Tag Archives: fiddle tunes

The Splinters Play Oh Susanna

Posted by on January 31, 2012 Comments Off on The Splinters Play Oh Susanna

J and I played at the West Roxbury Open Mike, which J emcees each month. The video below captures our performance of Oh Susanna. We first played this tune up in Maine one weekend just goofing around and it stuck. After each taking a chorus for improvising, we play together in a counterpoint before taking it to the finish.

(I don’t know why WordPress doesn’t display youtube videos sometimes, so here’s the link to it.)

Oh Susanna

We also played 2 medleys:

Cold Frosty Morning > Old Grey Cat – this one we played 2 choruses of each tune and switched back and forth. The first one is in Am and the second in Em, gives it a cool effect.

Blackberry Blossom > Kitchen Girl. Blackberry we did medium tempo 3 times through, then pick it up a notch for Kitchen Girl. It’s high energy.

Chris

http://splintersmusic.com

The Splinters Music at Nourish

Posted by on November 27, 2011 Comments Off on The Splinters Music at Nourish

J Johnson and I did a mini-set at Nourish Open Mike run by Ellen Schmidt. That means instead of the usual one song per act we got to do three songs before the feature act. We started with the fast fiddle tune, June Apple, then slowed it down a bit with Ook Pik Waltz, and ended up with the crowd-pleasing (we hope) Cluck Old Hen. These three songs pretty much sums up what we’re about.

I used my little Canon Elf camera to record it and it came out pretty good, except for the annoying glare from the mirror. Maybe I’ll get the official video from the soundman instead. I’m going to try to replace the audio on these videos with the one from the sound board – we’ll see how that goes in iMovie. 🙂

Enjoy. Here’s June Apple, a traditional fiddle tune in A.

Ook Pik Waltz, by Frankie Rodgers.

Cluck Old Hen, traditional old time song.

Chris

 

Splinters at IBM Centennial Celebration

Posted by on June 19, 2011 Comments Off on Splinters at IBM Centennial Celebration

As previously tweeted and facebooked, J and I played at the IBM Centennial Celebration at the Museum of Science. Both of us being IBMers made it convenient, for sure. The event was an “IBM’s Got Talent” show with about 10 acts, ranging from rock and bluegrass to show tunes and dance numbers. I especially enjoyed the Indian dances – one traditional and one Bollywood style. (Somehow I ended up without a program, so I don’t have all the details!)

Each performer had 4 minutes to get it done. This required quite a bit of editing on everyone’s part. That was a common comment backstage, for sure. For our part, we decided to string together 2 fiddle tunes: Salt  Creek followed by Whiskey Before Breakfast. We did the math and as long as the tempo was right, we’d be about 4:15. 🙂 I guess it makes you focus and get to the point to have a time constraint.

We were fourth on the program, which was good – right after the solo singer doing “Memories” from Cats. After us was one of the Indian dances. The venue was the Cahners Theatre, which holds about 300 people. It was standing room only in there, maybe because there was no alcohol served at the party! Anyway, in addition, they also simulcast the show to screens throughout the museum.

Bottom line: we had fun and we nailed the transition to our satisfaction. One of J’s colleagues took a video on his iphone and posted it to Vimeo.


The Splinters at the Boston IBM Centennial Celebration from Paul Beaulieu on Vimeo.

Chris