Wed March 17- St. Patrick's Day -7pm
Lovin Cup Cafe, Johnson
"Guleesh and the Sheehoague" (Description below.)
March 19
Jay Peak Hotel
music in the dining hall 6:30-7:30, storytelling in the living room
8-9
April 2
Jay Peak Hotel
music in the dining hall 6:30-7:30, storytelling in the living room
8-9
April 3 (Sheefra)
Montpelier Farmer's Market
Alumni Hall, Vermont College, Montpelier|
Background Music for shopping
April 9
Tinmouth School
12:00
April 29
Elementary Schools in Frenchtown RI -- looking for more shows in Massachusetts & RI!!
Wed March 17
Lovin Cup Cafe
Main St.
Johnson VT
7 pm *
$5 admission (or buy a CD)
For adults, and school-aged children who are good listeners.
Info: reply to this email or call the Lovin Cup Cafe at (802) 635-7423.
Neither of us drink anymore, and our music isn't great for happytime bar music anyway (too poignant, maybe), so we don't get a lot of bookings around the 17th of March, but we like to arrange something, when it looks like it'll be fun.
This year, we're returning to Johnson's Lovin Cup Cafe to play Celtic music and tell some traditional Irish folk tales, most notably "Guleesh."
We love this story, it's a wild ride of a tale about a farmboy who ran off with a dangerous mob of fairy-folk to steal the king of France's daughter. It's been in our repertoire for years, but most of our audience hasn't heard it because, at an hour long, it's too long for our regular gigs. It's exciting and magical, and the real deal.
It was collected towards the end of the nineteenth century by folklorist and Gaelic culture revivalist Douglas Hyde (later first president of the Republic of Ireland.) He got it in Gaelic from the best storyteller (or Shanache) he'd ever heard, and writes of keeping his right hand in his pocket, surreptitiously taking notes in a little book, while his left hand kept the storyteller's glass topped up with whiskey.
The ending of the story was not available to us. (Hyde decided he had gotten it all wrong, and meantime the teller had died, so Hyde just leaves off abruptly at a cliffhanger moment, then goes straight into a wedding finale, with no indication of how he got there.) So we had to come up with something on our own-- we really had no choice. Fortunately we're not folklorists, or we would be forbidden from doing any such thing. We're storytellers, and that's the kind of thing storytellers have always done.
It took us about a year to get the whole thing into shape. We try to bring it out, work it up, and tell it again at least once a year, just to keep it alive in our minds and on our tongues. Even so, it's a couple of weeks of serious work getting it to speed. Maybe we'll record it one of these days, if we can manage to tell it enough times first. But we'll surely have an audio excerpt on our "listen" page, and we'll link to it in our next communication.
If you live close enough to come to the Johnson show, and are so inclined, we'd love to see you. (It's small, but very comfortable, and the food and coffee are excellent-- it reminds me of the old Coffee Pot, in Cambridge, only it's a living room, not a luncheonette.)
Of course, we'd be happy to discuss a possible potluck or community event in your area, either this year or at some future time.
We've been writing up the final report on the recording/performing project for the Vermont Arts Council, so we can get the second (small) installment of the grant money. You might be interested in our calculations:
November-February, we performed The King and The Thrush 38 times, to a total of 3300 people in Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, and Massachusetts.
It has happened. I predicted it, remember? The sap is running, and it's time to get outside. Write, if you feel like it.
Tim & Leanne
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