1 Street Piper - Febonio
Written for Yours Unruly and included in Febonio's Opus 24,
Whistle Music, Book Two (1993).
2 For Bell I Toll - O'Carolan
A combination of two tunes by the legendary Irish harper,
Turlough O'Carolan (1670-1738), The Lament of Owen Roe
O'Neil and Carolan's Cottage . The
Celtic tradition holds that a funeral lament be followed by a
spirited tune to celebrate the life of the dear departed, and a few
years back this combination served as a farewell for my father who so
enjoyed the comic hiccups of Cottage that I was sure to play
it when his strolls took him downtown.
This year I play it in memory of the late harper Derek Bell who
resurrected the music of O'Carolan when he joined The Chieftains in
the early '70s.
3 Mrs. Garvey's Greensleeves - O'Carolan/English
Trad.
Many O'Carolan tunes carry names of patrons, their children,
relatives and friends, families in whose homes he stayed during his
life as an itinerant bard. In gratitude he composed tunes for
them. The first of this pair is one that he composed for a
woman who was likely one of my own ancestors.
The second song is the second song.
4 First Night - Scottish Trad.
A pair of Scottish tunes, both taken from Robin Williamson's
book, Fiddle Tunes, a gift that truly keeps on
giving--received some 25 years ago from my daughter's mom in
Denver, Colorado, where and when I first hit the streets.
The first, Farewell to Whiskey, was played just before the
clock struck midnight of Hogmanay, the Scots' name for New Year's
Eve, to lament the last glass of the year. The accompanying
toast was: "Here's tae us, wha's like us, damn few, and
they're a' deid!"
Immediately after midnight, they would follow it with a spirited tune
called Welcome Whiskey Back Again, but I've replaced that
with Cadgers on the Cannongate, about a cast of characters and
a place with a history much like that of Denver's Larimer
Square. Says the incredibly stringed Williamson, it "might be
more properly called a fling than a reel."
5 Felix - Mendelssohn
What Bell did for O'Carolan, Mendelssohn did for Bach.
Not only that, but he has one of the most colorful male names in
history, right up there with baseball players Babe Ruth, Yogi Berra,
Vida Blue, and Blue Moon Odom. Why else would the greatest
cartoon cat of all time be named for him? Which brings us to
another sure sign of the decline of Western Civilization: That
the noble, affable Felix the Cat has been replaced by the lazy,
insolent Garfield.
With nostalgia, this is a theme from The Italian Symphony
(#4).
6 Tickets for Tull - Lynn/Bach
Any piper on any kind of pipe busking any public street in any
English speaking country over these past 30-plus years has more than
once heard the inevitable request: "Hey, Man! Play some
Tull!" Sometimes I try to honor it by propping my left foot
up onto my right knee while I continue to play whatever I had going
at the time.
I can hardly deny being one of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of aspiring
young minstrels who first picked up a wind instrument during the
heyday (say, late 60s-early 70s) of the band Jethro Tull.
They still tour once a year, coming my way every August, and so it is
something of an annual religious obligation that makes me and the
flautist of Full Cold Moon, vigilant to obtain tickets as soon as
they go on sale.
I'd love to include my street-version of Tull's Fire at
Midnight from the Stormwatch album, but that
would require permission and royalties. Instead, here's my
version of the same Bach Bouree they popularized some 35
years ago with an improvisational intro I call Soiree.
This way I pay tribute without paying anything else...
7 Hamm Lynn at the Gate - Lynn/Telemann
Not easy to collaborate with a fellow who's been dead for more than
two centuries. Ouija boards have very low memory and are slow
to download, with poor definition even when all the gigglebytes are
finally in...
This begins as an improvisational tease that somehow evolved while
working the queues at the gate of King Richard's Faire, an annual
renaissance bash held deep in the cranberry bogs of southeastern
Massachusetts.
Through the Gate is the first Plaisir from Georg Philip
Telemann's Suite in A Minor.
8 Sweet Molly's Pleasure - Scottish Trad./Telemann
Sweet Molly, also from Fiddle Tunes, is a most engaging
street-piece, lending itself to all kinds of body movement and facial
_expression. I'll often ask little girls their names, and
whatever the answer is, I'll rename it: Sweet Rachel, Sweet
Anna, Sweet Melissa, Sweet Sara, Sweet Hanna, and on and
on...
