Cantiga: Michelle's Blog

Church Gig, TX

I just got back from performing at a Church Madrigal Dinner with Istanpitta; I just can't get over how nice it was to play indoors, with AMAZING acoustics, for a quiet, appreciative audience. WOW. What fun. I was so relieved we didn't have to worry about amplification, or trying to be heard above people yelling "TURKEY LEGS! GET YOUR TURKEY LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEGS!", and we didn't have to worry about drunks hovering over our instruments, or about rain causing chaos. For once, all we had to think about was the music.

On the other hand, today was also an excersize in trying to be flexible and roll with last minute changes... Oh well. It was an adventure!... As always. I never could have imagined the kind of situations I would get myself into before I started playing professionally....the recording studio dungeon, being surprised with new material at the very last minute, gigs starting earlier than planned, driving hours away for one gig, being hungry, or exhausted, or sick, or getting lost ... or stuck somewhere because of Tornadoes (Tornadoes?!! I never even had the THINK about that when I was in New England!) having to learn a new instrument in a week....playing in venues where I can hardly hear the rest of the band.... Max told me, after I complained about not being able to hear the rest of Cantiga very well while we were performing at the Ovations concert the other week, "Well, the best musicians have to put up with this kind of stuff all the time." And that's just how it is. The fun is that no gig is ever the same twice! I just never know what to expect.... and I hope the audience gets a similar kind of thrill.

Ahhhh

I was feeling kind of down as I was getting ready for bed tonight... then, as I was washing up, I looked up at a brilliant, dazzling night sky and thought, oh my goodness, this is so amazing-- how many people get to look up at the stars as they brush their teeth?

Thanksgiving

For the past twenty-something years, two days after Thanksgiving, my friend's family has been staging mock battles in their medieval-style castle on their farm in Arkansas. Attendace ranges from 50-150. so I came to see what is was all about, and help build additions to the castle, cook, and improvise music to the battle game that was happening all around me. I kept hearing "Hey! I killed you!" "No you didn't!" "Yes I did!" When I wasn't fiddling, me and Renae Taylor(www.renaetaylor.biz)from "Imaginarium/Faerie Art" at the faire sketched the goings-on. Very fun, and I was so glad to spend time with another artist-- especially one as talented as Renae.



While I was still in AR, Renae and I visited friends (Joe Jewell from "Featherstone" and his wife Sue) in the next town over. We had all been neighbors on Bob's land during TRF, but had never had a chance to talk. Funny how it took all 4 of us driving out a thousand miles away to finally sit down and get to know eachother! They had a "pickin' party" at their house with the local folkies, which meant we played a lot of Old Timey/Bluegrass tunes and ate good food. I meant to return to Texas that night, but Tornadoes kept me in AR another day...

Now I'm back on Bob's land and-- thanks to the generosity of a friend (Jan Jackson, one of the talented musicians at TRF)-- I'm living in a trailer! What a difference it makes not to be scrambling on my hands and knees to cook! And it's so small it's easy to heat up-- I'm just snug as a bug. As I was cooking some hot soup, I got a phone call from someone in the community who was worried about me living in a tent and offered to let me stay in her house when it got too cold... I'm continually amazed by such generosity from people I hardly know.... or don't know at all!



Now there's a lot of work to catch up with, of course. A lot of people think I have five-day weekends, but actually, when I'm not at faire, I'm swamped with things to do-- rehearsals for Cantiga, Istanpitta, and Yuletide Carolers (a group Leslie, Martha and I are starting)weekday gigs, personal practice, giving fiddle lessons, making phone calls, working on my art, Cantiga promotional materials and the occasional commissioned illustration , odd camping chores like fixing tent zippers and patching up holes, filling up water jugs .... cleaning, cooking, driving 20-25 minutes to the nearest town to do laundry, buy groceries and wait in line at the library to use a computer etc etc...and when I wasn't driving to Arkansas and back (4-day trip), or cooking for what I thought would be up to 150 people, or building a castle this past week, I was cramming practice time on my my medieval vielle, or "fidielle," for a gig with Istanpitta tomarrow. Yup, I only had a week to learn it, but it's very similar to a violin. It has an extra low C or D string (5 string total), a wider, flatter body, and a short, curved bow. Also a very mellow and more subdued sound...but very primal... feels like I'm in a time warp when I play it, and I get way more animal responses from the forest playing the vielle than I ever got from the violin...! Like a singing frog and a mesmerized cardinal....

Plantersville, TX (Part Deux)

When the bright Texas sun poured in my tent Thursday morning and woke me up, the first thing that came to my mind was, “Oh my G-d, I’ve been turned into an olive.” I felt like a little squished pimento in the huge round of bedding I had surrounded myself with, and wiggled and squirmed my way out from under all the zippers and flannel sheets and goose down blankets; it got down to the 30’s (F) for the last couple nights, which is cold if you live in a tent. After making sure my instruments were still snug under the goose down covers (I keep them under the covers with me in cold weather to keep them functional), I stumbled to the outdoor shower and was very surprised to get stung by a bee in my fiddling arm for no good reason.

