Newsletter Cute Dog Music July, 2008 "It's tail-waggin' good!"
This last month seems to have flown by - and that with fuel prices so high!  But it does seem to have gone by pretty fast, maybe because a lot has happened during that time.  So, with no further delay....   Newsletters are online: Cute Dog Music's Newsletters are email newsletters, sent out on roughly the 20th of each month.  We post each newsletter on our website when the email is sent out.  Links given in the newsletter are active in the online version, and past newsletters are available by following the links at the bottom of the Newsletter webpage (this page if you're on the website).  So if you're just now finding us, you can see what we've been up to musically in the recent past, and what we'll be doing in the near future. If you wish to sign up for the Cute Dog Music Email Newsletter, please and I will add you to the email list.     What happened in late June and so far in July: Workshops: As mentioned in the last newsletter, I taught a couple of workshops at the 2008 Chattanooga Dulcimer Festival - my Introduction to the Modes Commonly Used in Old-Time and Celtic Music, and Intro to Playing Backup workshops.  The workshops went well.  Each had about 7 or 8 people in them, and I think those who attended them gained some insight into the Modes and into playing backup on dulcimer.  I was able to have available the practice CDs I mentioned in last month's newsletter, and I haven't heard any complaints from anyone who bought them. I also was involved in a workshop taught by Randy Clepper of Columbus, OH, that addressed several issues of playing in an Irish Session.  Randy (bouzouki), Ken (flute), and myself (dulcimer) were the core players in that workshop and we had great discussions and some tunes.  Later on that day, after the concert, we had some tunes together with others at the local Clarion Hotel in a special festival Irish Session.   Private Lessons: Private hammered dulcimer lessons in Chattanooga are on hold for the summer.   Public Performances: Public performances in late June and early July were: Sunday Nights, June 22 & 29, July 6 & 13, 6:30-10PM - I took part in the regular Chattanooga Irish Session at Tremont Tavern. I have to say that the session on June 22, just after the dulcimer festival, was a lot of fun.  We still had some of our out-of-town friends in town who attended the dulcimer festival who came out for the session - Marcy (IN), Shelley (IL), Dave (PA), Kitty (VA), and Peter & Christine (all the way from England!).  The tunes were good, as was the fun! June 21, 10PM-Midnight - as mentioned above, I took part in the Chattanooga Dulcimer Festival Irish Session at the Clarion Hotel. June 28, Noon-3PM - I performed at Rock City.  This time I was under the trees near the water wheel at the end of the garden trail.  Good place to play.   Weddings: No weddings were scheduled for late May or early June in Chattanooga.   Documentary: This won't be nearly as long as last month's was, but I wanted to add something to the trip report.  Once we had gotten home from Ireland, I received the photos of tugboats on CD from the Ulster Folk & Transport Museum.  The package wasn't visibly damaged, nor was the top of the CD, but the computer wouldn't read it, and when I removed it from the computer, I found the back of the CD was cracked.  So, I called and had to leave a message for Alan, who had gotten the photos for us from the museum archives.  I found out a couple of weeks ago when I called again that messages of any sort don't seem to get through, but I was able to get Alan on the phone and tell him the CD was damaged and I hadn't been able to get anything off the CD.  He said he still had my file there and would post another CD with some reinforcement in the package that day or the next (they are 5 hours ahead of us there, so it was afternoon there when I called). I received the CD last week.  When I talked to Alan on the phone, I mentioned that after we had been to see him at the museum, we had found out that John Rea had also worked on the tugboat Meadow.  Amazingly enough, he looked and found that in those photographs he had were also ones of the tugboat Meadow!  So, again we were both excited and amazed.  He kept saying Someone was looking out for us, and he was right.  Someone is. At this point in time, that is all that has been done on the documentary.     The rest of July and further into 2008 Workshops: At this point in time, I have no workshops scheduled. If you might be interested in one of my workshops, you can check my Workshops page and see what you might like to take.  Please contact me for more information or to request a workshop in the Chattanooga area. If anyone is interested in a subject for a Chattanooga workshop you don't see listed on my Workshops page, please , and I'll see about teaching one on your subject of interest.   Private Lessons: I offer private lessons in Chattanooga.  However, during the summer months, I will not be having regular private lessons.  I will start lessons back up in September, sometime after Labor Day.   Public Performances: No public performances are currently scheduled for late July or August.  There are some tentative performances in the works, but I haven't received any confirmation on them yet.  Hopefully, that will happen next week sometime.  When I do get confirmation on dates, I will post them on the Schedule page, so check back there late next week.   Weddings: I provide music for weddings - for the ceremony and/or the reception.  Depending on the availability of musicians, I may be able to provide a duo or trio of mixed instruments, as well as myself solo on Hammered Dulcimer.  Since I mainly perform traditional tunes, my focus is on weddings for which traditional tunes (American Old-Time, Irish, Scottish, English, and maybe Medieval and Renaissance) and original tunes fit well.  Please visit my Weddings page and take a look.  If anyone is interested or knows someone who may be interested in the Chattanooga area, please contact me. No weddings are scheduled at this time.   Documentary: Sometime soon, work will begin on logging the video footage I have and beginning the long task of sorting all this information out and trying to make some semblance of a coherent story out of it all.   Recording Projects: Ancient Aires & Dances -  Work is ongoing on the CD project with Mara.  I have actively started work on arrangements for tunes, and we are picking some new tunes for the CD.  In fact, this last week the music began to really excite and inspire me, more than it had ever before, so I'm glad that, though it is being a long wait for those of you who have been waiting (thankfully, not with abated breath) for the new CD from the first announcement of it, that we have taken the time we have to make it and have not rushed into it because, at this time, I'm very excited about the CD and what you will get when it's finished. OTTC ReDup Project - The other project that I wrote about last week is the duplication of my first CD, Of Things to Come....  