reformed Church, where I've been the guest preacher for the last few weeks, I got on a train for Mystic.  I was intending to stay aboard the boat that night, but found that she was still out of the water at the Henry B. DuPont Shipyard at Mystic, so I ended up in a room at the Howard Johnson's in Mystic, until the next day, when the ship was returned to the water.  

That evening, I enjoyed dinner with Greg Belanger, Amistad America's CEO, and Hanifa Washington, Amistad's program coordinator, and heard about Amistad's partnership with Ocean Classroom and plans for the coming sailing season.  As things stand now, Amistad will be in home waters for the first part of the summer, then will travel up to Halifax in August.  Before hurricane season, she'll make her way to the island of Hispaniola, which holds the nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic and where Amistad will work with stateless children, caught between the governments of the two nations, building a school at an orphanage and doing advocacy work with the two governments and the United Nations to help correct the situation.

View of the shipyard from Amistad's deck.    Just beyond
the path are the ship's fore and main gaffs, as well as her
bowsprit.  The end of the brand new jibboom, wrapped in
plastic, is at the extreme left of the photo.

On the 23rd, the lift dock lowered Amistad into the water and we moved her to a slip just outside of the shipyard, which had only just been vacated by another Baltimore clipper, the privateer Lynx.  The crew (such as we were) were able to move aboard, clearing rigging out of the bunks so we would have a space to sleep.  There was lots to be done and Rebecca, the ship's rigger, was busy dealing with rust on various blocks and other fittings and then carrying them aloft in preparation for running lines.  I worked below for much of the 23rd, getting the galley back into working order and lamenting how much gunk can accumulate with two year's worth of neglect.

Over the next few days, we brought Amistad's gaffs and new jibboom from storage in the boatshed, then turned our attention to the storage container full of the ship's gear, which is located on the other side of Greenmanville Avenue, at the back edge of Mystic Seaport's parking lot.  Chris, the carpenter, let me borrow his pickup truck and Greg, Hanifa and I loaded up a couple truckfuls of standing and running rigging, which we brought back to the ship.

The first load of rigging from the
storage container.

Meanwhile, a couple guys from the shipyard used their forklift to lift our Zodiac from the roof of the container and drive it across so we could paint the bottom, inflate it, and get it ready to use as Amistad's tender.  While I worked on the Zodiac, a crew of guys were painting the ship black, working from floats alongside the vessel.  The plan was that, by the time that they were done painting the port side, we'd be able to have the small boat in the water to use as a mini-tug so we could turn the ship around and paint the starboard side.

I worked on developing a nice sunburn as we hoisted blocks aloft and carried rigging aboard, very roughly arranging it on deck to ease the process of getting everything into place when the time would come.  For me, though, my time was over and I had to leave the vessel and my crewmates so I could return to my CPE program at Norwalk Hospital, at least until I can scrape together a few more days to come back and help some more.

You can follow Amistad's progress at:

www.amistadamerica.net

and on facebook at

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002278330678

Gear ranged around Amistad's deck and cabin tops.  There's much more gear alongside in the shipyard
and still in the storage container.

An Afternoon (and Evening) with Peggy Seeger

Mike, Peggy & Pete Seeger, 2007

A week or so, at the monthly sea chantey gathering at the Rowayton Arts Center, one of the folks there noticed the signatures on my banjo head.  I've got several:  John McCutcheon, Tony Trishka, Tom Chapin, Bob Webb, Mike Seeger and Pete Seeger.  

"You know, Peggy Seeger is going to be in Saratoga Springs next Thursday," the person looking at my banjo volunteered.

I was glad for the news, as I've been a fan of Peggy's for years but I was also somewhat troubled, as Thursdays are the one day of the week where my schedule is completely carved in stone because of the CPE program at the hospital.  Upon arriving home, I checked out Peggy Seeger's website to see if she had any other concerts in the general area and found that she had one coming up at Rider University on March 30, coupled with a lecture, A Feminist View of Anglo-American Traditional Songs.  I also saw that this would likely be the last ever concert anywhere near where I lived, since she was planning on only touring in Europe after returning to her home in England after this tour.  I made up my mind that I WOULD go to the concert.

