Basking in some local music...

TA-DAAAAAAAA~!

Camps are over. I prayed hard and I worked hard and it turned out beautifully. We had a pizza party on Friday, and there's a few of us who'll go in and deep-clean this week... but it's pretty much... done.

The monsoon cancelled our weekend programs, so I just got to sit around the house. It was a good thing... I was in a little physical pain and a little spiritual pain, neither of which I'd like to go into detail about on this here blog. Most of my weekend, therefore, was NOT dedicated to cleaning (so the house still looks like it's the last week of camp), but rather to sitting in my favorite recliner and busting out some Final Fantasy III.

Anyway, it was a good weekend, full of music and people. I had the chance to see a couple different shows... Bullbuckers played at Home Grown in Newark on Saturday night. Facebook informed me of it about 8 hours prior. I have my ups and my downs with social media, but that was a definite UP!

Bullbuckers is a local ska band - I saw them open for the Toasters here in Delaware a month or two ago. (Another one Facebook told me about.) I lost my favored FAWM hoodie there, but the bands did such a good job keepin' everyone skankin' all night that frankly, I just didn't care. Bullbuckers are a seven- or eight-piece band, and they rocked at Mojo 13 that night. I couldn't believe they were a local band - with a sound that polished, they had to be touring from somewhere. Anyway, I'm glad I had the chance to see them at a bonafide ska show surrounded by that ska energy... they did a great job at Home Grown, don't get me wrong, it just wasn't a ska show. ^^

I go out by myself with moderate frequency. This was the case all this weekend. It's not like I have no one to ask, but I just like adventures sometimes. Going out with people is a very safe thing. Safety is the hazard.

But the cool bit was running into some old friends from high school who are also ska aficionados. Sitting at the bar alone would have been just fine, but it's great to be at a show with fellow appreciators who will yell and clap in appreciation when the saxophone player mutes the low note with his knee, leaving himself to stand on one foot while blaring the sax.

Sunday, I went to a house show here in Newark, DE. This is a relatively new venue. The family just loves local music and having folks over and I'm not sure if this was the case, but it seems very much like the house was designed just for those two things. Runa is an awesome contemporary Celtic band. One of their members is genuinely Irish... :) His wife is American but she did a great job singing in Gaelic on many songs. They are just an incredibly enchanting and mesmerizing group. It was wonderful to see them in such an intimate setting - there were about 12 or 14 audience members, so I got to meet a lot of new folks and I got to chat with a good number of the band members. I had thought the guitarist was classically trained (got excited when he had to pause mid-set to file a broken nail), but it turns out he has just busked a lot. ^^ I have to admit a bit of guitar envy because his guitar sounded positively magical. He played a steel string like it was a classical. I have yet to figure out how one does that without destroying the nails. :( Shannon, the singer, told me a good deal of her story, how she was working and trying to make ends meet that way (in the "normal" way that so many people know), and that her husband (the guitarist) encouraged her to quit her job and see if they could make the band work. She commented that it's been three years and it seems like most small businesses need those three years to actually start taking off. They're now playing tons of festivals and it's really easy to see why... they are just a fabulous Celtic band and they have definitely come into their own.

And let me not forget to mention - the awesome drum battle! Bodhran versus the drum kit. (Well, it wasn't really a kit, but it was the best acoustic percussion setup I have ever seen, played by a great percussionist from Canada.) (Did I mention that the fiddle player was from Japan? None of them was from the same country. :)

Apart from being a tad jealous ;) it was a great weekend for music. Now that the summer's more or less over, it's time to burn more demos, cut more business cards, and renew myself musically.

And clean the house.