Introduction

I was accompanying my friend Paul Phillips who was taking the advanced bodhran class in the summer school and meeting up with my buddy Rob Forkner from the Tea Merchants who was taking the intermediate and kids' classes.

Having spent the weekend sessioning at Lacrosse Irishfest with our friends áthas , Munnelly , Trifesta, Fritha , Gan Bua,  Andreas Transo, Kim & the ladies of Glencastle and more as a warmer-upper, we were ready to get stuck into the summer school classes. I am very lucky to have the All Ireland and Former World Champion bodhran player Paul Phillips as one of my closest friends and I was invited by him to informally assist in his classes. I invited myself to Rob Forkner's classes as official heckler and purveyor of contrary information :)

  This year the Summer School bodhran classes were held in the music department of UWM, the room was good-sized for the event and comfortable. We did find however that others practising timpani in an adjoining room at times interfered significantly with the communication within the classroom itself. Apart from that the only other difficulies were the distance from the on-campus 'Grind' coffee shop and the early (10am) starts, but that particular pain is self inflicted :)

Both the intermediate and advanced classes were well attended and the attendees were very keen.

Monday 13 Aug

Monday 13th Aug 2007 

Intermediate class - Rob Forkner 

Rob's Monday class was primarily about introductions, ice breaking and then getting creative by making our own bamboo skewer tippers.

The attendees seemed to enjoy the class very much and we had a wide ranging discussion to uncover the direction and skill levels for the rest of the week, as well as finding out what everyone's favourite colours are - green seemed popular. I was happy to see several familiar faces and fellow subscribers to the bodojo site and the Yahoo bodhran group.

 Advanced bodhran class - Paul Phillips

Paul is the former All Ireland Champion, World Champion and 7 times Ulster Champion 

Paul's advanced class followed lunch and was very well attended. There were several more people in the class than were apparent on the tutor attendance sheet. 

Thank you to Amy Richter for lending Paul her ghetto blaster to enable him to play the tunes needed to accompany his class work; Paul asked, but apparently there are no CD players in the UWM Music Department.

Paul's classes are based specifically on the top-end style of play, a stylistic development that has developed over the past 10 years and has really become prominent in the past 5 in particular. This style allows for a rhythmical / ornamental choices beyond the ubiquitous triplet and extends the tonal palette of the drum significantly, thereby allowing the player to develop new levels of expressive accompaniment and in many cases, virtuosity.

Part of Paul's teaching methods include having the players play individually in short bursts as well as part of the whole group. This method certainly increases the focus of the students and even as an player of some experience I found it difficult when so exposed. Where we did play as an ensemble, Paul spent a lot of the time going around the classroom with his head inside the back of each drum listening closely, making small changes to the players' technique and moving on.

Paul teaches a prescriptive style, i.e a particular way of holding the stick and of moving the hand on the back of the drum, he does however immediately follow that with the advice to refer to as many other styles and teachers as possible and to combine elements of each. This allows individual players to develop stylistic and tonal tools that work for them. He refers to this as being 'bodhran thieves' but I prefer to look at it as being influenced by how others approach the drum just as every player does on every instrument - standing on the shoulders of giants.

The attendees took well to the demands that Paul placed upon them, It was immediately apparent that there was a wide variety of abilities represented in the class from complete and utter beginners to one former All Ireland contender. I had  to wonder about what everyone hoped to achieve in 4 days.

 Monday Evening 

For food, we decided to take a trip to Milwaukee riverside and I dined on the delicious Jim Beam burger at the Rock Bottom micro brewery accompanied by a couple of pints of their lovely home made red rooster ale - yum. Part way through the meal Rob Forkner asked a question and was severely traumatised by the response and probably will never recover, no I can't tell you the question.

If you do go to the rock bottom, I recommend you check out the Jim Beam sauce - it's amazing. I was told off for licking the last drops from wee container but hell, I'm from out of town and I can do that kind of stuff :). On the way home we made a critical stop at the Whole Foods for beer; well... man does not live by food alone.

  The neo traditional thing to do for the evenings of the Summer school is to attend the formal sessions. Last year and this, these were held at Carini's Concha D'oro on Oakland Ave. Carini's is a Sicilian restaurant and bar.

This year Carini's had been re-titled O'Carini's for the event and had apparently hiked its prices up quite substantially. I heard several reports of people who did not attend or who did attend and left because both the food and drinks had become too expensive.

