We were able to get together the weekend of September 28th for a bit of catching up and showing off new musical skills and instruments. Larry is playing the acoustic guitar and we did some switching around by playing the song “Buffalo Gals” with Larry on the guitar and John the upright bass. Fortunately it is a simple two chord song (G & D) and after a few attempts it sounded very good. Larry was impressed with hearing the bass while playing another instrument.
Tim provided us with his new chord playing technique on his new mandolin. A very beautiful looking and sounding instrument. John brought his new configured single key of A autoharp. This was more of an experiment to understand how well a single key harp plays and provided John the chance to learn how to do the configuration himself. The sound was very good and this should eventually lead to him obtaining a 2 key G/D harp sometime next year. These single or two key harps allow for easier playing Old Time “fiddle tunes”
The rest of the weekend was spent working on some new tunes: “Hangman’s Reel” (we were introduced to this at Clifftop) and “Catch the Wind.” as well as going over all of our other songs including one we hope to play in next year’s Clifftop traditional contest.