This Molly leads into the second Plaisir of
Telemann's Suite . The connection is that Telemann was
the Godfather of one of Bach's children, and Bach had so many
children that there must have been a Molly in there somewhere.
9 Frost Runes Welcome - Febonio/O'Carolan
Frost Runes is also from TG Febonio's 1993 collection,
and I credit Roger with the idea to prolong notes at the end of
measures and allow for pauses.
Attached is Carolan's Welcome , a title apparently given the
tune after the bard's death, a not uncommon practice. In the
O'Carolan cannon (see Carolan: The Life and Times of an
Irish Harper by Donal O'Sullivan, 1905) it is
identified merely as #171. Here's to not uncommon
practices...
10 Marybeth's Favorite - O'Carolan/Dvorak
A combination of O'Carolan's Mrs. Cole and a theme
from Czech composer Anton Dvorak's New World Symphony.
Marybeth Hallinan, pianist and vocalist for the aforementioned Full
Cold Moon, and her companion Chaz Beaulieu, the aforementioned
flautist for the same, performed a lovely version of Mrs.
Cole at my mother's wake, just at the time I was first
learning it. They so captured the tune's spirit of
generosity, that I cannot but play even this racy street version with
my mother in mind.
Months later, Marybeth, a music teacher whose students number onto a
rather long waiting list, surprised me with a remark to the effect
that the New World Symphony is played much too often. To
which I replied, "Well, that's not Dvorak's fault!" To
which she relented: "I know! I know!"
Mary, do you know? My new title here is not
so much satirically whimsical as hopefully prophetic.
11 Card from Willimantic - English Trad.
Two more from Williamson's book, Rover Reformed and
Fine Companion, which he adapted and arranged from the collection
of John and Henry Playford. I like to play this for couples,
young or old, who stop to chat with me between songs and invite them
to pick which tune suits each of them.
Years ago I got a card from Connecticut, a marriage announcement from
a couple who met and struck up a conversation while listening to me
play in downtown Salem, Mass., there with separate tours for
the Halloween celebration.
How dare they talk while I play!
12 Caroline Alight - Lynn/Irish Trad.
When JFK's daughter paid him tribute at the 2000 Democratic
Convention, most viewers were struck by her eloquence and
elegance. I was equally struck by the tilt of her head, the
lilt of her voice, and the pauses revealing so much emotion beneath
so much composure. Next day, with her mood and tempo, I began
an improvisational riff which turned into the opening of The
Butterfly--an Irish traditional that I had previously played as
if it were more of a humming bird.
Can you name one other pleasant memory from Bush-Gore 2000?
13 Santa Rosa Soundcheck - Lynn/Irish Trad.
An improvisational whim, loosely based on the Irish tune, Ian
Bain, the Piper, for one of Roger's soundchecks that he decided
to "get." If he ever writes it down, I might actually learn
to play it a second time. Otherwise, it is a lavish launch into
yet another tune from Williamson's collection, the Irish
immigration classic, Off to California.
14 Mrs. Farrell - O'Carolan
At a First Night celebration in Brockton, Mass., I thought to
introduce this song by asking a cafeteria filled with revelers if
there was anyone named "Mrs. Farrell" in the room. From the
far back corner came a delighted cry, "Me! Me! I'm
Mrs. Farrell!" As the laughter subsided and before I could
speak, a very stern voice from the same direction pierced the
air: "And I am Mr. Farrell."
I get that all the time in the streets.
15 The Burning of the Piper's Hut - Scottish Trad.
When the English overran Scotland and Ireland, they made sure to
erase as much of the culture and art as they could, sort of trial
runs for what they would do all across North America a few centuries
later.
If this song sounds rough, it's because I refuse to practice it at
home.
16 Hole in the Wall - Purcell
Punched into a collection of renaissance dance tunes, this is
attributed to Henry Purcell and dated 1660. I'd be less
equivocal about that if I could believe he gave it that title--or
that he wrote it when he was two years old.
17 Jazz for Chaz - Febonio/English Trad.
Another pair of tunes , this time in the lusty style of my
aforementioned friend who brought both, with great persistence, to
the challenged span of my attention.
The first is Underfoot, from Febonio's 1993 collection,
named for his very black dog.
