No longer a virgin

[billeyler]

Tonight I called my first tip with a live band...with virtually no rehearsal!

For the first time in probably decades the NM Central District Dance featured a live band...Bill Bailey and Country Classics. They had a VERY long hiatus in playing for square dancing...Bill B told me during a planning meeting a month ago that they had played for some of the earliest Nationals in the 50s. I'm sure he and his wife had to be somewhere in their 70s.

In any case, almost all the callers in the central district got to call a tip...except that the band was over-LOUD, it was nice to have them there. I did a patter call to O Lonesome Me, and a singer to Oh Baby Mine. Nary a breakdown on the floor.

Yehaw!

Comments

[bearfuz.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, interesting. Even though I don't recall it being mentioned specifically on the trad-callers list, it suddenly (duh!) occurs to me that one *big* difference between live music for contra and live music for MWSD patter is that square dance musicians really need to stay relatively quiet and — dare I say it — uninteresting, so as not to distract from the caller's voice. And they never get to get louder, but must stay completely in the background until the patter tip is done. That helps explain, to me, why square dancing quickly migrated to records once the patter started to evolve and get complicated. (For singing calls, of course, it would be a different matter, at least during the breaks.)

Experienced ontra musicians obviously know to keep it simple during the first few rounds of a dance while it's being prompted, and then they can start getting elaborate with their improvisation... then their tune changes... then their manipulations of the energy level... etc.!

Anyway, congratulations! I hope it's not your last... :-)

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

I was curious as to why they wanted to use amplifiers and speakers, even though we voiced concerns about that at the planning meeting last month. There was a fiddle, two different electric guitars, a keyboard and a bass guitar.

After the first tip, a number of the dancers squared up either at the back of the hall or on the south side as far from the musicians as possible. The caller was BEHIND the speakers, so we didn't have a sense of what the dancers were hearing.

Many sat out after the first few tips, and some left that were noise sensitive. I'm sure they turned down the amp a bit early on, but not enough. I left at 8:30 myself, since I was feeling a bit underweatherish and the loudness was distracting.

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

But on the other hand, it was the largest dance I've been to at the center in a long time. If everyone had danced, there would have been more than nine squares.