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jenettI spent last night at a house concert by Heather Dale, and I want to write about it here, because it was fabulous. I'm pretty sure I first stumbled across her music via iTunes (one of the very few times that's been this successful, in fact.)
Heather is a musician who started performing (and still does so extensively) via the Society for Creative Anachronism [1] about 15 years ago. For the last 8 years, she's been making a living as a travelling musician: she and her partner Ben are on the road about 8 months of the year. (She's also way sensible about the business side of it: she's got a blog on LJ at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zen_indie where she talks about that.)
First off, she's a fabulous performer in person - for those of you who've seen S.J. Tucker, they remind me a lot of each other, but Heather Dale is perhaps more quietly intense. There were multiple places last night where I had tears in my eyes, or my skin was crawling. Many of her pieces come out of SCA experiences and events, but in a way that remains powerful even if you don't know the people/stories/culture there (other than some very basic concepts, like the ideals of fealty and honor and such.) But many of her other pieces come out of myth and legend.
Arthurian: As many of you know, I have Opinions about Arthurian legend. Not surprising, given that one of my undergrad majors was Medieval/Renaissance Studies. A lot of modern Arthuriana drives me absolutely batty, and music even more so. Heather Dale's doesn't. There's places where she goes to a different take on a story than I would have thought of - but even with that, they're glorious and poignant, and the people in them are people, struggling and wishing and wanting, and sometimes failing.
I particularly like her "Tristan and Iseult" (a story I've long adored), and she did a chilling "Mordred's Lullaby" last night. And her "Holly, Ivy, and Yew" is a lovely story of Guinivere as wise queen (a part of the story a lot of retellings forget.) And there's "Culhwch and Owen", though without the long lists of names, which is probably a good thing in a song.
Myth: She also does a fabulous job with various myths and tales. She told the story of how she wrote her "Sedna" (which tells that myth) - her father was working up in the far north of Canada for a short time, and spent his evenings visiting with the elders of the village, so he could bring her back a treasury of stories. I also adore her "Medusa" which is a very different twist on the tale. Last night she sang "The Maiden and the Selkie", which is off her new album, and which was one of the 'chills up my back and tears in my eyes' songs for me.
There's lots of other good stuff, too. "Road to Santiago" reminds me of my mother (who has walked the entire route on foot now, over the time my grandmother was dying, she'd go spend a month with my grandmother, two weeks or so walking (picking up from the spot she'd left off in), fly back to the US for another month or six weeks, and then repeat.) "Joan", which is an incredibly powerful song about Joan of Arc. "One of Us", which she sang last night (which is on the one album I don't own yet).
All in all fabulous, and if/when she makes it through here again, I intend to be there.
Now, there's two reasons I really wanted to go (even in this week, which has some scheduling complications.) The first is that I've made a commitment to try and go to some kind of live performance every month if I can manage it, and part of it is a plan to try and get my brain around the idea of re-embracing music. Giving it models to work with (of people whose music I love, and who play in a style and format that has things that particularly echo for me) is part of that, and it's so far working on sneaking around the bits of my hindbrain that got damaged doing the music major.
But this one was a little more fraught. Most of the people there (as I suspected they might be) were current SCAdians. Everyone was very welcoming - a little "Do I know you?" and then some great conversations, including a gloriously geeky one with an 8th grade science teacher about getting kids interested in earth science. (Also, seeing the way that 'refreshments will be provided' translates in SCA speak in the Midwest is hilariously amusing if you're not a native. Groaning tables indeed, and with some lovely food. Though, for my fellow Felding aunties, no lutefisk, though there was discussion about that fact, and there was pickled herring.)
You see, I very much miss my SCA days. There are some obvious reasons for that - they're how I met my college friends who remain dear to me, even though they're 1500 miles away. The Internet doesn't fix that, entirely, as much as I revel in the Midwest.
So many of my current hobbies and interests - spinning, doing things with the spun wool, baking - even some of my cooking (especially this week, since I'm going to be making the meat pie out of "Take a Thousand Eggs" tomorrow for Samhain again.) And the music, the thing I touch against and dance away from, over and over again. Oh, yes. And the local kingdom has an active equestrian program going, so if I started riding again, there'd be that. And I miss shooting things with arrows, though I'd have to recalibrate for changes in my eyesight.
But there's the problem of time. If I pick up SCA stuff again, I'd want to do it right - and there's no way I'm going to have time or energy for that for a bit. I need to get my life in a place where I'm not spending a day of every weekend just recovering so I can throw myself into massive work days again on Monday. And so not there yet. There's also the tiny problem that all of my garb has been discarded in the various moves, though that one is fixable.
There's also local circumstances: when I moved out here, the local principality was in a massive growth spurt. Since then, they've become a kingdom, and the barony locally has gotten quite sizeable and active. That transition time, though, as transition times do, got rather fraught a few times, as I understand it, which is also part of why (along with grad school and being married to the ex, and everything since then), the idea sort of went out the window. But everyone I met last night was very nice, and quite pleasant, and very welcoming in the ways that mean people are sincere, and not just saying things.
But now, I'm sort of circling around the idea of - sometime this summer, maybe - gently picking it up again, at least a bit. This is not something that'd be 'take over my life' - in an ideal world, I'd make it to archery stuff sometimes, and fiber stuff sometimes, and some sort of music something or other, rather than it eating my life. But that's still a time investment that I'm not up for yet. But maybe sometime sooner than later.
