Blog archives for March, 2002

In that bag of tapes, I found a tape of me giving Pat a music lesson on my front porch. I have not found any clues about the exact date [The recording is on the back of a Lisa Wahl tape so I can only imagine we were going to send it to her and I never finished it. The tape from Lisa talks about here finishing High School regents so that might help lock down the timeframe somewhat.] but it I figure it must be in the High School time frame. Neither of us was very good and I would not want anybody to hear the lesson but it is interesting to listen to the interaction and the songs being worked on:

• Merry Minuet
• My Sweet Lord
• Some Simon and Garfunkel song

I am either playing the banjo or guitar while Pat is playing the guitar. There is some singing as well as general nonsense that was typical of our interactions at that time.

The band survived St. Patrick’s Day weekend. We played 2 hours at Tir na nOg on Friday night, talked in the parade for about an hour and then played for 4 hours at Greenshields Saturday night, and on Sunday we played for about a 1/2 hour at Tir na nOg before playing 4 hours at Greeshields that evening. All in all, we played about 12 hours not counting sound system set-up/break-down (twice), travel, waiting to go on, talking with the audience at the gigs, passing out business cards, etc.

This year we played 4 completely different 45 minutes sets with tunes and songs left over. Now we begin work in earnest for our first CD. Progress on that front to follow . . .

You can’t set titles, archiving is messed up as well. Hopefully they will fix this soon. Sorry for the problems.

Over the past few weeks, we have been doing some MAJOR clean-up / reorgs at the Sealy house. I ended up with a paper grocery bag 1/4 full with unlabeled audio tapes that I decided to listen to and decide what to do with. Since I have a tape player in the van, I figured I’d just listen to them on my drives. Yesterday, I found a tape that has me thinking and reflecting on my past. One side of the tape consists of a tape “letter” that I was composing to send to Lisa Wahl, a pen/tape pal from high school/college time. One side seems to be from the summer of my Junior year in college. It talks about Pat working at Pizza hut and in the process of changing his major from CS to some foreign language but not having decided which language yet.

The tape is a rambling note that refers to a paper letter from Lisa and also wonders off on to many different tangents. It is quite strange listening to myself talking about my future from my future. I keep wanting to give myself advice or grin at my younger understanding of topics that I am MUCH wiser on now! The other strange thing is this tape is from a time before I had left home, fallen in love with Denise, or started on my career. It is from a time where I am struggling with what I want to do with my life and has me thinking about how I would have “graded” my future if I could tell my younger self how it would turn out so far. It also makes me wonder about what a future self will think about this journal and my future past (i.e. present).

What is even stranger is when I turned the tape over. It seems to start off as a continuation of the other side but then there is an abrupt switch in time to my senior year in high school. It looks like I was taping over a prior unfinished letter to the same person! [Being a pen pal was always tough for me. I do much better in an interactive chat than a long monologue. If I had had AIM or email, I might have done better since I would not have felt that I had to spend a long time composing a letter that was as big as the one I had received.] Anyway, it will be interesting to hear from an even earlier version of myself talking about my self and maybe some more gazing into the future. What started out as two failed letters to Lisa has turned out to be a time capsule to myself: something I wish I had done more of.

My band’s busy season is almost here. St. Patrick’s Day is 3/17 for those who don’t know but our busy time runs from the weekend before through the weekend of the big day. Between tomorrow (Friday 3/8) and Sunday-week (3/17), we are booked to play over 15 hours of Irish music. Below is our schedule as of today — we often get asked to do things at the last minute so this could change.

Fri. 3/8

Tir na nOg Irish Pub, 218 S Blount St., Raleigh, NC
7:00 – 9:00 PM
 

Fri. 3/15

Tir na nOg Irish Pub, 218 S Blount St., Raleigh, NC
7:00 – 9:00 PM
 

Sat. 3/16

Greenshields Brewery and Pub, 214 E. Martin St., Raleigh, NC
4:00 – 8:00 PM
 

Sun. 3/17 (St. Patrick’s Day)

Tir na nOg Irish Pub, 218 S Blount St., Raleigh, NC
2:00 – 3:15 PM
 
Greenshields Brewery and Pub, 214 E. Martin St., Raleigh, NC
5:00 – 10:00 PM

To get ready, we have been working up some new tunes/songs and adding to our sound equipment. Last night I went to Mars Music and bought a second Fender 1270 Monitor Speaker to let us hear ourselves better at noise gigs (like St. Patrick’s Day). We now have 4 full 45-50 minute sets put together without having to repeat any numbers with a few songs in reserve. In the past, we have not had to play more that 4 hours in a row. This year, Greenshields has asked us to play 5 hours on Sunday evening. If anybody has been sitting there drinking for more that 4 house, they won’t even remember their name, much less a tune/songs we played earlier!