I took a trip in February to work in Southern Florida and was stunned by how different it was from everywhere I have ever been in the US.  I’ve been to Orlando and Daytona Beach numerous times but when I got down to the W. Palm Beach/Ft Lauderdale/Miami area near the tip of Florida and there were coconut palms and banyans everywhere.  

There were iguanas sunning themselves by the side of the interstate and that was one of the indicators of how I was in a completely different range.  This place felt tropical and I heard it said that Miami was really a Caribbean city just an hour South of where I was camping. 

At the Florida Ren Faire where we were playing I was struck by the skill and work ethic of the other musicians in the lineup and how many bands the owner had hired to fill the stages.  There were some powerful groups on the bill and we all gave the audience everything we had in the Florida heat and humidity.  That said, we were playing to a very tough crowd and I have never had a harder time getting a clap or a cheer.  

Something I noticed during the week driving around the area restaurants and shops, was that a lot of the residential neighborhoods were completely walled-off.  When I went out to dinner sometimes to posh places on the beach, there would often be a balladeer, again incredibly skilled and singing these beautiful medleys as the moon rose over the water.  The music would knock me out but I noticed a crowd of 200 folks having dinner, nobody would clap.  Not one.  And I’m not talking about an annoying too-loud balladeer.  This was three nights in a row I heard three different guitar player/singers on the stage with the most perfectly tuned and mixed sound system performing excellent renditions of pop songs with just the right amount of creativity in the arrangements while staying totally faithful to the songs.  Not. one. single. person. clapped….  I walked through the tables from the back with money in my hand to drop in the tip bucket. Sometimes that’s a nice thing to do for a musician accepting tips: throw some money in the hat in the middle of the set and sometimes you’ll start a chain of people following suit.  No one followed after me.

That’s also what it felt like to blow my heart out on the pipes on an open stage with the sun burning down on me and people streaming past offering no reaction.  My new collection of very wide brimmed hats is off to the musicians of FLARF for their fortitude.

Florida Renaissance Festival had been one of the faires where Owain Phyfe used to play. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owain_Phyfe

They have a stage there named in his honor and it made my heart sing to see his picture on display along with another I recognized: wind player Bob Bielefeld

At the end of the day they sang “A Health to the Company” which is like a hymn to me and the way they played I could clearly hear the influence of Phyfe and Bielefeld even if many of the players had never directly met them.  Traditions and sounds pass from person to person that way and it did my heart so glad to hear it.

There was an excellent madrigal group on the stage and they were also actors with a beautiful script talking about the pieces in character.  Another group I became friends with were the band Blue Muse with Misti Bernard and the Lady Victoria and Eric of the North.  Their playing and singing and instrumentals were brilliant in the way they made some of the historic pieces sound so powerful.

It was a month of sunshine at the Florida Renaissance Festival in February and now I’m back home and training for the gigs coming up at the Spring Faerie Ball in Baltimore and the run of TX gigs before St Patricks Day starting with an early show Saturday Night 15 March at the Mucky Duck