For some reason they also gave us plastic disposable 'glasses' from which to drink our beer which I found to be a little insulting, I'm not sure what they expected from us, but paying more money for beer in a plastic cup isn't an ideal scenario.

Over the course of the week, there seemed to be a marked decrease in the numbers who participated in the sessions or who came to watch which is unfortunate, particularly compared to last year, because this series of sessions was one of the highlights of last year's festival for me as you will know from my 2006 blog

There was as usual, a large 'ceilidh' session in the back room with musicians two deep, a clatter of dancers and many observers. We ensconced ourselves in the usual session cubicle at the front of the building just beside the bar and the '07 sessions were underway. 

  In the image above left we can see one of the Carini 5 incarnations, Amy R, Paul P, Rob F and Pat Budic as well as my self, now behind the camera. At other times we had Colm Phelan, the drummer from Green tea, Asher Gray, Randy Gosa and others. We very much missed the craic of Simon O'Dwyer who was so much a feature of the '06 summer school. I did a little Tuvan throat singing in his honour but not enough to be slung out. We were joined by many of our friends  including the pictured Matt & Micha on guitar and fiddle respectively.

At one stage some serious-looking sean nos singing broke out in the middle of the restaurant that seemed to generate lots of 'shhh-ing'  and to demand quiet from all in the building, we had to shut the door between the session and the bar further isolating those who had gathered to listen. 

That said, those Sean Nos peeps can be pretty radical, and at one stage I heard a large ballyhoo. On looking around the corner I saw that they had started dancing on the tables. Looking closer I could see that the entire table top was wobbling about 6" in all directions and those in attendance were drafted into playing supporting roles - The craic must be mighty when the 'Sean Nosers' start letting go like that.

It seemed that a night time feed was in order and we made our introductory visit to Ma Fischers , a late night diner where we all dined mightily on great value 3am breakfasts served by very friendly staff. Paul P and I were talking afterwards and we both reckon that it wouldn't survive in Belfast without tight door security and even then....

Our late night drunks are much less affable. 

We retired shortly afterward back to the dorm at UWM that we shared with Chris, Charlie and Rob from the tea Merchants (and Jim from the bodhran class (sorry Jim :)). We had earlier ensured that we had stocked the fridge with Leinies, but there wasn't a massive session nor great amounts of music, however we did manage to stay up until the wee hours having almighty craic, telling jokes and just hanging out with our friends.

Sleep came eventually, and Tuesday morning arrived all too soon after... 

Tuesday

Tuesday 14 Aug 07 

Rob introduced us to the finer points of horseshoes and goats and had us working on strike accuracy. The shoes are a useful tool because one can actually hear the click of wood on metal behind skin. The number of these clicks could clearly be heard to diminish over time as the attendees focused on striking a small part of the skin - success! Nice tool Rob,

Rob also focused on the left hand and we worked on developing better hand contact to give a cleaner sound. We also worked on the different sounds available from different points of the skin and moving between hand positions. Rob's class also included the beautiful playing of Chris Buckley, it is a tremendous benefit to have a live musician in the class, particularly one of the calibre of Chris and we all benefited from his playing and input.

 Paul's second day concentrated on holding the stick, looking at rhythmic patterns and introducing the top end palette. I hereby name the palm knuckles on Paul P's left hand as Mick, Keith, Ronnie & Charlie - the rolling tones.

Paul's reel pattern came back to haunt him later but I'm not sure if we can talk about that in a public forum :)  The top end single-ended triplet seemed also to generate a lot of interest and we had a brief discussion of drag rolls and hand speed.

Having developed a taste for micro-brewery fare we decided to make a return trip to the Water Street Brewery , the site of the infamous Mark Stone garbled phone call from the previous year (yet more tradition). We feasted mightily on Bratwurst, sauerkraut and little lumps of dough, all washed down with a pint or two of their amber brew. Chris opted for the safer parking option of the multi-storey opposite rather than risk the safety of other car owners by parallel parking. Driving out of the wavy-floored parking garage was not for those prone to motion sickness as it would surely have placed a hitch in one's giddiup.

We arrived at the session a little later than we meant to, due to another whole foods pitstop  (beer run) but our friends from Athas has already marked the session territory and we walked straight into the session. Most excellent.

The incoming weather front meant that the humidity rose during that day, eventually to the point that the instruments really suffered and were barely playable, requiring retuning constantly. The restaurant solved this by closing the large windows on the terrace and switching on the air. This unfortunately cut off the music from the street but the instruments came back to life requiring constant goat de-Tuning for the next while until it stabilised.

