Post a picture of your band!!

[Sue Rieter]

That's a nyckelharpa. It's a kind of a keyed fiddle but more in
the viola range. It was Sherri's pandemic project and she's pretty smitten with it. It's hard to get her to play guitar anymore! Originally Swedish it fits in with most folk music.

It looks really cool. Do you have any recordings with her playing it?

[Chuck Leyda]

It looks really cool. Do you have any recordings with her playing it?

I think this should work. I'm not sure why it seems small but if you click and then go full size you can see it

[Willi Bahrenberg]

Here's us, doing a little living room recording as a replacement for our annual Christmas Concert that had to be canceled for the second time in a row now.

We'll be uploading a video to youtube on Christmas Eve - I'll notify the cafe community of course!

P.S.: Sadly our singer Kristina couldn't make it that day. But we're planning to put her on film soon enough.

[Sue Rieter]

I think this should work. I'm not sure why it seems small but if you click and then go full size you can see it

Thanks, Chuck. That nyckelharpa's a really interesting instrument, and I like your band's sound.

[journeybear]

Here are photos of my current "duo"



I say "duo" because more of a duo project than a duo performing act. We've been working intermittently for a couple of years on five songs with the goal being producing an EP. Some of you - the more hip ones, perhaps - may recognize my partner as world-famous rock star and singer-songwriter Patti Rothberg, who generated considerable interest with her 1996 release, "Between The 1 & The 9" (a reference to her busking days on her favorite subway platform, where she was discovered), leading to an EMI contract, appearances on Letterman, Leno, and Oprah, and a European tour opening for The Black Crowes and Chris Isaak. I think she's kind of slumming with me, but she doesn't, and that's fine with me. We're celebrating the end of the recording phase, and delivery of the files to the mixing engineer. It's not too complicated, so we should see the results in a week. And to think this is all a dream we dreamed one after noon, long ago.

PS: Note clever inclusion of MC hat in both pictures. Representing!

[Willi Bahrenberg]

Patti Rothberg. Wow! What a great artist.! I'm intrigued. Say a word when the project is finished, will ya?

P.S.: Great photos, especially the one with the rainbow!

[Mark Seale]

Here's a picture of New Vintage Bluegrass Band.



And a bit of video:

[journeybear]

Patti Rothberg. Wow! What a great artist! I'm intrigued. Say a word when the project is finished, will ya?

P.S.: Great photos, especially the one with the rainbow!

Thanks! Say a word? As if I wouldn't!

Yes, the rainbow photo was quite a happy accident. Glad we caught it. That's for the back cover. The other is for the front cover. The slightly odd lighting effect is caused by the candles on my birthday cake. You can see its reflection in my left lens.

Yeah, her debut was an instant classic. I feel immeasurably fortunate to have met her, become a friend, and gotten to work with her.

I'm a little leery of teasing out any of the music yet, not until it's been worked on by the mixing engineer. Though I think I've snuck in a track or two over the years in relevant threads. I have no illusion about it making a big impact, but I hope it will be well received. I had a good chuckle when she approached me with the idea for this, because some of the songs are the well-worn usual suspects in the world of pop/rock mandolin. I teased her about not selecting "Friend Of The Devil" or "Ripple." She didn't quite get the joke until I explained it. But I think we may do "Ripple" in the next project. I hope so.

1) Maggie May
2) Morning Dew
3) Mandolin Wind
4) Battle Of Evermore
5) Gasoline Alley

[Willi Bahrenberg]

I'm a little leery of teasing out any of the music yet, not until it's been worked on by the mixing engineer.

Well, consider me teased anyway ;-)

[Charles E.]

Once upon a time, there was a band called Tin Can Alley. And I was in it. It was my first real band. Fiddle, mandolin, guitar. Added a bass soon enough. Eventually pedal steel and a female singer, too. We started out playing the usual 60s stuff - The Band, The Dead, The Beatles, etc. We had to make a change, and we got into swing, Western swing, some Southern rock, and more.

This just showed up. It's from a little music festival in Canaan CT, in 1981, I think, and not too well recorded - but pretty well played, if I say so myself. We worked on our arrangements, and came up with some nice touches, like the doubled riffs here, in unison and harmony. This dates from the Dark Ages - before cell phones and wall-to-wall videos, so there aren't any videos of us. Indeed, this is the first time I've ever even seen a photograph of us. Enjoy!



Dave Bradford - fiddle, lead vocal
Lou Florio - guitar, harmony vocal
Steve Gibson - mandolin

Wait a minute Journeybear, your last name is Gibson?! That explains a lot as to your choice of mandolins!

Hope you have a great new year with your Quiver of "Gibson" mandolns.

[Willi Bahrenberg]

Here's us, doing a little living room recording as a replacement for our annual Christmas Concert that had to be canceled for the second time in a row now.

We'll be uploading a video to youtube on Christmas Eve - I'll notify the cafe community of course!

P.S.: Sadly our singer Kristina couldn't make it that day. But we're planning to put her on film soon enough.

Aaaaand here it is! Please be gentle, we are obviously amateurs and weren't able to rehearse much beforehand
But if this brought some enjoyment to anyone of you that would make us extremely happy!

