Tour des Chutes

It is another crystalline blue sky day here in Central Oregon as I sit and listen to one of my favorite acts, Wild Rye, at the post-ride party for the Tour des Chutes. The Tour is a great event in the Livestrong tradition that brings together cycling and support for cancer care and survivorship.

Wild Rye does a wonderful cover of the Hanneke Cassel arrangement of Bono's "Mother of the Disappeared."* While the context for Bono's inspiration for the song did not relate to cancer, I was struck by the juxtaposition of the music and the sight of cyclists passing by with tags pinned to their shirt in memory of loved ones. The sight of these pinned to children's shirts tears at your heart. Those who succumb to cancer may disappear physically, but they live on in our memories.

* Recorded on Some Melodious Sonnet

2010 Wild Rye.mp4

Here's a video of the local (Bend, Oregon) band, Wild Rye on YouTube.  This debut appearance at the Tower Theatre contained some technical difficulties, but the band played along, even if partly unplugged for a chunk of the performance.  I attended the gig the following night when they were spot on, technically and musically.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATeh5TRyLuk

Locally Grown Rye

Wild Rye is defined in Wikipedia as "a term used for several grasses. They are natively found in parts of North America (as well as elsewhere) and are valuable in the control of exotic invasive plants and as a rotation crop."  A pretty boring description from a non-botanist's point of view.  Especially because the name itself connotes a certain image - full of waving tufted seed heads in a plains-y kind of land.  Wide open spaces and big skies.  The kind of place where a certain Mimsical dog would streak around with wild abandon until finally plopping down panting in the shade of a shrub.

The music that arises out of such a vision is also tinged with wildness and abandon that comes from the roots of the land, which is a reason that I think the locally grown band, Wild Rye, is aptly named.  The roots of this group's music reach into Irish and Scottish traditional fiddle music with strong influences from modern takes on the genre from the likes of Alisdair Fraser, Natalie Haas, and Hanneke Cassell (you can see a clip of Natalie and Hanneke playing at  www.hannekecassel.com).  Which isn't to say that the band's influences are entirely Celtic, because they've pulled Americana and rock songs into their unique style, including a great version of REM's "Driver 8." 

While there may be some resistance or perhaps bias in some quarters to being defined by the term "Celtic," I thought it was interesting to do a quick look at the history, Wiki-style, to find that the heartland of Celtic culture appears to have been southern France and: 

"Genetics suggests the Celts were descendants of people who originated in southwest Asia between 4,000 and 8,000 years ago.^[7][8] Celtic origin legends recorded in Medieval Scotland and Ireland suggest a possible beginning in Anatolia and then to Iberia via Egypt. It has been noted ^[9] that the distribution of the gene for lactase persistence apparently originating near the Baltic Sea between 4,800 and 6,000 BP indicates a spread from there to both the British Isles and to Iberia."  

An interesting article, all in all, particularly given that one of the citations is entitled, "How did pygmy shrews colonize Ireland?"  But I digress from my point, which is that, given the historical spread of Celtic society and the more recent (the potato famine being recent in the grand scale of things) spread of the Celtic influence to the music and dance of southeastern states in the US, there are few cultures today that can't claim some tie to this heritage. 

And I think Wild Rye, the band, pays homage to these deep and varied roots by blending traditional musical elements with modern texts and tunes.  Take a quick listen.  Imagine those gently waving tufted seed heads...imagine that touch of wildness and abandon....

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...

Green in the high desert

As the calendar portends, spring is not until tomorrow, but today is a heady mix of crystalline skies, cool breezes, new crocus and frenetic dog.  Chores persist indoors with the threat of guests arriving next week so I clean, do laundry, clear the table and otherwise make a vain attempt to make the house presentable - all while coming off the rush of St. Patrick's Day.

The annual celebration in green is a holiday of major proportions here.  After all, being a family with an Irish dancer and guitarist playing in a band with a Celtic bent (http://www.wildryemusic.com) has both its compulsions and responsibilities.  All that makes for a satisfying alternative to a day that most people think of as an excuse for partying.

For many years now, my St. Paddy's starts early in the morning as the local Irish dance school trundles a troop of kids off on an itinerary filled with appearances at schools and retirement homes.  The first year or two of these events witnessed many of these youngsters being shy with the oldsters.  A few years of being on the stage at performances and competitions, though, have turned the youngsters into hams or near hams.  As a result, striking up small talk with the grandmas and grandpas of the day has become more natural. 

What's even more fun is a few of us adults get the roles of teacher/auntie/stage manager.  We shepherd these kids around and line them up and tell them what to do next in the midst of a dozen voices all asking questions at nine or ten different locations in a single day.  We get to dance with them, too.  Then we send them home with their parents, tired and cranky.  What's better than that?

My only regret this year was that I was too tired to enjoy a Guinness...