Sunday, April 6 at 8 pm
Uncommon Ground (the new one on Devon)
Chicago, IL – MAP

No cover. We play for your tips.

We get to team up with the great Chicago sonwriter Steve Dawson of Dolly Varden, who is presenting a “low key” concert the day after his b-day. He’ll be in duo form with bass/guitar. The Orange Mighty Trio is happy to try playing the new Uncommon Ground location and will be joining Steve for a couple songs, most likely.

I occurs to me, as I scramble through some tough rhythms for Tom Sawyer, that the process for sight reading is different from non-sight-reading in a key way. That is, when I read a piece that I already know, I can hear it in my head ahead of time, but that is not always the case with sight reading. With sight reading it may make sense as the notes are sounding, but you may not always have time to get the sound in your mind ahead of time.

(Is it like flying a plane by radar versus the normal way? I always wondered if pilots hate having to land by radar.)

If sight reading is tough (I haven’t aways been too great at it myself) I recommend actually tapping your foot or your toe, and actually thinking the beats in your head (actually thinking 1, 2, 3, 4). A favorite joke of mine is that musicians can only count to 4. If the music is in 6 that’s just 3 plus 3…

I play good old bluegrassy, swing and folky music for this musical of Tom Sawyer. The pit band has guitars, piano, bass, drums and me on violin.

Tickets: 815-479-0404 x401

SHOWTIMES

Friday February 29: 7:00 pm

Saturday, March 1: 7:00 pm

Wednesday, March 5: Senior Citizens Matinee– 1:00 pm

Thursday, March 6: 7:00 pm

Friday, March 7: 7:00 pm

Saturday, March 8: Two shows– 1:00 pm and 7:00 pm

Users of the Kun shoulder rests might have noticed the following problem as the shoulder rests get older– they can get droopy. They are designed so that you can adjust the angle between the plastic “feet” which grip the instrument and the padded part that fits your shoulder. This way you can adjust the rest to fit the slope of your shoulder and also accommodate how high you want to hold the scroll. In any case, the plastic part that pivots this angle loses its hold over time and then tends to slump the instrument in the direction of the floor. I’ll have to make some cartoons to make this all clear. While practicing today, I remembered I had some Krazy glue lying around, so I’ve crazy glued mine to the angle I want (which is entirely opposite of the way it slumps). I will let you know in this entry or a new entry of any potential pitfalls of this approach, but it worked perfectly because the crazy glue pen is small enough to put glue in the little space between the plastic parts. Is it nerdy to get excited about this solution? Well, anyone out there with the “old Kun” problem…now you can do the same.

It occurs to me to make a note that there are some models of shoulder rest that are pretty similar dimensions to the Kun but with sturdier hardware, so the same problem may be avoided by buying one of those instead. When I tried those though, they didn’t sound as good as the Kun (there is a subtle difference in the sound you get with different shoulder rests) perhaps because of the very fact that it is sturdier.

March 28 from 8:00-9:00 pm
Zack and Adam
Lilly’s
Chicago, IL – MAP

$6 cover. I get to try something new– a set that includes fiddle and also songs I’ve written that I sing, with a new collaborator Adam Ollendorf on dobro, guitar, and “weisenborn.”

Sunday, March 16 at 7:30 pm
Cedar Cultural Center
Minneapolis, MN – Map

As the Cedar says, “Who else but Piper’s Crow to pipe in the onslaught of local celebrations of all things Irish, in this special Saint Patrick’s Eve show?”

Tickets: $14 advance / $16 day of show.