Following the session, it was suggested that we go for something to eat and we ended up in a Oakland Gyros with several other night revellers dining on Gyros. It was only now after several years eating Gyros and asking for them as they are spelt  (we know them as doner kebabs)  that I learned they were pronounced 'Euros' LOL - you Americans sheesh :). Thanks to Kimberley from the Glencastle Ladies for sharing her Euro with me.

Standing outside for a smoke I entertained my 'still inside'  friends with my elevator, escalator and staircase routine, much to the amusement of passers by. 'It Must be Irishfest' I thought I heard someone say. Darn tootin it was! Hey, I don't get out much.

Again we retired to the dorms for some craic, this time we were joined briefly by our Athas buddies and between us we managed to put a little dent in our beer stock and laughed the night away -great craic. 

Wednesday

Wednesday 15 Aug 07 

So I'm sitting in Paul's class and the door opens at the other side of the room. I can see a set of red fingernails so I'm thinking 'it's a woman, could be cool'. And in walked Darius Bartlett and Colm Phelan! LOL. How wrong could I be?! Darius had obviously been working right up until the last minute on the infamous red drums!

Colm is the current (06/07) All Ireland U18 Champ and Paul had Colm working straight away, demonstrating some aspects of top end playing, poor fellah hadn't even checked into his dorm LOL but it was great to see him display some of his skills. That dude's fast!

Paul Philips was attending to other business that evening so the rest of us decided to take another trip into Milwaukee to a clandestine eating location that shall be known as the safe house. Never having been there before there was a certain 'WTF?' about the experience but Chris assured us that we'd be happy with his selection. Unfortunately Chris said the password out loud which meant that we had to undergo the entrance procedure.

This involved Darius wearing a pink boa and dancing a wee jig, followed by the rest of the group (although there was unfortunately only one boa). This all seemed a little strange but what the hey.

Having passed the initiation, a bookcase opened and we walked through a maze of tunnels and sliding doors into a bar where we were greeted by a round of applause from those at the bar - the whole thing is broadcast on CCTV. Unfortunately there were no tables as we had not thought to book so we ended up walking back to the Rock Bottm across the river and feasting mightily. I couldn't resist the Jim Beam sauce again and unusually for me I had the same meal two times in succession, this time with an extra shot of sauce. Hey it was great, ok! :)

Because of  the hunt for food, we were somewhat delayed in reaching the session and the front room was fully occupied already. We stepped into the back room where Queen Liz Carrol and King Mick Moloney were holding court surrounded by lots of players who had never come to the sessions before, it must be nice to command an entourage that includes the lovely ladies of Liadan, where do I sign up? :) The playing was great, but because there were so many people it was hard to get close enough to hear properly.

At that point we were told that 'the other' front room was available so we grabbed our stuff and headed that way. The session really didn't take off. A couple of flute players were exchanging the first few bars of tunes then stopping despite having a room full of people so we were unable to get more than a few tunes for the longest time. The session atrophied for a couple of hours and everyone went to the bar for a drink and do some social. A little later however Chris and Charlie from the Tea Merchants, Heather & jeff from Athas and our Friend Kari on Fiddle struck up some mighty tunes and the session swung into gear. Having a larger room allowed us to be joined by Kari and Kim 'booty' dancing as well.

We were joined by Randy Gosa, the phenomenal banjo player and  guitarist from Cé On this evening Randy scored himself one of Rob Forkner's new drums and seemed to be very happy with his purchase. We all marvelled at Randy's double downs on the banjo and we know that he will be a tremendous top end player. Asher from the band has developed a highly idiosynsratic style, reminiscent of Ronan O Snodaigh from Kila but with a 'front end' style of tone finding, it's certainly unusual but looks to be a little impractical. I'll be interested to see how that develops. AFAIK Asher scored a new drum also. Rob's new drum designs are pretty special, all very individual sounding with a wide variety of skins, bearing edges and technical alchemy techniques used thereon. More about those in a separate article.