The second, Kempe's Jig, is named for Will Kempe, an actor
with Shakespeare's company at The Globe who became wildly popular
in his own right by playing The Bard's best comic roles, including
that of Falstaff. He also had a penchant for taking bets that
he could dance from town to town along the king's highways.
Some scholars speculate that Shakespeare himself may have composed
this jig.
Other suspects include, but are not limited to Christopher Marlowe,
Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, Thomas Kyd, the Earl of Oxford, Queen
Elizabeth (the Judi Dench version, but not the Cate Blanchett
version), Grover Cleveland, Rimsky Korsakov, John Updike, Wilson
Pickett, and Peter Graves.
18 How Gentle is the Rain? - Bach
Speaking of tunes that we've all heard too often, is it just my
imagination, or does every South American band have a version of this
on their debut CDs? Pending the investigation, here's an
eccentric street-version of THE Minuet in G. The title I
use was attached by a pop-band back in the early 60s along with
lyrics that opened with this fanciful question.
Sure, I play it because it's a public hook for the rest of my
largely unfamiliar repertoire, a standard busking practice. But
more, I play it this way in hopes of convincing young school children
that those instructional manual tunes are living things, full of
possibility. Call it gentle rain on dry text...
19 Long Live the Queen! - Irish Trad./Foster
A few years back, a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer
published his first novel, Indiana and Eighth, and hit the
talk circuit. Asked for his influence, inspiration, he recalled
a high school assignment to write a book report on To Kill a
Mockingbird. Years later, he still recalled that, as a kid,
he thought of what it must have been like for Harper Lee to sit at a
desk and write those words. "That act of writing," he told
NPR, "was the most humane and noble act I could imagine that any
single person could do."
All of the arts have more than a few candidates for such high
praise. My musical choice has to be when a youthful Stephen
Foster, in a garrett overlooking the Ohio River docks in Cincinnati,
with waves of Scotch-Irish immigrants and undercurrents of the
Underground Railroad, went to his desk and penned, "Let us pause in
life's pleasures..."
Hard Times, a common _expression of the day--and of many days
since--and a title also employed by Charles Dickens, is here
enveloped with an intro/outro of the Irish classic, The Foggy
Dew.
My re-title pays tribute to the most humane and noble Barbara
Burinski Shelton (1955-2002) who reigned as Queen Katherine at King
Richard's Faire and at other renfaires across the country for
twenty years. Long Live Bodge!
20 Gaelic Garlic - Lynn/O'Carolan
When I thought I might compile a CD entirely of O'Carolan's music
(a la Derek Bell's Carolan's Receipt), I considered the
title, "Ancestral Voice." O'Carolan was very much
influenced by the Italian Baroque composers, particularly Francesco
Geminiani who lived in Dublin for twelve years. And so his
music bridges Celtic with Baroque, or between Irish and Italian,
which is my own ethnic make-up--call it a dish of corned beef and
pasta, or a glass of Guinness Red Rose'... This is a
stout basil-pesto vamp into O'Carolan's Miss Murphy.
21 The Restoration of Felix - Mendelssohn
A continuation and reprise of track five because I'm on a crusade
to restore good-natured, fun-filled Felix to the throne usurped by
that insolent, indolent, insipid tub o'lasagna that passes for
America's "favorite" comic-strip cat.
22 Ludwig's Slide - Irish Trad./Beethoven
O'Keefe's Slide with a theme from LVB's piano
concerto, Fur Elise. Have you noticed that fur coats
(and hats and accessories) are making a comeback lately?
To all those who sell, buy, and wear them: Furk You!
23 Hole in the Wall Repaired - Purcell
He wrote this version when he turned three and learned the tools of
his trade.
24 Tyrolean Tryst - Febonio
A breathy take and take-off on Tyrolean, from Febonio's
first collection, Whistle Music, Book One (1985), a
piece that slows the most hurried passersby and draws approving
nods.
25 Cape Ann Ballad - Febonio
Massachusetts' other cape juts into the Atlantic north
of Boston with Febonio's Rockport at the tip. From not much
further north, I can see all of Cape Ann's upper slope while
standing on Plum Island, the glorified sand-bar I call home.
