Posted by dbrooks on Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Last night, the dancers and volunteer band members were invited to come to the dance in costume. I'm not really good at coming up with costume ideas and am even worse at carfting the costume itself. I remembered, however, that my son-in-law had an adult-sized costume for Eeyore, the donkey with the dismal outlook from Winnie the Pooh.
I had hoped it would be a chilly autumn evening, but the temperature was in the 60's. This costume is made of thick fleece, and it was quite warm, but not totally unbearable. Not everyone dressed in costume in the band, but there were 3 or 4 of us. The dancers had some great costumes as well.
I was able to use a few good Eeyore lines. When someone complimented my costume or our playing, I said, as drolly as possible, "Thanks for noticing," just as Eeyore does.
At one point, I turned to Mark, our fiddler, and asked him to pick a tune in the "key of E--eyore". He replied, "E or what?"
We didn't really have any spooky Halloween music, but Mark did introduce one new tune for the occasion, a jig called "I Buried My Wife and Danced on Top of Her." It's a little too bouncy and upbeat to be called spooky, however. Jigs are tough in clawhammer. Some leading players have said that they don't think clawhammer players should attempt jigs. Ken Perlman is one of the major exceptions. And Cathy Moore has a great arrangement of Cliffs of Moher on her web site. "I Buried My Wife and . . ." is one jig that does fit well on my fingerboard, and I look forward to playing it in the future.
2 comments on “Halloween Contra Dance”
Banjowik Says:
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 @2:25:45 AM
Just a thought, but don't you guys say Fall rather than Autumn?
dbrooks Says:
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 @4:47:44 AM
"Fall" is more common than "Autumn" is Ammerican usage by 80% to 20% maybe. But "Autumn" is used quite a bit. It is slightly more formal. Since the day had moved from dusk to dark, "Autumn" seemed more somber to me. "Fall" suggests daylight, wind, brightly colored leaves, etc. Of course, I didn't really put any of this line of thinking into my word choice. I just picked a word.
You must sign into your myHangout account before you can post comments.
