This afternoon
Cecilia and
I played for
Somerville
Porchfest, with
Harris
calling and Danner running sound. There was rain, but not enough keep
us from playing, or to keep folks from dancing:
We were originally planning to be on Morrison Ave, where we’ve been for
years.
Two weeks out, though, I learned that it wouldn’t be possible to close
Morrison this year. [1] After lots of scrambling, talking to neighbors
and the city, and some help from Lance
Davis, we were able to get permission to close the dead-end
section of Highland Rd instead:
This meant we didn’t have my usual porch roof, and while dancers are
reasonably water resistant my gear is
not. Seeing rain a few days out I got a cheap canopy:
It was big enough for the two of us and our monitors, but not Harris.
And he wouldn’t have fit anyway, with his crowd-observation-ladder:
Being away from the house also meant we couldn’t easily plug in for
power. We probably could have made extension cord work, but Danner
and I both have batteries. This worked well, and none of the
batteries were below 70% at the end of the 2hr set.
I’m very glad we had a dedicated sound person this time: running sound
for myself is never great, since I can’t hear what we sound like, but
this was a much more complex setup than we’ve done in the past. In
addition to the usual mains and monitors we also ran a pair of delays
halfway down the street and a subwoofer. Danner was fantastic, and
I’m grateful for BIDA for providing gear and
funding a sound person. Here’s hoping a lot of people who gave
contra a try will come out to one of the regular dances!
To keep the water off the equipment outside the canopy we used trash
bags for the speakers and some 18×24 pieces of corrugated plastic for
the mixer and batteries. Everything seems to have done ok!
youtube
(If this looks like fun, TryContra lets you find nearby
dances. And if you’re not sold, Ben Kuhn has a great explanation of what
makes contra dancing so wonderful.)
I tried to get neighbor friends to park up one side of the street and
move cars just before, but this wasn’t enough to get that side fully
cleared out. It got us about five spaces, which was enough for more
audience space, but the contra lines were limited to the ~18ft between
the parked cars. This is enough for two lines, but at one point I
counted four squished in there. Harris also had to abandon
teaching one of his dances and switch to one that needed less space.
Last year Harris tried a format where he alternated between dances for
anyone and ones for people who already know contra, and he used it
again this year. It continues to work really well: the new dancers
aren’t up for dancing every dance and the experienced dancers get to
do some more complex (but still not very complex!) material.
While Kingfisher is a bit weird as a contra dance band, I think this
mostly translates pretty well to this kind of environment. Having
drums and bass, even simple multitasked ones, seems to make
fiddle-driven music more accessible to the general public:
youtube
With so much gear to get out and back it was incredibly helpful that
Al came early and volunteered to help set up, and of course we used
the wagon.
The older kids made and sold lemonade. Nora held signs:
While people were overall super respectful (and joyful!) they did
leave a lot left behind, mostly alcohol-related. I took the wagon
around picking things up, and it was nearly full by the end:
Just as I was finishing the city workers came by to pick up the
temporary street containers, which were also overflowing:
One of the workers helped me dump the wagon into their truck; very
helpful!
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It was on the cold side for playing, and fingerless gloves were very
important. Probably not a bad temperature for dancing, though!
Overall, it went really well, I’m glad Somerville hosts a Porchfest,
and I’m glad I got to play for it and introduce a lot of folks to
contra dancing.
Thinking about what to do differently next time, I think the big one
is reaching out to the organizers ahead of time to figure out about
closing streets. Both this year and last year there was a last-minute
scramble for permission to close the street, and I don’t think anyone
prefers it that way! I’m going to plan to do this way early:
probably in a few weeks once the organizers have had time to rest a
bit.
[1] After all this, police ended up closing Morrison anyway. I asked
about it, and they said it was a safety issue since people gather in
the street.
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