Wren Song’s Upcoming Performance

My children’s Celtic band, Wren Song, will be performing this month at the St. Louis Festival of Nations.

Admission is free! So anyone in the area, come down, meet us, and hear some excellent music. We’ll be at the Folk Grove stage at 10:00am on Saturday, August 29th, 2009.

And yes, I’ll again be performing one song with them. You can close your ears for that song if you wish!

I had hoped to be involved in more of the music, but my mandolin has been a bit dusty these past few months. This is because I’ve been trying to learn to play guitar all over again.

If I already know guitar, why do I have to learn it again? It’s because I have re-tuned to DADGAD, which is radically different from the normal guitar tuning, and this meant I’ve had to throw out everything I knew with my left hand.

Now, this has set me back, but the benefits are intriguing. A guitar tuned DADGAD just sounds so beautiful. The three D strings really give it a bagpipe-drone sound, and many of the chords you play are only one or two fingers.

I’ve also been learning a new style of playing, which is designed for backing up Irish tunes. The book I bought is “Accompanying Irish Music On Guitar” by Frank Kilkelly. This is an excellent book, and I highly recommend it. DADGAD playing is also prominently featured.

One warning, however, is that the “Accompanying Irish Music On Guitar” as sold through Amazon does not come with the accompanying CD. I had to buy this through Mel-Bay or else get a used copy. Thankfully I live only a 10 minute drive from Mel-Bay’s headquarters and warehouse, so that wasn’t a problem!

So will I be playing my mandolin, or guitar, you ask?

Good question. I don’t now yet. We have a great mandolin song picked out that I play “dueling” with my 8 year old daughter’s fiddle. But Ness also has another song which I am working on backing up with the guitar, so we’ll see. We have the first verse down, but I need to figure out the second.