Casey Henry
I write this from the kitchen table of my grandparents’ house in Clarkesville, Georgia. I spent all of yesterday picking blackberries and making jelly, and completely forgetting to blog. So, I offer another video clip from YouTube. This, as I say in the introduction, is an arrangement of a lullaby Grandmother used to sing to us when we were little. I recorded it on my Real Women Drive Trucks CD.
Red Henry
Dale’s recording session had been tentatively scheduled for 10:00 Monday morning. Typically, Barbara arrived before 10 with her bass, tuned up and ready to play. Various small details, however, caused minor delays in starting to record. By that time we were all rested, fed, and chomping at the bit, Dale had excavated for the songs he wanted to record, his computer was set up for the session with space cleared off its hard drive, Buddy Ray was on hand to set up the mikes and engineer the recording, and everything was ready to go.
By now, it was 5:00 p.m. Barbara was tolerant– she’s been around Dale before.
Now, some people are what you can call copiously creative. Dale had a big stack (actually several stacks) of old and new songs. A few of them he’d recorded 30 or more years ago and wanted to try again, but they were mostly unrecorded material, ranging from some songs which were pretty well formed in his mind to some drafts which he hadn’t revisited for 20 or 25 years and would rewrite on the instant as we played. He had a few “covers” of his favorite old songs which he wanted to record too. So Buddy Ray started up the machine, and we went at it. But this was not your conventional recording session.
Now, in a conventional recording session, the “tightness” of the arrangement and the cohesion and smoothness of the music are everything. That means that everybody is playing as closely together as possible, and other things– energy and spontaneity, for example– are pushed out to make the music sound as pleasant and homogeneous as possible. Not so with Dale! To him the creative process is paramount, and otherwise there’d be no point in the music. So when recording with him, you have to be alert. You won’t ever play two “takes” in a row with the same arrangement. Consecutive “takes” of the same song may be in different keys or different rhythms (4/4 and 3/4, for example). And Dale will rewrite the words spontaneously, or sing the verses in different order or repeat some of them, or leave out a chorus, or change the chords on the fly, or play the chords to either a verse or a chorus, as it occurs to him, behind the instrumental breaks. And he’ll end the song when it’s time to end it– he may know when this is even if the rest of us do not. It’s all wonderful, and if you’re recording with him you just hang on. Barbara on the bass, and Chris on the guitar, have some kind of radar and can almost always tell what chord Dale is going to, and the rest of us just hung on. It was good.
By midnight Dale had gotten a dozen or so cuts which, with a little mixing and editing, will sound really good. And they all had that Crider energy in them. Look for these songs (and others) on a CD sometime soon. And see more about Dale and his music on his website (including a live clip of us all playing “Seine Gang of Cedar Key” at the Old Marble Stage), here.
We drove back to Virginia the next day, full of music. Dale’s like that.
Red
Murphy Henry
(Very little bluegrass content but banjo is mentioned!)
After spending a productive five days at Kaufman Kamp last week, I headed north to Louisville, Kentucky, for the National Square Dance Convention. I was driving 250 miles so I could dance for one day! Held in the Kentucky Expo Center, the convention was a huge affair which drew over 8,000 people from every state in the Union and several foreign countries.
One of the things I was looking forward to was dancing with Murphy Method student, Travis Cook. When I blogged about Square Dancing and Banjo Playing back in March, he sent a comment saying, “As a young caller (and beginning banjo student) from Kentucky, welcome to the world of Square Dancing! Glad you’re enjoying it!”
I sent back an email inquiring if he were a young person or just a new caller and asking if he was going to the Nationals in June. He responded saying he was 22, had been dancing since he was 13, started calling a few years later, and was originally from Knott County, Kentucky—“Coal country, deep in the hills. Bluegrass was a way of life!” He is now studying Computer Engineering in Louisville and works as a Web Services Consultant for First Quality Music and Sullivan Banjo Co. And he said, yes, he would be at the Nationals. He closed by saying, “Have fun at the festival! I hope you’ll write about your time there. I look forward to following your square dance journey!”
So a few days before Kaufman Kamp, I sent Travis an email with my contact info, telling him to call me on Saturday so we could hook up for a dance. He did and we did!
There were a number of different dance halls at the Expo Center—easy square dancing (Mainstream), harder square dancing (Plus), round dancing, clogging, a youth hall, a solo hall, and the arena with a live band at night. Travis was calling a “tip” (two dances in a row, one a singing call) and serving as emcee in the solo hall (for dancers who come without partners), so we arranged to meet there at 7:30 Saturday night.
As I walked into the solo hall, I realized that I didn’t know what Travis looked like, and if he had been watching the Beginning Banjo DVDs he might not recognize me, twenty years after their making! But since he was the only young man in the room I figured it out, and we delightedly gave each other a big “yellowrock,” which is square dance lingo for “hug.” He introduced me to his girlfriend, Dorothy, who is also a dancer.
Travis didn’t have to call right away, so he asked me to dance and away we went! He is a smooth and confident dancer who likes to create a good time on the dance floor. We danced a tip, and then he had to get ready to call, so I sat down beside Dorothy. We talked a bit and she told me she and Travis had met at a square dance and that they had been going together nine years. So it occurred to me that if she had been dancing that long…..she probably could dance the boy’s part (as many women do) so I asked her if she could and she said yes, so we hit the dance floor!
Dorothy is a lively, assured dancer, and we were dancing in a square that had several other female couples and it was so much fun! Between dances the composition of the square changed a little bit, and at one point there were SEVEN women and one man squaring up. Then a woman from the sidelines jumped up and asked the man if she could dance in his place and he graciously ceded his spot to her, so we had an all-female square. I found out later I can get a “dangle” to hang on my square dancing badge that says I’ve danced in an all-female square. I can put it alongside my two other “dangles,” one for square dancing in an IHOP (!), and the other, a Purple Heart, for dancing in a square with three callers! Great sense of humor, these square dance folks!
Dorothy and I were dancing while Travis was calling and he did a great job. He’d been tossing down cough drops like candy because he had bronchitis, but you couldn’t tell it when he hit the stage. His singing call was “Ghost Riders In The Sky,” one of my favorite songs, and his voice was coming out strong and clear. I never in my wildest dreams imagined I’d ever be square dancing while a Murphy Method banjo student did the calling. Life does take some wonderfully unexpected turns!
After Travis’s tip, I congratulated him on his singing and calling and said goodbye, with another yellowrock, of course. It’s the square dance way! I headed for the Plus hall where I danced until 11:00 p.m. Then I took my tired and blistered feet back to the hotel room, crawled in bed with a couple of cold Coronas, watched some old episodes of House on TV, and blissfully fell asleep.
My square dance journey takes another completely unbelievable turn this Saturday when I will square dance on a parade float in Middletown, Virginia. The only thing I can think to say about that is: Well, I never!
Stay tuned for my next blog which might possibly be about banjo!
This video clip popped up on YouTube this morning. Casey Henry playing her original song “Leroy and Liza.” Enjoy!