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FiddleFish |
Last night, Whole Hog Musical Revue* played our first dance. It was a multi-family gathering with adults and youngsters at the local YMCA. They were not an overly critical audience so were able to loosen up and really enjoy it. But we still wanted to dish up our best.
When we were asked if we would play for this dance we were absolutely tickled. The organizers had a couple of callers and they wanted to do some called mixer dances, and then have us fill in the rest of the evening from our repertoire. It was a really fun mix of tunes and rhythyms, but it was a lot more work than we imagined. We played a good deal faster and harder than we expected we would. We learned that we really need a bass player and that we need to be ready to play faster without getting too loose.
We kicked off the dance with Mr. Fisher's Old German Waltz, followed by an interesting dance set to a medley of Butterfly Waltz and Little Brown Jug. We played reels, rags, polkas, schottisches, and waltzes. The diverse mix of music included tunes and songs like Hava Nagila, Salty Dog Rag, Ace of Diamonds, Stegenvals, Pindsvine Reinlender, Norwegian Polka, and Teton Mountain Stomp. It was a great experience and it firmed up our notion that we will continue to orient our repertoire and our playing style to playing for dances.
*Whole Hog Musical Revue is a loose aggregation of musicians who got together a couple of years ago to organize a weekly jam. None of us had any idea that we'd be doing this kind of thing back when we started.
