Tales From the Road

After a wet and drowsy day I was hanging out at the front gate of King Richard's Faire, just in time to see this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7trDl3AEEY

These are the kinds of shenanigans that happen on rainy faire days!

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was working on a stage show for King Richard's Faire.  I didn't get what I had in mind finished in time, and so I basically winged a "professor Vince" show instead, as suggested by Moira (pictsy ).  It went fantastically!  I had a lot of fun, the audience was into it, and I didn't need to be nearly as gimmicky as I'd feared to hold attention to acoustic instrumental music.  There are still a few segments of what I'd been working on that I want to keep (the grand finale idea will be amazing, I just have to compose the bugger), but overall it seemed to really work just...being Vince.  That was intensely gratifying.

I saw Hamlet 2 yesterday, and don't bother.  I expected stupid, but craptacular was a bit too much.  Amy Poehler was a riot, as featured in the trailers, and if she'd had more than four minutes of screen time it would have been a much better movie.  I'm not a big Steve Coogan fan, but after the overall genius of Tropic Thunder decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, which was a bit unwarranted.  It wasn't unpleasant to sit through, but had I been at home I wouldn't have made it through twenty minutes before finding something else to do.

Last night Moira and I split up.  I think it was the healthy decision to make, but it's still hard.  Thankfully we're looking at a continuing friendship, which gives me a lot of hope.

Seeing it coming pretty much overshadowed the weekend for me, but there were a few standout memories.

One of the most inspirational things I've ever seen was the blind teenager who was undaunted by being told that piano was only for the sighted and was learning recorder and keyboards anyway.  I gave him a hammer and demonstrated the basics and he was off.   His attitude was infectious, and I hope that he holds onto it throughout his life.

I also bought a new hat.  I'm not sure if it's the coolest thing ever or total dorkdom, but I think I love it.  It fits the costume, and my facial features, in a way I've never found in a hat before.  Hopefully pictures will be forthcoming.

I got about three hours of sleep and I'm totally scattered today, but I'm slowly getting things done.  Friday morning I leave for Boston, and I'm helping my parents clean the house in preparation for relatives visiting on Thursday, so I'm looking forward to burying myself in chores.

What a day!

It is a real pleasure to be back at the Michigan Renaissance Festival.  It’s been two years since I played here last, and I felt incredibly welcomed back.  The weather was perfect, the audience was in a great mood, and I was breaking in new music with great alacrity.

For the past two months I’ve been learning, arranging, and rehearsing about a dozen new songs, half or so of the prospective songs for my upcoming Celtic CD.  Today they all came out to play, with greater and lesser success, but for the most part I’m really happy with how they sound!  I’m tweaking things a bit; this tune needs to be slower, that one transposed to another key, but they’re really coming along nicely.  It’s a very mixed feeling when patrons ask “which CD is that song on?” to have to tell them I only learned it two weeks ago.

Another unexpected thrill was performing “Camerino” on the spot where I wrote most of it.  The first three parts (of five); A, B, and C, were written while I was messing around one morning in 2006.  To set up and play the tune at that exact spot (next to the SkyChairs booth) was unexpectedly neat.  I gave the tune its name from the Italian word for the theatrical “Green Room” because I had written parts D and E backstage at a busker festival in Austria two months before.

This weekend was a nearly identical repeat of last weekend.  Saturday was hot and Sunday was wet, but it was better on balance because it wasn't as hot or as wet as the previous week.

Saturday was pretty much perfect faire weather.  On the hot side, but not unbearably, and the crowds were large and in a very playful mood.  It was fantastic!  The shows with the Angels clicked in a way that they hadn't previously, with the music and the routines wonderfully in sync.  I'm still not sure exactly what I did to make that happen, but I managed to highlight moments of drama and tension without losing the thread of the tunes I was playing.  It was awesome!

Sunday was a bit less so.  The day was drippy and wet, but off and on so we still managed to do three of the four scheduled Angels shows (and I did two lane shows, one of them hiding in a friendly booth).  We've been doing some finagling about positioning, and we had a silk hanging from some trees that we were using in our first show.  I hadn't noticed the details of our positioning until, after my first loudly dramatic dulcimer flourish, Jim Greene (Emrys Fleet) shouted from the next stage over "hey Vince, can you play a little LOUDER?!?!".  Mortified, I used a transition in the show to move the dulcimer to the opposite side of the performance area and I dropped my volume a bit.  Afterwards I hung out until his show was finished and abjectly apologized, which he found deeply amusing.  Jim's a great guy, but Emrys is bitingly sarcastic, and what I thought to have been an offense ("thou shalt not step on another act" is the first rule of performing) was pretty much just milked as a comedic moment in his show.  After I changed placement he hadn't heard any of the rest of the music, so apparently it all worked out, but he had a good laugh about it last night at the bar.

And speaking of the bar, one of the really neat things about Sterling is that the cast is incredibly tightly-knit, but not at all cliquey.  That's really rare - a lot of casts tend to be very insular (and performers and merchants as well), but here there's a much greater sense of welcoming comradery.  I had some friends involved with the faire to begin with, which is always helpful, but I feel really at home with them all.  We're heading out to see Dark Knight on an Imax screen in a few hours, followed by dinner, and I'm looking forward to hanging out!

