An Old Found Land

I was cruising through my iTunes library this morning and stumbled across an album a friend had given me after her trip to Newfoundland a year or two back.  I had taken a trip there many years ago with my spousal unit and in-laws (though they might have been out-laws at the time) during the off season when everything seemed half-shut down.  We had a good time exploring the back roads and playing chess on a giant garden set that was the biggest I'd ever seen.  I'm a terrible chess player but that particular encounter left me with a much better understanding of the game, I think because I was actually on the battlefield.

Anyway, these memories came flooding back, not because the music triggered them in the way some people's memories are triggered by music from a significant high school encounter, but more in the way a string of related thoughts link together and tumble each other from the edges of your mind.  We were listening to a demo track that Wild Rye had recorded a week or so ago and iTunes popped up a tune by Great Big Sea after the demo track because I had left iTunes on shuffle.  Great Big Sea is a Newfoundland band that, on their debut album from the mid-1990's, sounds a bit like a collision between the Crash Test Dummies and your favorite pub stompin' ceili band.  Makes me wish I had been an Irish dancer back then haunting the pub scene in Halifax...