Volkert Bahrenberg - Banjo
Willi Bahrenberg - Mandolin
Till Braukmann - Bass
Ingo Frank - Guitar

00:40 - let me love you one more time
03:40 - blue eyes crying in the rain
07:09 - Rosa und Greta
09:51 - little cabin home on the hill
12:58 - dark hollow
16:23 - hickory wind

P.S.: Feel free to disregard the German announcements! Our audience isn't usually familiar with bluegrass so we like to do a little explainig before our songs!

[snakehead_a2z]

Gumbo Limbo Cajun band. We are from Gainesville Florida area. The band has been around since the late 1980s. We play Cajun, Creole, Swamp Pop and Zydeco.

Band members are:
David Massey - fiddle, vocals
Marietta Massey - triangle, frottoir, vocals
Mike Stapleton - accordion, fiddle, vocals
Bob Stone - steel guitar, vocals
Susan Marynowski - drums, vocals
Bill Paine - guitar, vocals
Rob Blount - bass, vocals
.

[journeybear]

So, one wonders ... Where's the mandolin in this band? For that matter, where's the mandolinist?

OK, with that little bit of gentle tweaking out of the way, I wonder whether you know Ash Reed or Rex Blazer? Two fine fiddlers who reside somewhere near your area, I believe. For 12 or 13 years I played in what I call a seasonal country-Cajun-bluegrass band, and one or the other would come down for a few days or a week around Mardi Gras to play some more Cajun-oriented-than-usual gigs, since we didn't have a fiddler, or a squeezebox player for that matter. We had a pedal steel player, who was excellent on the country - he should be; he'd been playing since the 60s, including some of the greats going back to the Nashville sound era. But he never could get the right feel for Cajun music, just couldn't get that bounce. He leaned on the downbeats, while Cajun lives on the backbeats. I developed techniques to simulate what a fiddle or squeezebox would do, which was actually a lot of fun. Sometimes I wouldn't even take a lead on a song, preferring to lock in on the rhythm with the bass and guitar. And we did "Bosco Stomp," and surely a bunch of songs you also do.

Wait a minute Journeybear, your last name is Gibson?! That explains a lot as to your choice of mandolins!

Hope you have a great new year with your Quiver of "Gibson" mandolns.

Could be coincidence ... could be intelligent design ... could be the luck of the draw ... who can say for sure?

Yeah, looking forward to picking up the A-3 restoration, as well as the 1907 A-1 and my main plain A from the shop. Gonna be a big year.

[journeybear]

I did want to offer a bit of a response to Willi (and anyone else interested) about my duo partner, Patti Rothberg, in timely fashion, it being Christmas. She's been playing in an all-female Ramones cover band for eight years. Even though she's a monster guitar player, she just sings in this band - she gets to be Joey Ramone. I believe the band was started by the guitar and bass players, so that role was covered. I know this is a bit off track here but I wanted to give people the chance to hear her killer vocals. And it's Christmas, so she posted this, which took me by surprise - never knew the Ramones wrote a Christmas song. Oh, yeah - it's pretty loud.

[snakehead_a2z]

[QUOTE=journeybear;1849053]So, one wonders ... Where's the mandolin in this band? For that matter, where's the mandolinist?

Fair question, so here’s a link to me with my mandolin (video made last year during isolation times): https://youtu.be/8Bnsr6D5sYM
Gumbo Limbo is where I get my rhythm guitar playing fun from, so don’t play mando in that band. I do play mostly mando with other groups, though.


OK, with that little bit of gentle tweaking out of the way, I wonder whether you know Ash Reed or Rex Blazer?

I know Ash Reeder, but haven’t seen him in years. One of my regular music-playing buddies bought a fiddle from him a few months ago, and told me Ash was doing well. I’ve met Rex, and played tunes in sessions with him a couple times, but don’t know him.

Oh, and I have a couple old Gibson mandolins, a ‘25 A2z (owned and played since 1985), and a Kalamazoo KM-12, which I just posted a for sale ad on: https://www.mandolincafe.com/ads/180919#180919

[journeybear]

Gotcha. Must be nice to be a multi-instrumentalist. Opens up much more possibilities. I do play some other instruments, harmonica for instance, but not well enough to parlay it into playing in other bands. Mostly whatever else I play - banjolin, Triolian steel tenor guitar - is something I use to add variety within the same band.

Ash and I keep up a bit on facebook; Rex, not so much. He's been more of the go-to guy in that band for the last several years, but apart from during his annual visits here, we don't talk much.

If I'm ever up that way I'll give you a shout. I've got friends in Ocala, and I'm overdue for a visit, but it's a pretty long haul. Maybe when I go up north in the spring.

Well, keep on keepin' on!

[snakehead_a2z]

If you’re up this way, please do.

[Randi Gormley]

I will never be this cool again.

By a fluke of fate, a group of us were hired to play traditional Irish music at the Hard Rock Cafe at Foxwoods Casino for St. Patrick's Day. The sound guy took photos.

[Eldon Dennis]

From several years ago the "Hard Tack and Honey Band".