The old love and the new

The Crane flies again

For the past year I've spent almost all my time on Bluegrass/Old Time music and playing the mandolin, and the  prospect of returning to my traditional English folk repertoire and playing the concertina was becoming more and more remote. However, I no longer have access to a regular Bluegrass session, and my recent attendance at this year's Tenterden Folk Festival - which is overwhelmingly devoted to English traditional music - made me feel that I should he more realistic about what kind of music is most appropriate to the opportunities I now actually have.

I therefore decided to revive my old repertoire alongside the new one. This does put some pressure on my 'psychological focus' - which I was trying to avoid - but it shouldn't put too much pressure on my time as I still seem to remember most of the lyrics of the circa 60 songs I was singing when I left the old repertoire behind. About 40 of these are acapella and it's just a case of refreshing the words.

The 20 or so songs accompanied on my Crane duet concertina are more problematical as I want to develop a style that is less melodic and more appropriate to accompaniment. This is partly to make performing easier and partly because that is the style I've always really wanted to achieve but didn't know how to. For that I need to go back to square one and start experimenting, i.e. have fun rather than pursuing some rigorous schedule. My hope is that if I can develop a general approach, I can then apply it without having to spend too much time arranging individual songs.

As hoped for, my concertina playing (in the old style) has become a little more relaxed and confident. This can hardly be down to the hiatus, but is presumably down to my experience with the mandolin which has been easier, helped me to become a more relaxed performer, and has hopefully improved my sense of timing. But one can't be complacent. All these things are fragile and need to be kept up.