Checking in with my wife and son to get their approval for my taking a road trip to New Jersey, I called my mother, telling her that I had found something that "I was sure she'd really want to do when she came up to visit," holding my breath and hoping that she'd decide that she wanted to take a two and a half hour drive to New Jersey the day after taking a train up from Virginia.  Fortunately, she agreed and I packed up my banjo and some Sharpie markers for the trip.

On Thursday evening, I picked my mom up from the train station.  On Friday morning, we left for Rider, stopping for some shopping and lunch along the way.  We were doing fine until we hit traffic on Rt. 1 on the way into Lawrenceville, causing us to arrive half-way through Peggy's lecture, but she welcomed us into the small theater where she was holding forth on the role of women in Anglo-American folk music, which she punctuated with a variety of songs, accompanying herself on guitar or keyboard, as appropriate.  (If you didn't click on the link earlier, here's another chance to see a summary of her lecture.)  

After the lecture, I asked Peggy if she would sign my banjo, which she happily did, including her unique "female music note" symbol with her signature. (See pictures below.)  After signing the banjo, she played it for a while, then surprised me by inviting me to stick around after the evening concert so I could play her banjo.

That evening, my mother and I had front-row seats in the Gill Chapel, where the concert was taking place and we sang along on many of the songs, laughed at her stories, and were generally impressed with this amazing woman who, in her late seventies, has more energy in her than most people half her age.  After the concert, I had the chance to play her pre-1900 A.C. Fairbanks banjo, with an 11" pot.  Suffice it to say that if any of my blog readers should wish to present me with a similar A.C. Fairbanks banjo, I wouldn't turn it down.

So that was my day spent with Peggy Seeger.  She's a phenomenal musician, with a deep knowledge of her craft and a love for her audience.  I enjoyed her keen sense of humor and her generosity of spirit.  I wish her well as she concludes her U.S. tour and returns to Britain.  And I hope that she'll decide to come back to this side of the pond someday.

Peggy Seeger Playing My Banjo

Me Playing Peggy Seeger's Banjo
with Peggy's 1929 Martin Guitar in Foreground

Peggy, Mike & Pete Seeger's Signatures on My Banjo

Earl Scruggs (1924-2012). Requiescat in Pace.

Even though I grew up in Virginia, I didn't grow up with bluegrass music.  My mother favored contemporary Christian music and my father would usually tune to the "easy listening" music on WRVA.  My parents' record collection, which was rather small, consisted of a box of 45s with songs like Ricky Nelson's Stood Up, Broken Hearted Again, Gene Pitney's If I Didn't Have a Dime (To Play the Jukebox), and Percy Faith's Theme from A Summer Place.  The 33s featured artists like Don Ho, and Don MacLean   Inexplicably, there was a copy of 101 Strings Play the Beatles, even though the actual Beatles made no appearance in my parents' record collection.  The only banjos in the record cabinet were buried in 1960s folk scare groups like The Brothers Four and the Serendipity Singers. [REVISION 3/30/12:  My mother, who just read this posting wants me to point out that she and my father didn't actually buy most of their records, but that they were given to my father by a friend of his who worked at a radio station and would pass along things that weren't being played.  Perhaps this explains a lot... ]

On weekday afternoons, though, the sound of the banjo came blazing into the house, with the theme to The Beverly Hillbillies.  "That's Flatt and Scruggs," my father told me, but there was no further information forthcoming.

Later, I would fall in love with the iconic "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," not knowing that the man who played the banjo on the recording was the man who, along with his Foggy Mountain Boys, pretty much invented bluegrass music.  Only later would I learn that FMB had become the bane of banjo pickers everywhere, since it is the one tune, aside from Dueling Banjos, that absolutely everyone knows to ask for.  Still, I love it.

That happy, rollicking banjo that Earl played made me want to play banjo, too, though my taste in music led toward the mellower tone of open-back banjos and the old-time style of clawhammer, instead of the three-finger picking style that Earl Scruggs invented.  Even so, I've always loved to listen to Earl and to those who play "Scruggs style," and have dreamed of getting yet another banjo, a resonator banjo like Earl's, and learning how to play at least a bit of that three-fingered magic.

Last night, I was at the extremely cool Jalopy Bar in Red Hook, Brooklyn (NY Times article about the place here), playing banjo with friends.  This morning, I woke up to the news that Earl Scruggs had passed away and I've been thinking that last night's musical adventure was a fitting tribute to a man whose genius so completely transformed American music.

Farewell, Earl.  You will will be missed.

Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs

Farewell Blues