This was also the first time that I had the chance to try Darius' new drums. There were 3 of them, all red which now demarcates Colm Phelan's personal branding. The 14" had a reasonably heavy dark skin and an unusual three stage tuning mechanism for different degrees of tuning finesse, a nice sounding drum. The second was Darius' new punter-friendly introductory model that he intends to retail for about 220 euros. It was 16" diameter and had a lovely skin, probably kangaroo. To my ear it responded very like an oversized O'Kane but I didn't have one there to a/b them. The shell was one of his new composites, again I'll need to get more detail. The third was Colm Phelan's flared drum that you may have seen on Inis Oirr. The drum sounded nice with a very lightweight shell and amazing projection, although part of that was Colm's playing, that dude is loud!. The skin was slightly heavier than the others but had been played in for about a year. After having played 14" & 12" drums for a few years I found the scale of the 16" skin to be more of a challenge than anything but the skins are gorgeous due to Darius' experimental alchemy - I shall have to get more details on the individual drums and will do a separate report.

Of particular interest to me personally  was a drum that Darius had made a few years previously and had been living somewhere in New York, this was a wee 10" drum with a thick roo head that was just sumptuous. The drum is modelled here by mr Phillips who decided that his hands were too big for it and it would look better as a hat. You can see in the image also that Paul is holding one of my 4" baby bo tippers that matches the drum perfectly for me but no-one else seems able to get to grips with.

This was the last session at Carini's for the year and we played on until they chucked us out at 2am. It didn't take us long to arrive at the collective decision that we all fancied a trip to Ma Fischers and so we returned. The staff welcomed us warmly and joined in the craic. We were complimented on our sense of fun and general good naturedness.

As usual, we had an appointment with some beer back at the dorms, we were joined by Andreas Transo who entertained us with an amazing array of songs and that incredible voice of his. Charlie from the Tea Merchants was in rare form and told a long and immensely detailed 'joke' of which I daren't give you the title. I can't even bear to think about it. Charlie is one of my favourite people to be around, lightning fast laconic wit and a sense of comic timing to which many professional comedians could only aspire.  If ever there was a book that is not to be adjudged by its cover...

I think bedtime was around 6 but I'm not completely sure, we were sober, but at that stage and after almost a week in town hanging with our 'homies' it really ceased to matter it is all just one great experience

Thursday

16 Aug 07

Last day of summer school.

Today was a day for questions, answers,  more questions and rounding up. We were joined in the class by Darius and Colm who were able to contribute significantly to the discussion from a technical and players' perspective respectively. The conversation centred for a long time on sessions, etiquette and useful advice from the very experienced players and builders now in attendance.

Paul's class looked in a little more detail at playing polkas at both full speed (with the music) and at half the speed of the music. Given that Amy Richter (polkahontas) was there, all the tutors had a right to be nervous.

Toward the end of Paul's class we were discussing hornpipes (the rhythm of 'drunken sailor')  we had yet another unannounced visitor in the form of Albert Alfonso who, as ever, made a grand entrance.

Paul said "adies & Geltlemen may I introduce Albert Alfonso". and a round of "Oh" went up - "THAT's Albert!"  Albert raised questions on bent wrist against straight wrist which was an interesting discussion. He had some of his new drums with him. A complete departure from his former, more traditional instruments, and definitely in the 'bass out of the box' category. Lovely instruments to listen to and to play, nice one AA. He also took great pleasure in unfurling his Tipper collection with a satisfying 'domino effect' sound.

Again we were very lucky to have Chris in attendance for the discussion but particularly in the chats about sessions and the perception of bodhran players generally. It is recognised that we as bodhran players do get a bad rap within traditional circles, this is for many reasons, with loud and inaccurate playing usually from inexperienced players being the main ones. We were delighted to get Chris' input to give a melody player's perspective and at the end of the day the thought 'to go' was that that it all comes down to musicianship and respect no matter what the instrument is that is being played.

Between attendees, our welcomed friends and people just dropping in to ..ahem.. observe through participation, Paul's final class had swollen to about 20 at this stage . At times it was welcomed and at times it served to increase the pressure on the players as they played along individually with the tunes and patterns. The extra players on hand did mean however that we were able to split up and speak with the attendees individually during the class and help with aspects of their playing where we were able to do so. I hope that this was useful

Overall from what I witnessed, and from feedback given to me personally by attendees, the classes seemed to have been received very well and the 'students' left armed with a whole slua of new tools, approaches and stuff to think about. I hope that my own presence in the classroom added to the usefulness of the event rather than detracting from it.

I enjoyed the classes greatly and applaud both Rob and Paul for thier willingness to share their skills and to help develop their relationship with the drum.

Pictured below are the members of the 2007 Advanced class

from left to right: Kathy, Jim, Amy, Paul, Celia, Rae, Dietrich, Linda, Errol and Kerry.  Thanks guys!