As I said last time, I have been very pleased with the way Oasis has handled the problems we ran into, and now I'm finding out more about the things they offer with their duplication package - promotional tools.  Among other things, Oasis gives each person who uses their duplication services a free lifetime membership to CD Baby.  For those of you not familiar with CD Baby, they are an online source for independent CD from all over the world.  I now have Of Things to Come... for sale through CD Baby here.  One can purchase the physical CD, or one can download the whole CD as a ZIP file, saving shipping.  They have approved the digital downloads, so there is a button to add it to the cart on the page.  The ZIP file includes the following: MP3 files, one per-song, for easy use in any computer, iPod, or MP3 player. JPG of the album cover. Text file full of info from that album's page: song titles, notes, and links. And some even more exciting, but related news - I've sold my first CD through CD Baby, and it was my first digital download, as well as it being an international sale!  Thanks to Elaine from Australia for being my first customer on CD Baby! Now, Of Things to Come... is still for sale through my website the same old way - fill in the order form and submit it, print out the resulting printable order form and send it to me with a check for the amount on the order form.  This works well for those of you in the U.S. with no currency exchange to do.  And - I get all the proceeds from the sale.  Purchases through CD Baby have a fee for CD Baby taken out, of course.  Where CD Baby is good for me is that now those of you in other countries who, until now couldn't purchase my CD at a reasonable cost (due to foreign check fees, etc.), now can purchase my CD through CD Baby. So, I am excited about Of Things to Come... being available worldwide now.  And if this works well, I will be putting subsequent CDs on CD Baby, as well.     Never a dull moment... No, things are still not dull here!  One thing that happened over the 4th of July weekend was a porch crawl on our street involving three houses, including ours.  This was a surprise porch crawl.  "And how can such a thing be a surprise," you ask?  "Simple," I say.  You have to have a neighbor who is a little, well.... - like Christie.  At the Irish Session the Sunday before, she said (jokingly) to Robby that there was going to be a surprise party, and that it was a surprise because those giving it didn't know they were giving it.  Now, Robby then posted that much info on the session group adding that he had it from a good source - a neighbor of theirs.  When I read it I knew who had said that to him immediately - it was Christie.  Not because I had heard her say that, but because we were the only people at the session that night who had a neighbor there - us! So, I replied to the posting saying, "Hmmm.  Wonder who that could be?"  And within a day or so, we had a full fledge porch crawl between us, Christie and our neighbor Bill, directly across the street from us, and next door to Christie.  Each house provided some food, and those coming brought some, as well as drink and instruments, for those who played them.  Another neighbor brought out his grill and grilled hot dogs, hamburgers and corn on the cob.  Christie and Butch had some other types of food,  Bill had food and we had sandwiches inspired by tea in Ireland.  There was Old-Time music going on at Christie's for the first part of the afternoon/evening, and later on, at our house, Irish music.  And lots of conversation, and people in and out of the neighborhood we knew coming, so some of us met people we hadn't met before.  And near the end were some pretty pitiful fireworks in the street.  But, all in all, we had a "surprisingly" good time.  This would have never happened in our neighborhood in Raleigh! Another interesting event was the recent ChattaMug meeting at CreateHere.  ChattaMug is the Chattanooga Mac Users Group, and they had their first meeting this week at CreateHere.  The presentation was on the new iPhone 3G.  I wasn't interested in learning about the iPhone to buy one.  Maybe someday I will be so busy as to need one in addition to my laptop, but for now, I'm sticking with my much, much less expensive cell phone which I only need to make phone calls, after all.  I had to have texting turned off on our account because of SPAM text messages.  And unlike SPAM email, I get charged for every text message I receive, so I'm not about to have some scuzzbag SPAMmer cost me money each month, or the time it takes to have those charges taken off my bill.  Apparently, there is no way to block those calls, either, they told me!  (Sorry, I almost got started....)  Anyway, I did want to go meet the people who would be there to form some contacts with people who were Mac geeks.  I do, after all, love my Macs.  So, I went and learned about the iPhone 3G and the upgrade of software available for the older iPhones, and met the others who came.  Nothing I heard about the iPhone changed my mind about needing one - even though I worked as an engineer for years, I don't feel I have to have the latest greatest gadget.  My buying of such things is driven by need, rather than mere geekiness. Now, one thing we have coming up this weekend will be fun.  Three of our Irish Session members have gone this last week to Swannanoa Gathering's Celtic Week.  The Swannanoa Gathering holds music camp weeks of various sorts (Celtic Week, Old-Time Week, Dulcimer Week, etc.) at Warren-Wilson College in Swannanoa, NC, in the month of July and in early August during which resident "campers" park their cars, sleep in the dorms, eat and go to workshops on campus.  It is a very relaxing and wonderful week for the "campers".  One thing we were warned before leaving Dulcimer Week several years ago was to not drive 45mph on the Interstate, and to not hug the gas station attendant when you stopped to get gas.  It's a magical time up there.  So, to ease the return of our musical companions from the "Land of the Faeries", we are hosting a party for the emotional benefit of those returning from the "Land of the Faeries" at our home on Saturday night.  It will be a session, but maybe more like a ceili, with stories, I'm sure, from Celtic Week, tunes and probably songs.  And of course there will be appropriate food and drink for the occasion involved.  We're looking forward to another party (see above), but this one to benefit our friends' return.  This is, course, in addition to the Slow Irish Session on Sunday afternoon and the regular Irish Session on Sunday night.  They will be duly "eased back in" to life outside the Faerie hole, and we will have yet another excuse for a party.  No, this wouldn't have happened in Raleigh, either. Wellll, I guess that's pretty much all I have for this month. Until next month....  All the best!
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