Wow, two months between sessions. I guess we’re busy folks, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change until January. We have a few gigs in September and October, and then it’s time to review Christmas material and play Christmas gigs. We’ll have to keep trying to fit in some recording sessions between gigs, practice, and other work.

Today we played at the Farmers Market. This is the second year they’ve run a Thursday afternoon / evening market, and it’s still quite small, with maybe ten vendors and twice as many visitors. It was lovely weather, and we had a good time playing together.

We reconvened at Craig’s, and fortunately the dulcimer still seemed sufficiently in tune for recording. Good thing, because I’d remembered to bring my tuner, but forgotten the tuning wrench.

We spent the evening working on the O’Keefe’s Slide / Derrane’s / Trip to Durrow set, and I think we have a few potentially good takes.

Lots of false starts and interrupting mistakes in between. And we discovered that Craig and I have been playing different chords at the end of the B part in Durrow. (How did we not notice that before?)

During one take Craig missed his echo, and we just let the previous notes fade out, then he just started again from the echo (it would be an easy edit) and we carried on.

I got caught in the “don’t laugh” problem, where I’d think how funny it was, but try not to laugh, then think how funny trying not to laugh is, and so on — I came pretty close to losing it. We were all a little punchy today, even at the market; I like how easily we laugh together.

By the way, back in July I’d made a preview CD with all the stuff we’ve got so far — seven tracks — and we think we like it.