On blogging....(and I recorded an album!)

.On blogging:

So, I've had a heck of a December/January - don't really want to overshare on the internet but on top of the holidays, I had a huge (and fantastic!!) change in my life that is going to eat up a considerable amount of my future free time. Its therefore kind of hard to promise a weekly blogpost of the caliber/quality that I'd like, so I think I'm going to have to back off on the blog for a while.  

I'll, of course leave the blog archive up on my homepage and I may do an occasional post...just can't promise a weekly one. I do have at least one piece of unfinished business - finishing my Album of Original fiddle tunes (here), by recording the last tune, "Cheese and Krackers," which I hope to get to soon. Note - this is a different album than I talk about in the title of this post - more on that album below.

To everyone who reads this thing regularly, thank you so much! I've especially loved hearing from you via email and comments on the site. Hope you got something out of it too! Now, on to other news:

I recorded an album:

Okay, thats a bit of a strong statement - really I played banjo on my friend Molly McBride's album. Molly (mollygmcbride.com) is an amazing fiddler I play with frequently - often at lunch as part of our duo/band "the Rock Andy Lunch Time Experience" (a couple videos of us playing here). Molly did all the organizing and tune selection - I just had to learn a few tunes and show up for two 4-hour recording sessions. Everything came together super quick and the album's already available!! Here's a link to a page about it on Molly's site (you can buy a copy if you so desire!):

​mollygmcbride.com/music/the-sigogglin-string-band/

The Album is called "Goodbye Honey I'm Gone" and its named after a cool G minor tune that appears on the album (the tune is actually one there twice: once as a solo fiddle rendition and once with the whole band). As with all my G tunes - minor, major, or otherwise - I played it in Old G (here). The album is all fiddle tunes but includes a few banjo/fiddle duets, a few solo fiddle pieces and several full band (fiddle, banjo, guitar, bass) numbers as well. 

As a teaser, Molly's given me the go-ahead to share a track that didn't make it on the album. Here's a banjo/fiddle duet of "Sally in the Garden" we recorded alongside the rest of the tunes:

"Sally in the Garden" performed by Molly McBride (on fiddle) and myself (on my Buckeye tuned aDADE). Recorded and mastered by Chris Scales, who also plays guitar on the rest of the album.

A few days back, I was also lucky enough to play onstage with Molly in a concert featuring women fiddlers of Michigan. The concert was put on by a local folk music society called The Ten Pound Fiddle - more info on that here:

​www.tenpoundfiddle.org/event/michigan-fiddle-styles-molly-mcbride-ruby-john-judy-raber/

Honestly, that was one of the most special shows I've ever played in! The room was packed with an attentive audience and it was really just a celebration of the music I love (and 3 women that play it really really well!) - I've been on cloud 9 ever since. Molly, Chris (guitar) and I played 5 tunes off the album and ended up selling a bunch of copies afterwards. Just a great evening!!

Anyways, thats about it for now - again, I'm not entirely sure when I'll post again but check back on occasion - thanks for reading!