 Following the end of the class the Tea Merchants had taken themselves off to Spring Green for an evening gig and Athas went to play with the wise maids so we were without our usual gang.

Not to worry, we had arranged to travel with our friend Patrick Budic to the Valley of the Kings - somewhere out near Lake Geneva. VOTK is a sanctuary for Tigers, Lions, bears, cougars and other terrifying beautiful stuff.

Patrick had been winding us up with all kinds of stories for the previous 2 days and when we were introduced to his former classmate Chris, the on site veterinarian, who handed us waivers we realised that this was no wind-up - SH*******T!!

We travelled with Celia Farran (flame-headed everyday goddess) and her photographer friend Lori. Between us, Lori and & must have taken 600 photographs in the two hours we were there. Rather than show all of those images here, I am preparing a short video which will hopefully give a flavour of the animals. I caught some amazing consecutive shots of the lions roaring and one moment where one of the animals decided that he didn't like the camera - You can ony imagine how it feels to have to have a roar directed at you from 3ft away. Luckily I had a change of underwear.

 Lori had a smaller camera lens that I did and was able to put it through the fence , she took some amazing images which I have on my Mac but I don't have her permission to show them here.
There are about 50 big cats on the site held in a variety of open pens and cages, they cats come from a variety of sources, some are old & retired, some are former movie animals, some are confiscated from drug dealers and many more places. Chris taught us how to talk with them to say "I'm a friend, be cool" and the tigers responded to that, it's amazing to talk tiger! 

There is even a Liger - a cross between a lion and a tiger. The liger we saw was once weighing in at about 1400lbs (that's 100 stones!) but Chris had not seen this particular animal in a while and seemed very concerned at its deteriorating condition brought on by old age. It only comes out one in about every 10 visits and we were very fortunate to witness such a massive aminal despite its poor health. He also reckons that this is its last season which is very sad.

The animals are really well cared for by the good people at VOTK who operate without any funding apart from donations - when the animals die they are buried in a private graveyard, intact and with great respect; no souvenirs, no taxidermy, no private sales. My first thought was that I wondered what a tiger skin on a bodhran might sound like but alas I think I shall never find out.

I have never been so close to such innate power, these are amazing animals, many about the size of a medium cow but with much more muscle and bulk. You can see the size of the animal's head in the image of me above right and they have paws like dinner plates. Many of them are friendly and will come up to the fence to allow you to stroke them as you can see above, some are more temperamental. It is amazing to look into their eyes, mesmeric almost. You can see Paul Phillips looking at Jasmine in the image above left.

It was remarkable to witness how male lions react differently to men than women. One was able to smell that Chris had shaken hands with Celia. The lion we saw had an amazing reaction to this, sniffing closely and then Chris said "watch this" - The lion put its head back and let out an amazing roar - again, I have it on stop motion camera and it will be on the video.

Some of the lions like to lean against the fence and have Chris push back against them. This was good for a while until 2 of them were vying for his attention. This generated a lion 'spat' and the two started to get really annoyed. Having seen the lightning speed at which they turn and snap. We backed well away from the fence!

I'm still stunned by the whole experience. I've only ever seen these animals either on TV or at a zoo behind 10ft width of fencing. To get close enough to have a handful of tiger fur, to feel the muscle under the skin and to hear their roar intimately is an awesome experience and one that will live with me for the rest of my days.

The Valley of the Kings sanctuary accepts memberships that entitle you to visit and bring another visitor, these subscrioptions fund the upkeep of the animals and they are saving to build better accommodation for them. I encourage you to support these most beautiful of creatures. You can visit their website by clicking on the link above. I thank the owners and Chris for permitting us access out of hours, we left a donation in the box. I hope to return. I'll bring some chicken legs and more underwear.

  After such excitement we returned to Milwaukee in the car reviewing the images excitedly and then fell asleep totally exhausted.

Thursday is the Volunteer's preliminary night at the festival and we were not back in time to attend so we went straight to the County Clare Pub which is the neo-traditional meeting place for that evening, there we bumped into so many of our friends that I can't hope to recount the names but it felt great to be back in town on the cusp of the festival. We stayed for a few (several)  pints and a bit of craic.

