Big Mon - A Mandolin Duet with my teacher, Al White
Recorded in Spring, 2000, at Berea College. I was a senior and close to graduating so I wanted to record some tunes that I had learned—even if they weren’t totally up to the usual bluegrass tempo, a.k.a. “lightning fast.” I actually had the pleasure of attempting to play this song on Monday for the first time in probably a decade at the Radford Fiddle and Banjo Jam . It was fun, but holy cow it was fast!
This recording of Big Mon is not-so-fast, short, and a fun memory for me. We were in the upstairs piano lab of Preston Hall (before the renovations) and just put the tape recorder on a music stand, and played. At first, it was hard to tell which one of the mandolins is him and which one is me. After listening a bit more closely, though, I can hear the difference in both his mandolin (my favorite Gibson f-style I’ve ever played) and mine, (Sigma f-style) and his excellent touch alongside my hit-or-miss technique.
Al White is an outstanding musician, teacher, and fun fellow to be around. You can check out some of his music at: http://bit.ly/bereacastoffs. His songbook, Yesterday’s Noodles, has some of the most fun contra dance and waltz tunes in it around. He probably still has copies of it for sale if you ask him.
You Are My Joy (rehearsal)
Song Story This video is of Dug Hampton and his band (of which I am a part) rehearsing the day before the CD release shows in November 2009. Playing with Dug is always a fun time and getting to prepare for releasing his first CD together with Amanda and J.D. was incredibly over-the-top!
I have always loved playing great music with great friends who are also great musicians. In a word, it was great. What takes it to a completely “wait, it gets even better” kind of level, is that we were all singing and playing to worship our God. Leading the crowd of people who came to join along with us in worshiping Jesus somehow always takes it to a level of “uh-maz-ing” beyond that.
It is such a privilege to get to worship God through music and leading other folks to do so, too, has always been one of my favorite things in all the world. It’s something I’m gifted to do and absolutely love. I’m so glad that Dug invited me along for the journey that was making his CD and got to help tie the big blue ribbon on the package as part of the release shows.
Barry came to our last rehearsal to be better prepared to film the concerts. However, at the last minute, he was unable to come to the shows. Thus, what we have instead of concert footage is this fun, raw, energetic, wonderfully noisy, and joyful rehearsal video instead. It’s definitely got some mistakes and some stellar moments. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!
Credits: Song - You Are My Joy, by David Crowder*Band Videography - Barry Keller [DidaskoFilms.com] (did I tell you he built the jib he’s using?!?) Video / Sound editing - Amanda Dillard Band - Dug Hampton, Fritz Schindler, Amanda Dillard and J.D. Shanks
This is my first Old Release Wednesdays post. (It’s not actually a Wednesday, but I had to start somewhere!)
Outro Idea
The Song: “Outro Idea” recorded in my home on August 4, 2008
I think this lil’ number is appropriate to kick off the blog for several reasons:
1. It’s an unfinished song. I don’t know quite where it will end up, much like this blog.
2. It’s intended as the “outro” to a song, which is exactly the opposite of what this post is to my blog, an intro.
3. It’s short. (Don’t want anybody to nod off during my first post!)
4. It’s just me on the guitar (three times). I like overdubbing parts a lot and instrumental music is really where I got started. Singing first became a big part of my musical life in college so this is, in one way, a tribute to my musical beginnings.
So here it is, this first, lil’ musical slice from my life. I hope there’s many more to come! If you like, take a sec and write back what you think. I love good conversations about music.
Thanks for listening.
- Fritz
Sharing some older recordings and videos with you each week as a blog. These wonderful pieces of history are somewhere between a year and twenty years old with varying degrees of recording and performance quality. (That's a nice way of saying "I hit some wrong notes here and there," "some of this stuff is really old," and "just so you know, my cassette tape recorder might have gone kablooey at some point along the way between 1991 and now, but here's what I found after the dust settled.")
I'll be picking one-a-week to share from a wide variety of genres I've had the opportunity to play and sing, including but not limited to: black gospel (yes, I know I'm white, but they made an exception...), ragtime piano, rock-emo-folksy worship music (yeah, iTunes also said that genre name was too long), original tunes of various sorts, live performances (including some unfortunately flat-line performances), studio recordings, bluegrass (proud to say I grew up in Kentucky), classical voice pieces, a wide variety of instruments (usually no more than two or three at a time so as not to hurt myself), and folk dance tunes. I really do hope to keep things varietous (my new combo-word for "variety" and "hilarious") so if you hear something this week that makes your spleen a little queasy, please check back next week. (Next week's song will hopefully be more appealing to your liver.)
I hope you like the tunes! Please let me know by commenting, either here, on Twitter, or on Facebook. Thanks for tuning in!