Heather is a musician who started performing (and still does so extensively) via the Society for Creative Anachronism [1] about 15 years ago. For the last 8 years, she's been making a living as a travelling musician: she and her partner Ben are on the road about 8 months of the year. (She's also way sensible about the business side of it: she's got a blog on LJ at
zen_indie where she talks about that.) First off, she's a fabulous performer in person - for those of you who've seen S.J. Tucker, they remind me a lot of each other, but Heather Dale is perhaps more quietly intense. There were multiple places last night where I had tears in my eyes, or my skin was crawling. Many of her pieces come out of SCA experiences and events, but in a way that remains powerful even if you don't know the people/stories/culture there (other than some very basic concepts, like the ideals of fealty and honor and such.) But many of her other pieces come out of myth and legend.
Arthurian: As many of you know, I have Opinions about Arthurian legend. Not surprising, given that one of my undergrad majors was Medieval/Renaissance Studies. A lot of modern Arthuriana drives me absolutely batty, and music even more so. Heather Dale's doesn't. There's places where she goes to a different take on a story than I would have thought of - but even with that, they're glorious and poignant, and the people in them are people, struggling and wishing and wanting, and sometimes failing.
I particularly like her "Tristan and Iseult" (a story I've long adored), and she did a chilling "Mordred's Lullaby" last night. And her "Holly, Ivy, and Yew" is a lovely story of Guinivere as wise queen (a part of the story a lot of retellings forget.) And there's "Culhwch and Owen", though without the long lists of names, which is probably a good thing in a song.
Myth: She also does a fabulous job with various myths and tales. She told the story of how she wrote her "Sedna" (which tells that myth) - her father was working up in the far north of Canada for a short time, and spent his evenings visiting with the elders of the village, so he could bring her back a treasury of stories. I also adore her "Medusa" which is a very different twist on the tale. Last night she sang "The Maiden and the Selkie", which is off her new album, and which was one of the 'chills up my back and tears in my eyes' songs for me.
There's lots of other good stuff, too. "Road to Santiago" reminds me of my mother (who has walked the entire route on foot now, over the time my grandmother was dying, she'd go spend a month with my grandmother, two weeks or so walking (picking up from the spot she'd left off in), fly back to the US for another month or six weeks, and then repeat.) "Joan", which is an incredibly powerful song about Joan of Arc. "One of Us", which she sang last night (which is on the one album I don't own yet).
All in all fabulous, and if/when she makes it through here again, I intend to be there.
Now, there's two reasons I really wanted to go (even in this week, which has some scheduling complications.) The first is that I've made a commitment to try and go to some kind of live performance every month if I can manage it, and part of it is a plan to try and get my brain around the idea of re-embracing music. Giving it models to work with (of people whose music I love, and who play in a style and format that has things that particularly echo for me) is part of that, and it's so far working on sneaking around the bits of my hindbrain that got damaged doing the music major.
But this one was a little more fraught. Most of the people there (as I suspected they might be) were current SCAdians. Everyone was very welcoming - a little "Do I know you?" and then some great conversations, including a gloriously geeky one with an 8th grade science teacher about getting kids interested in earth science. (Also, seeing the way that 'refreshments will be provided' translates in SCA speak in the Midwest is hilariously amusing if you're not a native. Groaning tables indeed, and with some lovely food. Though, for my fellow Felding aunties, no lutefisk, though there was discussion about that fact, and there was pickled herring.)
You see, I very much miss my SCA days. There are some obvious reasons for that - they're how I met my college friends who remain dear to me, even though they're 1500 miles away. The Internet doesn't fix that, entirely, as much as I revel in the Midwest.
So many of my current hobbies and interests - spinning, doing things with the spun wool, baking - even some of my cooking (especially this week, since I'm going to be making the meat pie out of "Take a Thousand Eggs" tomorrow for Samhain again.) And the music, the thing I touch against and dance away from, over and over again. Oh, yes. And the local kingdom has an active equestrian program going, so if I started riding again, there'd be that. And I miss shooting things with arrows, though I'd have to recalibrate for changes in my eyesight.
But there's the problem of time. If I pick up SCA stuff again, I'd want to do it right - and there's no way I'm going to have time or energy for that for a bit. I need to get my life in a place where I'm not spending a day of every weekend just recovering so I can throw myself into massive work days again on Monday. And so not there yet. There's also the tiny problem that all of my garb has been discarded in the various moves, though that one is fixable.
There's also local circumstances: when I moved out here, the local principality was in a massive growth spurt. Since then, they've become a kingdom, and the barony locally has gotten quite sizeable and active. That transition time, though, as transition times do, got rather fraught a few times, as I understand it, which is also part of why (along with grad school and being married to the ex, and everything since then), the idea sort of went out the window. But everyone I met last night was very nice, and quite pleasant, and very welcoming in the ways that mean people are sincere, and not just saying things.
But now, I'm sort of circling around the idea of - sometime this summer, maybe - gently picking it up again, at least a bit. This is not something that'd be 'take over my life' - in an ideal world, I'd make it to archery stuff sometimes, and fiber stuff sometimes, and some sort of music something or other, rather than it eating my life. But that's still a time investment that I'm not up for yet. But maybe sometime sooner than later.
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no subject
Date: 2009-11-01 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-01 05:41 pm (UTC)And it's where all my close college friends came from. Many happy memories. (I did a little calligraphy and illumination, a little stage managing for the best commedia dell'arte troupe in the entire Knowne world, and a lot of other helping out around the edges, as I hadn't picked up the fiber geek bug yet.)
no subject
Date: 2009-10-31 07:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-31 01:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-31 09:34 am (UTC)Santiago de Compostela?
no subject
Date: 2009-10-31 01:28 pm (UTC)I know she found the British society that's focused on supporting Compostela pilgrims very helpful, too - they've got books and maps and meetings for people who are interested to chat with people who've done it.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-01 12:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-31 01:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-31 01:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-31 03:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-31 04:20 pm (UTC)