Prairieland Strings - Tuesday Feb. 5

Blast email sent out tonight to the Clayville and Prairieland Strings email lists --

A reminder - we have the first of our "first Tuesday" sessions of the Prairieland Dulcimer Strings from 7 to 9 p.m. tomorrow, Tuesday, Feb. 2, at Atonement Lutheran Church, 2800 West Jefferson. We're going over to a FIRST TUESDAY and THIRD THURSDAY schedule, so more of our members can come to the sessions, so our next meeting will be at the same time and place Thursday, Feb. 21.

Other dulcimer-related events: Our last beginners' workshop at Clayville from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, Feb. 9 (I'll send out more information in a couple of days), and Mike Anderson's Winter Weekend at Chillicothe, Ill., the weekend of Feb. 22-24. Details on Mike's website at ...

http://dulcimerguy.com/MA_MDW2010.htm

Since we'll have some new people at Tuesday's Prairieland Strings meeting, I'm attaching a couple of songs we like to play and giving links below to some others. I'll teach "John Stinson's No. 2." It'll be a re-introduction for most of us. We're played it before, although not much lately, and I went over it Saturday during the most recent beginners' workshop in Clayville. I invited them to join us; I've added them to our mailing list; and, hey, guys, I'm inviting you again. You already know the song!

Tab for "John Stinson's No. 2" is available on the Huntsville (Ala.) Mountain Dulcimer Association website at http://www.hsvmda.com/tab - (scroll down to title and click on "Tab" link to open the PDF file). There's more about the tune, including a couple of YouTube clips, on my blog Hogfiddle at ...

http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/2013/01/clayville-prairieland-dulcimer-news-feb.html

Most of you have seen it before, but I don't think it ever hurts to send the link around again.

In addition to "John Stinson's No. 2," here are links to the other songs we've been playing in the beginners' lessons at Clayville. I'd like to call both Tuesday night since we'll have some of them joining us.

They're both tabbed by Sr. Margaret Mary, on the EverythingDulcimer.com website at http://www.everythingdulcimer.com/tab/

-- "Boil Them Cabbage Down" (scroll down in directory and click on "PDF").

-- "Skip to My Lou" (scroll down in directory and click on "PDF").

At our Prairieland Strings meetings, we've started using a couple of books: (1) Mel Bay's Complete Book Of Celtic Music For Appalachian Dulcimer by Mark Nelson, available from Mel Bay, Amazon.com and other online vendors; and (2) Songs of the Civil War by Maureen Sellers, available on her website at http://www.maureensellers.com/#books ... We are still in the process of finding a reasonably priced book that features common jam tunes, and in the meantime we're using tab we can get for free on the Internet.

Some other songs we've been playing lately are available on the Internet. Among them are:

-- "Belle of Belfast City" (in tablature archives on Shelley Stevens' website - scroll down to August 2010 and click on "GET TAB HERE"). Link to http://www.shelleystevens.com/tab%20archives.htm

-- "Jamaica Farewell" (also on Shelley Stephens' website - scroll down to Sept. 2006).

-- "Jenny's Gone to Ohio" (on Doofus' website - scroll down and click on title). Doofus is the name of a band on the East Coast, and they have a lot of free tab at http://www.doofusmusic.com/tablature.htm

-- "Coleman's March" (Terry Lewis of the North Georgia Foothills Dulcimer Association has tab at http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/u/dulcimer/page2.html). He also has a version of "Go Tell Aunt Rhody" with harmony that looks like fun - click on titles).

There's a very good page of links to more free tablature available on the Internet at http://home.usit.net/~sandyc/dulcimertab.html.

Our beginners' session at Clayville have been exciting, and I think people have shown a lot of interest in learning the dulcimer. So I think Tuesday night's session of the Prairieland Strings will be an expecially good one. Hope to see you there!

- Pete