While living outdoors has its hardships, it’s such an overwhelmingly positive experience for me to live in a supportive, inspiring and encouraging community in beautiful Texas countryside that I decided to stay here until the band leaves for Florida at the end of January. The experience of living out in the sunshine and fresh air all the while observing nature is thrilling. Bob and Leslie are very knowledgeable about the local birds, and whenever I sit with them outside their trailer or camper we analyze the bird songs around us… like the White Throated Sparrow that sings “Old Tom Peabody Peabody Peabody,” or we talk about all the funny sounds the owls were making the night before, which vary from the simple, “Whooooooooo?!!” to sometimes frightening, otherworldly sounds I can’t explain, to very riské, human sounding mating calls!

There’s so much to like about living out here-- for one thing, for the first time in years, I have no trouble at all sleeping at night.. as long as I'm outside! Then, of course, there are all the great community events, like the R.E.S.C.U. rallies that happen at least once during each Ren fest throughout the country—a fundraiser for Rennies with overwhelming medical emergencies—and the annual S.P.A.N.C. festival (Society of Performing Arts of Nuevo Chile—“Nuevo Chile” meaning “New Chile” is what we call one of the places in “Tune Town” (aka “Ren Faire Drive”, where a lot of Rennies live both during faire and year round) owned by a Renny from Chile. At S.P.A.N.C., any Renny of any age who wants to perform a skit, musical piece, magic act, firedance etc can get up on stage and share the fun with others from the community. We get a great variety of performance art and a lot of new ideas are spun at these art festivals.

I’m so lucky to have the opportunity to jam with all the phenomenal and eclectic musicians that come through Tune Town—like a jazz-folk-classical-rock cellist who escaped New Orleans and came to live at Tune Town and work at the faire, and a singer-songwriter violist (Owl Morrison from TRF), guitar and banjo (Ky Hote from "Featherstone") husband and wife team with a brilliant child who spin great stories and sing funny songs. We trade melodies from our travels throughout the world, and pass techniques and music theory on to eachother. I’m also blessed with wonderful brilliant fiddle students who just can’t wait to learn… they inspire me and force me to really think carefully about my own playing and analyze how I learned—and still learn—to make music.

Though sometimes, just like anybody would, I feel overwhelmed by some of the hardships of living outdoors while trying not just to survive but also to become a successful musician and artist, it’s this community that helps me to realize how far I’ve come in the last year since I first joined the Ren Faires, and how unbelievably rich my life is, to know such beautiful and imaginative people… and it renews my spirit, determination and love for the music.

Time Travel, Aliens, and Musical Improvisation
It's 11:11, the time when (according to Rennie superstition) one day the universe will open and something will happen. Huzzah. This belief is so widely and half-jokingly accepted that I was actually late for my first Cantiga rehearsal back in February because no one thought to tell me when it would start... they just shrugged and exclaimed, "well all rehearsals start at 11:11, OF COURSE," like I was a moron, and then said, "but that's ok, we're not an orchestra, and it's just the first rehearsal," like it was MY fault. Riiiiiiigggght. And in a game of "Boho" (Bohemian) Bocce Ball, if the score is tied at 11-11, everyone must, OF COURSE, momentarily pause the game to make a little celebratory dance to no music in particular. Any Rennie passing by, who would happen to witness this, would know exactly what was happening and probably wouldn't think to look twice.

So anyway it's after 11:11 now and once again, nothing extraordinary has happened... or at least, not within the three dimensions of our known universe. I spent the day rehearsing with Cantiga, then visited my friend Al Cofrin, director of the the band Istanpitta (www.istanpitta.com), which I usually play with during the last set of each day at TRF (Texas Rennaissance Festival).

Now the interesting thing about Al is that besides being a fantastic musician and a really nice, down to earth kinda guy is that he also works for NASA. So sooner or later, any basic conversation is bound to lead into talk about aliens, time travel, space travel, or musical improvisation. We tried to watch the animation "Treasure Planet", which was fun because while I was busy mulling over both the beauty of the animation and criticing visual inconsistencies, Al was mumbling about the possibility of parallel universes-- string theory-- and the idea of other unknown universes having different physical properties. Knowing very little about any of this, I could only add what I knew of alien conspiracy theories-- like the one about how we humans are just a genetic experiment-- a slave race-- to an entirely different planet of Lizzard creatures, according to some author whom I can no longer remember the name of, and how a psychic told me she suspects cockroaches are capable of travelling beyond the three dimensions. Al was very patient with me.

We also jammed on some Irish tunes, which we promptly put into 10/8 just because. While I improvised over "The Butterfly" in this pattern, I desperately tried to hold down the rhythm by silently chanting "I-like-choc-o-late-choc-o-late" and letting the voices in my head tell me what to play; Al, however, prefers to improvise by mentally transposing numerical finger groupings of chordal structures or something like that. That's what I love about jamming-- it brings together all sorts of people, who all feel the music in different ways and express it through their own unique vision-- or mental calculations. Whatever. Now, if only I could find somebody whose eyes roll back into his/her head as s/he channels our alien hybrid ancestors while improvsing... now that would REALLY be something!

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