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I awoke and got up at 6AM. We were staying at the Ed. Centre now
in dorm-type rooms with showers down one hall for men and down another
for women. Breakfast was at 8:30AM, so in between I made notes on the
video I shot of the Street concert. Then after breakfast, I put the
items I had for sale in the festival store, and set up for my New
Beginners' HD workshop. It lasted from 10AM-12:30PM when we broke
for lunch, then resumed at 2PM until 4PM.
I had three students, Vince, Judith and Geoff. Here is a picture of
the workshop in progress.
Vince is from Sligo, and had found the dulcimer of his grandfather, John
Casey, in an
outhouse (an outbuilding, not what we call an outhouse here in the
States) on his brother's farm, and has been restoring it. He brought that,
so in addition to him learning how to play, we took a look at tuning his
dulcimer. He still has a bit more work to do on it, and we're not sure it
will hold its tuning on all strings, but if it does, it has a very nice
tone to it, and the work on it is beautiful. Dick has a picture of it
in its condition when found
here. Not
realizing we didn't have pictures of it restored by Vince, I didn't
take any of it that day. Hopefully, Vince will take some and send them
to Dick for his Dulcimer Photos pages.
Geoff is Nat Magee's son, and he isn't what I would call a New
Beginner by any means, but he came to the workshop. We did get to tune
his up to pitch since it had not been tuned in a while, and I wrote down the
tuning scheme for him.
Judith, from Co. Antrim, was the one who had heard the dulcimer the night
before and changed her holiday plans to attend the workshop, having made
arrangemetns with Dick to borrow one of his dulcimers. Judith is quite
talented, playing both the piano and harp already, and was quick to pick up
the playing of the dulcimer. In addition, she has been able to
borrow a dulcimer from a lady in Scotland who attended the festival
to use for a while until she gets one of her own, so things worked out quite
nicely for her.
Immediately after my workshop ended, Nat Magee gave his talk on
"John Rea - The Man & His Music". There was good
attendance, and I got the whole thing on video. Nat talked about the
family and how he and William were related to John, let us hear some of
John's own playing from a CD, played a tune or two himself, and some
with William Rea, John's third cousin. William and Nat both have
dulcimers that are exact copies of John Rea's, both built by Nat's
father. John was the main influence on William playing the dulcimer.
William heard John playing on BBC Radio, and knew he wanted to play
dulcimer. He and his father asked John's uncle, who built
John's, if he
would build one for William, but he wouldn't, so they asked Nat's
father, also a joiner, and he said yes. They made drawings of
John's, and Nat's father built William's, and when Nat expressed a
desire for one, built his next. Brandy took a picture of Nat and
William Rea playing together.
After supper, I dressed and tuned my dulcimer for the concert that night at
the New Mill Pub, then went to Charlie Gillen's talk on "North
Antrim Rhymes & Rhymers". I missed a lot of it while tuning, and was so
tired, I slept through some (Sorry, Charlie. Next year I'll be awake for
it.). Brandy, thankfully, heard the whole thing, and talked with
Charlie some afterwards.
The concert in the New Mill Pub was on a tight schedule, and due to that and
some of the performers running over their alotted time, I did not perform
that night. Some of the performers would not be performing again, and
hadn't yet, so it made sense to give them the time they needed, since I
would perform again later on in the weekend anyway. Brandy and I got to
the concert late due to having to lock up the Ed. Centre after Charlie's
talk, but those we heard perform were Barry Carroll on HD and his son,
Niall O Cearbhaill on fiddle, JCB (Colin Ross, Julia and Barry Say) on
Northumbrian Pipes, Lisa & Heather Malyuk on HD and Guitar, and Christie
Burns & Butch Ross on HD & Mountain Dulcimer, Guitar, and Vocals.
A fine performance they all gave!
Then we adjourned to the Ed. Centre where we had a session until early.
We went to bed about 3AM, but others stayed up playing until 4AM.
Or what's a dulcimer festival for? Some mighty nice tunes
and songs were had that night!
On, to the Next Page!
Back to the Trip Pix Index.
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