Going to VCON, need new passport!

The last time I remember having my passport was on the way back from Vancouver last year, when solarbird and I went up for the Olympics to see Great Big Sea. We haven’t been back since, so I haven’t had reason to need the thing–but the problem is, I cannot find it for the life of me. Dara and I have looked in all the reasonable places it should have been in and many of the stupid ones, to no avail.

This is important because we want to go to VCON next month! One, we want another excuse to visit Vancouver, and the B’ys have not favored us with another Vancouver show on the tour schedule yet this year. Two, it’s a fairly tiny convention and we’re looking forward to attending a convention Dara doesn’t actually have to work. Three, we haven’t had a formal vacation this year, and don’t have one scheduled, so this’ll be a bit of a mini-vacation!

So I’m going to have to fill out the forms for reporting a passport lost and applying for a new one. Fortunately the courthouse down in Lake Forest Park takes the appropriate forms, AND they have Saturday hours. So I’m going to get that done and dealt with next weekend, and pay the fee to expedite a new passport, and hopefully that’ll get VCON all squared away. We have hotel reservations but we don’t have train tickets yet.

Anyway–yo, Vancouver peeps, if there’s any chance you’ll also be at that convention, let Dara and me know! It’d be nice to see you.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

And speaking of reasons to need my passport

Early warning to all my Canadian peeps who haven’t seen me mention this on Facebook, Twitter, or G+ already: next year, solarbird and I wish to have a Great Canadian Trainventure!

The core of this is this music festival in St. John’s. I’ve wanted to hear Newfoundland music on Newfoundland soil for a while now, and so when I saw Mr. Hallett of the B’ys tweet about this, I went HEY! Also, I do have writing-related reasons I want to see St. John’s, as those of you who’ve read Faerie Blood have probably heard me mention–and I’m given to understand that if you want to visit Newfoundland, July-August is about the window wherein the weather is probably not going to suck.

But! The Trainventure part of this comes in with how Dara and I want to take the train across the country rather than fly, and stop in interesting places on the way. brightbeak has already favored me with a wealth of recommendations if we get to stop in her neck of the woods in New Brunswick. I will however very definitely welcome other recommendations on Interesting Places to Stop, keeping in mind that our travel route will be between Vancouver and St. John’s, and that I’ll probably have about three weeks’ total time to play with, the core of which will be the festival.

Also, for those of you who actually are in Newfoundland, if you have any recommendations on good little hotels or bed-and-breakfast type places that Dara and I might stay in in St. John’s when we’re there, I will totally want to hear them.

And if any of you want to arrange to see us, let me know! Actual details won’t be hammered out until early 2012 probably, but I wanted to get the word out just so interested people can start discussing it with me. :)

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Pretty bouzouki player pics achieved!

Now I totally need me a French version of the My Fandom Plays Bouzouki icon.

Because yum, oh my, and hell, he even looks good just HOLDING the bouzouki. Fortunately, he can also PLAY it:

"Octobre 1837, by Le Vent du Nord" (Watch on YouTube)

Furthermore, it must be said that damn, that boy’s voice is pretty too:

"Lanlaire, performed by Le Vent du Nord" (Watch on YouTube)

Also, this pic of the pretty Monsieur Beaudry and his colleague Monsieur Demers on the fiddle TOTALLY wants a caption. I love that look on Olivier’s face. I’ve seen looks like that exchanged between The Doyle and the McCann!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Back to the eight-stringed path

This post starts, like many of my days do, with the Handsomest of Marketboys yakkin’ at me the other day on my morning walk through the market. I was, I believe, telling him about my forthcoming furlough, in which I shall be not only taking time off from work but also from the Internet–so it’ll be me, my writing, my solarbird, and my guitar. He told me by way of reply that if I ever wanted a thousand-dollar Stratocaster, I should let him know.

Now this gave me pause for a couple of reasons. One, I already kinda knew that the HofM seemed to have a bit of musical inclination; I’ve heard him sing a time or two off the top of his head. Two, Jesus Jumping Christ on a pogostick, if you’ve got a thousand-dollar Strat sitting around and you’re not playing it, you are doing it a sore injustice. (Said the owner of a near-thousand-dollar Taylor 210, who is very conscious of the General STERNLY awaiting her return to him.)

So I told him I had no need of another guitar, since I had two, and he should be playing his!

Which of course sent me down the path of remembering I haven’t been playing my guitar much lately–not out of lack of interest, but because of change in focus at session. In the back of my brain, though, I’ve been pondering that I’ve got all these other songbooks and things, and other instruments, and it’d be nice to bring at least one other instrument with me to session that I could pair up with the piccolo to trade off between. Maybe not the General since the General’s too much instrument when I’m really playing him and he’s really more of a I WANT TO COMMAND THE RHYTHM LINE instrument anyway, at least in my hands. Which is not what I want to use the General for when I’m in a session.

Bring in Le Monsieur Beaudry and his bouzouki. As I’m looking through Le Vent du Nord’s site gallery tonight, I’m thinking–y’know what, I’ve got a goddamn bouzouki myself. AND an octave mandolin, neither of which have been played much in the last few years. So I tuned up both Autumn and Spring tonight, and looked in my mandolin fakebook, and lo and behold, there is “Banish Misfortune” waiting for me to start playing with it. It’s a slightly different arrangement than what we’ve been doing in session, but that is entirely okay. This is where my fledgling “pay attention to what my fellow session players are doing” powers can start activating!

Tried playing both Autumn and Spring tonight and realized that right now, Autumn’s fret spacing feels more comfortable to me, possibly because I’ve been more used to the General lately so I’ve been used to a narrower neck. So when Dara and I have our off-weeks for session practice, I’m going to start spending time on Autumn as well as with Shine, who will remain my primary session instrument for the time being.

I feel very good about this plan. \0/

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.