Jun

Sick guitar blues

Daniel’s guitar is sick, and it hasn’t even moved from Ireland . He bought it recently from a guy in Västervik, Småland, which is on the other side of Sweden, by the sea. Now lately it started making a buzzy noise, and most guitars need to get the trussrod adjusted sometimes or especially after weather changes, seasonal changes, etc. He took it to a shop in Göteborg to do that, and there he was told the guitar is so dry that it’s about to crack. Like my bouzouki did, and that my mandolin could have done.

What’s wrong with this country???? Is it a sign we should have stayed in Ireland?? Now he had to buy a special air humidifier that he keeps in the guitar case, and the guitar needs to stay there all the time when he isn’t playing it. The thing is that the winter is always very dry here, but this year the spring (that is usually quiet wet and humid) has been extremely dry too. We have another humidifier that stands beside the stringed instruments, but it works hard to get a decent humidity level and I haven’t used it for a while. Now I’m starting to worry about the octave mandolin.. it’s never fussed really but I don’t play it a lot and it comes from Arizona. My mandolin is fine right now so I don’t worry too much, but I will definitely turn on that humidifier!!!!

May

It sings again

My baby sings again. Yesterday Daniel asked if I wanted to play a couple of tunes on stringed instruments. What a nice idea! We’ve played now and then recently but mainly on squeezeboxes, and the movie about Hank Williams we saw the other night inspired us both, I think. Well, I know it did me!

The weather was fabulous last night so we sat on the porch and played some oldtime tunes. Lovely although we both are rather rusty with strings. And my mandolin needed new strings. So later I put on new strings, and after a night of adjusting, today it sounds fantastic. My mandolin, that was built in 2008, was VERY sensitive in the beginning and very unstable in tuning, I had huge problems with the tuning for a long time. Then after the big disaster it settled down and now it’s behaving very well and stays in tune most of the time, depending on how much I play it of course.

Although my wrist has been crazy lately, it’s fine with playing the mandolin, which is great of course. I need to make a list of tunes to learn and practice, for example some of the tunes from the tune challenge that I never really learned properly, and some of them that were so new that I forgot about them afterwards. In addition, I’ll try to get organized with the Norman Blake DVD. Yesterday we played old tunes, but surprisingly I couldn’t come up with any, and oddly started off with Billy in the lowground, that I definitely haven’t played much. And after that East Tennessee blues, that I haven’t played much either. After that we played some A tunes (=tunes in A), and today I’e been practicing Gold rush. The weather really sucks today, and it’s so grey and miserable that I don’t really feel like doing anything, so TV and mandolin is a good option.

May

I’m inspired

Daniel came with a movie last night, a movie about Hank Williams Sr’s last few days on earth. A very tragical film obviously, but it also brought A LOT of music inspiration. Now I’m about to take out the guitar and start singing!!! Just decided to get some bluegrass inspiration too…. this is truly great music.

May

Whiskey fair

Yesterday was spent at a whiskey fair where they exhibited all the finest whiskeys (and some not so fine just for fun – like the bourbon that was described as having the flavours of “chocolate banana”), like many of the fine islay whiskeys. My favourite of them all is Ardbeg, and we very much liked the heavily peated Bruichladdich Octomore (it is said it’s the most heavily peated whiskey in the world), people say it’s both bad and gross but we really liked it. I also still appreciate the mild Irish whiskey, it was a real pity they didn’t have more of them, and definitely a miss that they didn’t have Midleton or Powers, or the more uncommon Irish whiskeys.

However, we had a nice day and tasted many interesting whiskeys. The day started off with a group of highland pipers, very nice of course.

pipers

And here are my three favourites of the day (apart from the pipers, of course! )

alligator
highlandpark
octomore

Daniel and myself are collectors of fine whiskeys from Scotland and Ireland, and it’s become a major common interest of ours. Some people may think it’s almost offensive, but you know, whiskey isn’t only used to get drunk. It’s a nice drink that has endless subtypes and endless flavours and it’s fascinating to see how many variations there are. For me it’s about the same thing as testing the zillions of different variations of fine exclusive chocolates out there. And you know what? I would never get drunk.

Apr

Tune of the day – Zelda

The name Zelda makes me think of a Stephen King book I read when I was younger, in which a lady remembered her sister named Zelda who had some illness, that I still haven’t figured out exactly what it was, but it disfigured her so much that the sister only had horrible monstrous memories of her (being a child of course, at the time). So, Zelda isn’t a pretty name in my ears .

This is a jig I found on The Session, where they obviously have other styles than Irish music. I haven’t found any info on origins but this tune appears to be French.

I’m sorry for speeding up a bit but I’m just happy to not make any major mistakes!