Let me start off by just complimenting the crap out of the troupe of Aerial Angels I'm working with. Jamie, MA, and Patrick are really talented performers and absolutely splendid human beings. We had a really good rehearsal in late May, and I am really glad to be performing with them for an audience. We ironed out the few rocky spots in the show after the first one and they've been going really well ever since. They're fun to play with musically, in stage banter, and at the bar afterwards.

Other than that, however, it was a bit of a trying weekend. Saturday was brutally hot, in the mid-90s (low 30s for the rest of the world) and Sunday was a total downpour from 11 until about 4. Surprisingly, however, both days had more people attend and stay than I would have expected. When the sun peaked out just before our 4:15 show we weren't sure what size of audience we'd be performing for, but people really came out of the woodwork to see us (well, them really). Other than that I found several booths to perform in throughout the day, and after the Angels' show put on a bit of busking in the lanes.

The highlight of the weekend for me, however, was a lemonade situation. It was pouring rain, and the living statues were performing on a balcony. I talked to them about using the space, as did the Angels, and we ended up doing a three-way show with the Angels on one side doing partner acrobatics, the statues doing slow-motion movement, and my performing musical accompaniment to them both. It was so much fun! Unfortunately not a lot of people got to see it, though, because in order to watch the show they had to look up into the falling rain, but we were nicely visible from a short distance away because of the unique topography of the festival site.

It's nice to see so many old friends here. The festival has brought in a truly stellar entertainment lineup, and it's always neat to come into a new situation and be surrounded by friends. Jamie commented on it, saying that every time they turned around I was talking to someone and that they felt like they were my entourage. I found this particularly hilarious because I feel the same way about being with them - they're kind of rock stars due to the incredible show they put on.

Today I'm headed to Sirius Rising, a pagan festival in western New York state. I've never been to a pagan festival, much less performed at one, and I'm quite curious. A few of my fellow performers have talked about them in the past, and I think I can really enjoy myself while selling some CDs (combining fun and profit is kind of my creative challenge and mission). I have several friends who will be there with merchant booths, so I'll know at least a few people, but one of my favorite things is meeting people and making new friends. I'm excited to be off soon!

On a closing note, I dreamt that I startled a group of Canadian friends by standing with hand on heart for a playing of the Star Spangled Banner. As many criticisms (and there are many) that I have about our country, government, culture, and lifestyle there is a firm bedrock of pride in America and Americans beneath.

I haven’t posted for awhile, but it’s been a busy busy time!

I’ve been performing at the Greater St Louis Renaissance Faire at Wentzville, which went fantastically.  We closed yesterday and it was a spectacular note to go out on.  The weekend was oppressively hot and humid, but any weekend without rain is one to treasure.

The very first day of the festival, at the pub King's sing I performed the Tam Lin reel, accelerando (accelerating), and Bill of 3 Pints Gone blindfolded me on stage.  I’ve done this stunt before, but I was coming off of time in Italy where I hadn’t played Celtic music, much less this particular tune, for three months.  I totally blew it, humiliating myself.

The next day I changed the game by playing something pretty at pub sing instead of something so dramatic, but for the duration of the faire I’ve been getting mild stage fright before going on for pub sing.  Yesterday I redid the blindfold stunt, and it went brilliantly.  That was a definite high point!

There have been a lot of wonderful moments throughout the festival.  I performed with 3 Pints Gone quite a few times, including their pub show at Maggie Malone’s two weeks ago, which was a great deal of fun.  I got to see a lot of old friends and make a few new ones.  It’s especially amazing to have been at this festival for six years now!

The social network at this festival has been a great deal of fun as well.  A lot of friends I know from other festivals perform here, and it has been wonderful fun to spend time with them this week.  It’s typical that performers spend the entire festival run telling each other we’ll hang out but not taking the time until the final week.  But what a week it’s been!  A group of us saw Shakespeare on Monday night as the St Louis Shakespeare in the park put on Richard III (the lead actor was stunningly good).  On Wednesday we went to the City Museum, which is basically three stories of jungle gym for adults.  The we went out to Bailey’s Chocolate Bar, a fantastic restaurant.  This was also divided up by other various outings with other friends I don’t see often enough.

Capping things off, I was voted “Favorite Lane Act” by the cast, an honor they’ve given me every year I’ve performed here.  It has been a fantastic season and I can’t wait to come back again!

A few days ago I ate two beef burritos before realizing that they were beef burritos, and I waited a bit anxiously to see if I was going to start throwing up.  I didn’t!  So yesterday, following a similar craving, I had Taco Bell (after months in Italy Mexican-ish food sounds incredibly appealing) and likewise had no problems.  I wonder if there is a serving size element to it, because I ate a lot when I got sick after coming back.  But, then again, my dad got a stomach flu five days later which certainly points to a bug of some sort.  In any event, I think I’m OK now, but I’m still trying to figure out what to watch out for in the future.

In other news, yesterday I arrived in St Louis and am really enjoying seeing old friends.  One of the difficulties in traveling alone is feeling cut off from your social network and support group (though daily phone calls with Moira, pictsy, helped that a lot), and I’m kind of reveling in being surrounded by my people.  I’m staying with my friends Brian and Jeanine, and it’s really good to see and hang out with them again.

The show starts tomorrow with a student day, and I’m really eager.  I was feeling a little burnt out last fall, but after time off and in different surroundings I’m excited to be playing at a Renaissance Faire again.  There’s just a certain magic to them, in creating an atmosphere and an illusion of bygone times, that I find enthralling.

Who would have thought that after ten years of them I’d still be a romantic?