Category Archives: General

Florida in February

Piper Jones Posted on by

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

 

In a NYC bar one night…

Piper Jones Posted on by

A few months ago I was in NYC for a music session in a bar.  I wan’t playing, just meeting a piping colleague for a drink to talk about festival business while the local musicians tore it up with some tunes.  

I had played in this session before and just like the last times the music and energy in the place was sparkling. Everybody in the session seemed like they were giving it all they had in this breathless way, and it always struck me as odd and wonderful how this particular bar had a Celtic jam session that felt like it was right out of a movie.  

At one point somebody in the session recognized me and called me out to play something so I got out the flute and started a tune and pretty soon the place was roaring.  Then the lead guitar player started a song and then, same thing: by the second chorus the whole bar was all in, holding glasses high like we were at a wake for someone we all knew and loved, except we were mostly strangers.

After the session some of the musicians and I went a few doors down to a late-night dive and we stayed there until 4-ish AM with the conversation flowing and a feeling like we were having one of those special nights we remember from being young, except a lot of us were pushing 50 not 20. I noticed this at the time and part of my mind was trying to figure out why the NYC sessions always felt this way, and a night with them felt like one of the best nights of your life.

Then it hit me:

Many if not most of those players had moved to NYC as younger people who had been in school drama programs and worked in or around theater at some point.  A couple of them were still working in the arts at high levels but most were doing other jobs and they had just stayed in New York with their friends.  So the guitar player/singer wasn’t just playing guitar and singing, he was playing the part of a musician in a dark NYC bar. Even if he wasn’t consciously doing it there was some kind of “wax-on-wax-off” instinct him that came into play. Likewise in the dive bar where the conversations never died, there were enough people who had trained in theater improvisation that every sentence led to another building on it. 

It struck me that a good portion of the NYC general public audience at any one time contained people who had some experience acting, and they served as a social cue for everybody else, it’s ok to clap here, it’s ok to call out, and the result was the whole performance felt like we were all having the best time.  

Musicians and Actors don’t always get along, and I’ve never had any experience or desire to do any acting myself, but that night I started to understand how everything in our lives would be better if more kids had acting training.  It’s not so we can have more professional actors.  It’s so a higher percentage of people in the room at any time have training saying “Yes! and here’s how I can build on that…” and more people knew how to pay attention, and knew how to consider how another person would feel, what they would do, and more people would be striking a balance between whats better and what will just work to get us through this scene. Acting is a high form of intelligence as any biologist would tell you, and everything in our world would be better if more people at a young age exercised their ability to take momentary social risks to make everything better and were engaging their imaginations to do so.  

 

Piping Up a Storm

Piper Jones Posted on by

2014 was an incredible year.  I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on the job of a bagpiper, and I finally came to this conclusion:  My role is to soak up tunes, play with passion, create new music, and share … Continue reading →

Ten Years In

Piper Jones Posted on by

Ten years in….   I’ve been making smallpipes for ten years now and I remember in January 2004 trying to make a self-imposed deadline for my first customer. Making pipes, bellows, and reeds at that time before so much instruction … Continue reading →