All well and good while your a happy newlywed but watch out if your life gets a little rocky because that shit (music not Lone Star :D) will drag you into the abyss.
In favor of country music is the fact that, that's where the southern rock boys went when rock and roll went to hell.

FREEBIRD!!! :lol:

Clandestine was my favorite Celtic band, bodhran, fiddle, highland pipes, and guitar. I still remember coming out of the Tin Angel with my ears almost bleeding from listing to amplified pipes in a small venue with a tin ceiling and wood floors.

I could use a little spin on a red brick floor
In that crazy ol' bar when Tim locks the door
Where the walls are gonna ring and the strings are gonna bend
And it's a buss on the cheek from all my old lovers again

Oh. the Blue Ridge mountains at the fall of the night
It sure feels good when you cross that line
I'll tip my cup and holler at the moon
I'll say-a-Great White North... honey here's to you sleep tight...

-Nancy Griffith, "Red Brick Floor" ;)

Good to see we've something in common, Rich; maybe someday we'll be fortunate enough to listen to such music together -- exerpts from our CD collections, maybe. Better yet, play some. The Highland pipes sound well with saxophone, accordion, fiddle, and even the pipe organ -- one can achieve some striking hymn arrangements this way.

Bagpipes vary in their number of drones. The modern Highland bagpipe has two tenors and a bass; anciently it had only one tenor. I'm told the Irish still play such a pipe in addition to the the more widely known elbow-pipes -- you can set the drones on that instrument to achieve different effects, song to song, with lever-operated valves. There are varieties of Mediterranean bagpipe nobody knows how to play any more, preserved in fragments.

The Welsh aren't going to be forgotten as long as somebody keeps singing their hymns -- or playing them on the pipes for that matter, as most of them fit that instrument. Exempli gratia: Ton-y-Botel, Hyfrydol, Cwm Rhondda. Gwy^r Harlech would suit as a hymn tune, but I don't think anyone's come up with a good, rousing, popular text. Lledrod I don't think quite fits, and Pantyfedwen I'd have to experiment with, but a surprising percentage of them fall into "key of bagpipe," à la Slane and Saint Patrick's Breastplate, from the Irish side.

St. Pat's BP is one of the three tunes I know Jabberwocky may be sung to, with a little repeat at the end of each verse. Another, though you have to chop up a lot of notes to fit it, is O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing. You do this sort of thing to a choir director to make him blow either his cool or his lunch.

Wanna really freak out a bunch of country fans? And make one doozy of a technical fingering exercise of all the doublings, lemluaths, taorluaths, G/D/E gracenotes, birls and bubbly-notes for the pipers (you need two, it's a duet) that piping has and you could likely get into piobaireachd figures as well? Dueling Banjos fits on the bagpipes. :3_eyes:

Dueling Banjos fits on the bagpipes.

That is SCARY to imagen!!!!!

If you people are all hopped up on celtic music why haven't you bought Elspode's "Tristan and Iseult" disc? :eyebrow:

Perfect pitch with bagpipes: throwing the pipes into a pond, spang in the middle of a circle of ducks, without so much as disturbing a single duck.

Father O'Donnell: Mikey, me boy, d'ya ken ha' tplay th' bagpipes?
Mikey: No, Father...I duun't.
Father O'Donnell: Praise the Lord, sure'n 'tis a miracle!

It's not so much my disc as one that I engineered, recorded, helped arrange, mastered and played guitars, bass, percussion and synth on (and sang a note or two). The real credit goes to the lady who wrote the stuff, played harp and whistles, keyboards, wrote all the vocal harmonies and came up with the whole shebang in her head.

I was just a grunt.

So how do we get our hot little paws on a copy of the CD, Patrick? :)

True, Elspode: very few are neutral about the sound of the great Highland pipes. We pipers make a secondary hobby of collecting bagpipe jokes because we hear absolutely every one of them.

This one's probably my favorite: that the Irish conned the Scots (back in the days when the Scots themselves were pretty much Irish) into believing the pipes were a way to make music rather than an instrument of war -- and have been waiting twelve hundred years for the Scots to get the joke!

Funnily enough, it's the Englishmen who believe the instrument of war part.

Then there's the one about why the Highland Regiments are so unstoppable on the charge...

Demanding to execute, too.

Personally, I am a big fan of both the pipes *and* jokes about the pipes.

I played with my partners as an opening act for a bagpipe competition once. Stunning. I mean, these people were *amazing*. I wouldn't have thought you could play runs as fast and clean on the pipes as these guys were. Not only that, but frigging hopping around and stuff. Just entirely remarkable.

Mari: PM me your snail mail, and I'll see that you get a copy. The CD is a heavily traditional-flavored, with a touch of rock and roll ethic thrown in. It was to have been the music for musical play, but after we wrote the book we pretty much decided that it sucked, and just recorded the music.

Emmylou Harris was touring with Elvis Costello and the attractions- the St Paul show was cancelled- BOO.
But did see a great lineup a month or so ago- a California/Austin blend:
Moot Davis with Pete Anderson (Formerly with Dwight Yoakum- featured on Hillbilly Deluxe- my fave DY album), followed by Bill Kirchen (formerly of Commander Cody, famous for Hot Rod Lincoln, who absolutely hands down, stole the whole damn show- really, too much fun!), followed by the Hacienda Bros featuring Dave Gonzales of the Paladins- Its all roots- just roots with more twang and a bit of cojunto... All for $7. Dang, I feel your twang.

I got into country when rock started sounding so pre-packaged. Then country went the same route.

One of the groups that I really liked was Highway 101. They made some great music in the late 80s.

Damn, that sounds like one hell of a show!