We retired to the Park East for a couple of hours where Lee and I negotiated ice for the beer cooler and shared a bottle of margarita. I stayed on for a few hours chatting on the roof whilst everyone else went to Ma Fischers again. I managed to hook up with a great family whose name escapes me but who were most kind in buying me a 12 pack of beer with which I was presented during the festival weekend - damn you guys are good! I also met Mike, Joey and Dan from Scythian, a great bunch of lads altogether. As usual, we ended up talking drums and music and I brought out my new backpack-sized egg drum. After a couple of minutes playing, the guys issued an invitation for me to join them on bodhran during their weekend set - they only had to ask once! - read part 2 for more on that. I also bumped into the Munnelly brothers and Tony Byrne for the first time since LaCrosse the previous weekend, but I decided at 5am with discretion being the better part of valour that I'd better return to the dorms and get some sleep because the festival started the next day and every hour of preparatory sleep in the bank is precious. My return coincided with Paul Phillips had also having just returned so we chatted briefly and called it a night.

And so ended my great summer school week... with the fest lying before us. 

Summary

I really enjoyed the Summer School this year very much, it is amazing how it sets up the festival itself because for me the social and musical structures are pretty much in place. From the persoective of the drum, it was only my second summer school attendance but I could see now a clear interest in the adoption of newer approaches to the drum, in the use of the drum as a multi-tonal instrument and away from the simple pulse keeping role for which it is so much regarded in the US. It has moved a long way from that in much of contemporary Irish music and sessions and the catchup will not be long happening.

My own thoughts on the classes are that there was a wide mixture of skill levels from complete beginners to very competent players in the same classes. IMO there was probably too wide a skills range to make the classes sufficiently focused to ensure that all attendees received the best personal outcomes from the event. In the current registration set up, the attendees select the type of tuition that they feel is appropriate for them and it is up to the tutor to accommodate whomever presents themselves on Monday morning. It does make it challenging for the tutor to prepare and to deliver.

Many of the students in the advanced class were also present in Rob's intermediate class which again begs a question regarding the appropriateness of this kind of self-selecting registration, although I can see how exposure to the different approaches definitely opens up many avenues for personal exploration of the drum. Everybody in the classes was lovely of course and everyone was very keen to develop their bodhran skills, palette and toolbox. I do wonder however about the each students' ability to get the best from such tuition; I have further concerns, simply in the interests of relevance, about those who can properly benefit from advanced tuition being somewhat held back by the tutor's time being taken up by others requiring more basic interventions, but there were no complaints and everyone did have some personal time with their tutor during the event so maybe it works out in the end.  

There were also some individuals who apparently just showed up and joined in without having registered, others simply asked if they could 'observe' but had their drums out and participated with the full class over several days. Whilst personally I think it is great that many people want to attend the classes and have an interest in the drum, I think it is unfair for people to just show up willy nilly and participate as students; unfair to those students who paid their $120 to attend; unfair to the tutors whose wages are probably linked in some way to class numbers and also unfair to the summer school who badly need the revenue to maintain the excellent standards they offer.

It may be an idea to offer a number of introductory / information / demonstration / question & answer sessions for those who just want to know more about what happens in the more advanced areas of playing the drum - dunno, just a suggestion.

Also, the sessions at Carini's tend to attract great quality local players, SS tutors, players from bands in town for the main fest as well as the students. The standards in these sessions tend to be very high. In many cases the students are retiscent to get involved for all the reasons that we discussed in the class itself about knowing tunes, playing abilities and largely lack of confidence. Perhaps the summer school may consider making available beginners sessions every afternoon specifically for students from the various instrumental classes.

Here they could get the chance to put into practise the material that they have been learning during the week without fear of feeling so out of place. It's also an opportunity to develop and put into practise session etiquette and develop familiarity with the tunes. I suspect that this was the objective of the Carini's sessions however there are just too many good players in town for this to be practical. Again, just a thought to enable the students to maximise their value from the event

 The Carini sessions this year were great but definitely lacked the punch of last year where we had a massive crowd looking on from inside the bar and standing outside the veranda. I have outlined a number of factors in the main blog above that were recounted to me as part of the reason for this, which is unfortunate, I hope next year proves to be more like last.

For me, the Irishfest event overall is all about, bringing people together to share in a special cultural experience of a wee wet green place far far away. Having been to the festival several times over the recent past I have had the privilege of developing enduring friendships with many milwaukeans (is that a word?), many of the bands who play there and many of the people who work at and attend the fest. It is these people who really make the festival like a homecoming for me and who make me feel so welcomed even when I come simply as an participating observer. These people are the reason I travelled 4000 miles for the party although I couldn't afford to go every year - great craic, well worth the effort and I haven't even had the festival yet!

Bring it on!

Go to Part 2 - the main festival weekend