Bluegrass Sunday...

...with and Celtic twist.

In this week's Great Music Monday post, I mentioned being inspired by the night before.

So, here in the words of Paul Harvey, is the rest of the story.

Sunday afternoon I headed down to Wil, Red, and Ark-Builder's house to work with Ark-Builder on his 1st Degree Catechism for Masonic Lodge. After a couple hours of practice and the arrival of Teme and the Man From Ohio, we had a good dinner of chili and then headed off to Budde's in Galesburg for Bluegrass Sunday.

Bluegrass Sunday is basically a jam session/open mic night for Bluegrass. Spoon River String Band played for a while, and then some other played. They were all good, except one dumbass, trying to do some sort of modern alternative music. It was all we could do to stop Wil from booing him off stage. At one point, I had to turn around because I thought a woman had started singing with him. But no. It was just this same guy. He was douche-worthy.

There was also some "guy" there who was just getting ready to start playing when we left about 10:30. He was wearing a sweater with flowers down the sleeves, just like your grandmother wears, accented with the scarf and a purse. And I do mean a purse! All the while, sporting a beard. Wil knew him.

Anywho, after a couple of hours, there was no one on stage so they told me I should go up and do a couple Celtic songs. First one out of the gate, "Goddamn Dutch." I don't know how many times I have sung this song in the past, but this night, I actually offended somebody. Come to find out, this guy had moved to the area from the Netherlands a little over a year ago.

After a little while I went up and did a couple of other songs, including the "7 Drunken Nights," "The Minstrel Boy," and "General Taylor." After I did one or two songs, I went back to my beer and another guy got up and did "A Nation Once Again." Then one of the bartenders got up and did a couple of humorous songs, including one called "Viagra in the Water" about a truckload of Viagra crashing into a town's water supply.

Then the guy from the Netherlands, who had been playing bass for a few numbers earlier got up and did a song native to his country. It was pretty dang cool. This was followed by the guy who had done Nation Once Again doing a song, I guess, from "The Sound of Music" and then following up with "Black and Tans." This of course forced me to do two more songs. I figured since my new Dutch friend was doing a song from his country, I would welcome him to the land of the Swedes (there is a HUGE Swedish population in this area), so I did my best rendition of the intro of "Swedish Chef" from The Muppet Show. Complete with the "Bork!Bork!Bork!" And then I followed up that with my final song for the evening since we were getting ready to leave, "The Parting Glass."

Evidently, the Celtic stuff went over pretty well, as I was heading for the door, the wife of the owner stopped me and said how much she enjoyed the stuff I had done. As we were going down the road, Ark-Builder, who also works at that bar, said the owner's wife told him he was responsible for bringing me back for the high holy holiday in honor of St. Patrick.



Looks like I need to get really serious about doing some guitar practice and song learning. I think I now have two places to play around St. Paddy's next year.