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Celtic Clanjamphry

 

Ramblings

 

 

August 28th 2010

 

I found a couple of videos of Heritage (the group I played in for 15 years) from the early 1980s –

 

Here’s a Scottish TV show from 1982 with pretty much the original line-up (including the most tasteful accordionist I’ve ever known – Jimmy Dunn).

 

Hear Here

 

And on Swiss TV from Zurich in 1984 the basic later line-up with (a very youthful) Pete Clark on fiddle.

 

Swiss TV

 

February 10th 2010

 

I hope everyone noticed that CC has moved to 7 am! It came as a bit of a surprise and there are advantages and disadvantages to that, but, hey – we’re still there!

 

I know that serious changes to any radio station’s profile are bound to cause upset for some people, but it’s important for NPR stations to remain financially solvent and that means being sensitive to the kind of programming that listeners will support. I remember when Keltic Korner was airing on WETS (about 15 years ago) and the move was away from talk shows and towards all music – the times they are always a-changin’. These are just my observations, I hasten to add – not in any way those of the station!

 

 

December 14th 2009

 

My old singing partner Barbara Dickson published her autobiography recently and more than a chapter focused on our time together.

 

Here are some photos from these days ( it was 1965 and I was 23 years old!)  –

 

    

 

 

-         and here’s a link to her website http://www.barbaradickson.net/

 

 

August 19, 2009

 

Last Saturday saw the first Big Stone Celtic Day and, much to our relief, it was a great success. The parade featured Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Britanny (not to mention my 1962 Scottish MGB Roadster!) – see pictures here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/jack_wendy/sets/72157621945909259/ 

 

We had food from all the Celtic Nations and music all afternoon at Miners’ park and the bookstore.

 

July 26th 2009

 

Two recent and sad pieces of news – the deaths of Jim Reid and Jerry Holland. What connects them is very simple – they were tremendously talented and they were very nice and genuine people. This got me thinking a bit! It’s been my experience that folk who have little to prove are usually very easy to get along with and don’t exhibit any ‘prima-donna’ tendencies. I only met Jerry once, when we were both teaching at Swannanoa Celtic Week – we would often duck out at the same time for a cigarette and immediately hit it off. The following year he had to cancel and my good friend, fiddler Pete Clark auctioned a bottle of single malt to raise money for him. The winner re-donated it the following week and so it went on. The following year he had to cancel again and the bottle re-emerged to be auctioned again.  More than a thousand dollars was raised from that bottle of single malt – a real testimony to the high regard in which Jerry was held! I first met Jim Reid back in the late 1970s when he was part of a duo based in Dundee. They helped establish the Keith Festival and Jim went on to become one of the founders of the Foundry Bar Band. They made a number of recordings of mainly instrumental music with a few mostly traditional songs from Jim. Then he discovered the poems of Violet Jacob and Helen Cruickshank, put them to tunes he wrote himself and embarked on a new journey – his settings of their poems have been recorded by many other artists and will ensure that his artistry will continue to live on.

 

 

Jan 8th 2009

This will be a regularly (though perhaps not frequently) updated kind of blog of my (Jack’s) thoughts on musical and other subjects.

 

Wendy and I recently experienced a bittersweet journey up to Pittsburgh. We had received a call from Jerry Agin to tell us that his wife Stefni had died and that one of her wishes was that we should have our pick of her library of folklore books and recordings. Stefni and Jerry had been regular attendees of Swannanoa Gathering Celtic Week, a summer school held at Warren-Wilson College outside Asheville NC every July where Wendy and I had taught for most of the previous seven years. We were always pleased to see Stefni and she was a stalwart at the late night singarounds, but we no idea she would make such a generous gesture to us – we were enormously touched! Neither she nor Jerry had realized that we had opened a used-book store, so we ended up having to borrow a truck to bring back all the boxes of books and records. Some we were delighted to add to our own library and the others we are selling for Jerry. The February 1st Celtic Clanjamphry is a tribute show for Stefni.

 

One of the great delights of doing Clanjamphry is re-discovering half forgotten gems in my record collection, many of which are LPs rather than CDs. I travel down to WETS about every three weeks and pre-record three or four shows taking with me a CDRom for each show with all the music in order copied from the requisite LPs, CDs or cassettes. A few weeks ago I installed Skype on my computer and had made a couple of calls with it – I then made a CDRom of tracks from various LPs not realizing I’d left the microphone connected to the computer (it wouldn’t have mattered if it had been CD tracks, but LPs are different). Luckily I checked before I laid aside the CDRom – I could here various noises then a voice I realized was mine shouting things that wouldn’t have gone down well on a Sunday morning coming out of the radio. From then on I’ve checked VERY carefully that there’s no microphone plugged in!