A faithful, heartfelt version of Ballad, from his second
collection, appears on Two Hot Dates. In this one, I
have altered a few measures in the midsection to accomodate the bass
recorder. Call it a rendition of a coastal drive four times the
distance that a Piping Plover would need to land in Pigeon Cove.
26 Receipt for Drinking - O'Carolan
When a doctor told him to stop drinking, O'Carolan did what any
thirsty musician would do: Find another doctor. He had to
because word had gotten around, and no bartender in County Roscommon
would serve him. Hence, he requested that the second opinion be
put in writing, and he honored the doctor by naming a new tune Dr.
John Stafford. Apparently the harper's drinking
buddies were so amused by the doctor's note and the need for
O'Carolan to use it that they renamed the tune for the slip of
paper itself.
27 The Entertainer Live - Joplin
A live out-take from--and one of a handful of musical interludes I
played for--a stage performance called My Grandmother Had the Hots
for Liberace, a collection of stories by Andrew Mungo, at the
Screening Room in Newburyport, August, 2002, and currently being
adapted for a film mentioned below...
Street
Bootleg
28 These Are the Streets, My Friends - Lynn/Russian
Trad.
Riffing on Those Were the Days, My Friend during a film
shoot on Newburyport's Inn Street Mall where I often play, replete
with the ambient sounds of a fountain, of footsteps, of hacky-sack...
My role as street piper was one of three cameos. For those of
annoyed shopkeeper and heavy-smoking bookie I really had to
act.
The film is called Thanks for Listening.
Yes, thank you for listening...
Street Credits
Digitally recorded, mixed and mastered by Roger Ebacher at REBACH
MUSIC STUDIO,* Newburyport, Mass. 01950; 978/463-0159;
www.angelfire.com/ma/rebach
Produced by Roger Ebacher
Graphic design and digital photo editing by Susan Ebacher
Arrangements by Hamm Lynn, except Track 11 by Robin Williamson
Photos by Rain Breaw**
*"These Are the Streets, My Friends" recorded by Rain Breaw
**On the CD as background to the liner notes, one by Heather Flaherty
of Newburyport showing her son Aidan facing off with Hamm and
another, in color, taken at the gate of King Richard's Faire by Kim
O'Rourke of Plum Island
Street Rights
"Street Piper," "Frost Runes," "Underfoot," &
"Ballad" copyright 1993 T.G. Febonio
"Tyrolean" copyright 1985 T.G. Febonio
Street Thanks
To Rain Breaw, my hard-pressed next of kin, for the bootlegged
audio clip from the film she has directed and now edits; for much
useful direction over the years regarding appearance, posture, and
timing; and for making legible so much poorly-scrawled and
street-battered sheet-music back when she undertook the unlikely
teenage job of Music Copyist.
To Andrew Mungo for permitting the use of the last two tracks, both
live recordings from his film to be.
To Andy again and to Nancy Langsam, co-proprietors of the Screening
Room for occasional use of their acoustic gem of a theater as a
practice space.
To the Screening Room again and to Winfrey's Fudge & Chocolate
of Rowley, Mass., for getting me out of the fluorescent jail that
passes for "higher education" in Massachusetts.
To my fellow rennies at King Richard's Faire, including the many
behind-the-scenes rulers and rogues who keep the raucous realm
running.
To the Rose Medallion of Newburyport for its sustained generous
support of Inn Street buskers (yes, that's plural) for at least
twenty years.
To all the folk, past and present, at Middle Street Foods in
Newburyport, Front Street Cafe in Salem, and Cafe Brioche in
Portsmouth, all of whom merely charge me for coffee when, considering
the time a street piper needs to catch breath, I ought to be paying
rent.
To South Dakota for the musical jump starts of Michael Boer, Corliss
Johnson, and John Yammerino; and to North Dakota for the tune-ups of
guitar-picking Bismarck Tribuners, a few of whom went on to become
Grand Forks Herald Angels and win a Pulitzer Prize for Community
Service.
To Alohra Breaw of Santa Rosa, California, for more than one gift
that keeps on giving.
Memorial Drives
For Derek Bell,
For Queen Bodge,
And for fellow busker, Perri David Rlickman (1951-2003), known to
locals and tourists in Boston, Cambridge, and Provincetown, Mass., as
Perri the Clown...
May they Jest in Peace... May we all Jest in Peace...
