June 13, 2004

It's still a new and exciting thing to us to be flown somewhere for a show. The first time it happened was last Christmas season when we were brought out to Boston for the WGBH Celtic Christmas Sojourn. That had its own interesting stories of course, including very nearly missing our connecting flight in Rhode Island even though we weren't more than 50 feet from the gate. That and other stories somehow never made it into Navanews, but we now have a second exciting thing - a laptop! This means that Navanews can be written from anywhere - this one, for example is being written from seat 18D of an MD-80 on our way back from the DC area where we were headliners at the Potomac Celtic Fest. You would think most of the interesting stories would come from the festivals themselves, but the travel seems to prove more fertile ground. This time our last set of the festival ended 2 hours and 15 minutes before our flight was supposed to take off. The festival organizer (amazing woman... thanks Dana Henry!) put together a team of golf carts, drivers and a van to get us directly from the stage to the gate at the airport. We arrived, looked at the check-in desk and Sheila realized her small green bag containing HER ID was not with us. We called Dana to see if the bag could be tracked down, but there was no way to get the ID to the airport on time for takeoff. By some strange twist in the fabric of reality both the airline and TSA allowed Sheila onto the flight using her name badge from the festival and our write-up and picture in the festival brochure as ID. (We think we can now safely assume that her name isn't flagged on any national security lists!)

The festival itself was a joy. It's tucked into groves of trees at a horse park near Leesburg, VA. (We weren't paying enough attention ahead of time and thought the festival was much closer in to DC - we were amazed to find ourselves walking through luscious mud in rolling hills with cicadas chirping and lurching into us.) We also got to meet up again with Dalla, a lovely group from Cornwall that we met a few years back. We had an impromptu eight-person version of The Nightingale (An Eos, to us) backstage after this morning's set. We hope to be back again...


May 2004

Last night we sang for a benefit concert here in Madison. This qualifies as one of the amazing places that music has taken us. I spent the part of the concert that didn't involve us thinking how great it is to be surrounded here in Madison by so many wonderful musicians and such good people. The benefit was for a close friend of ours who recently lost a free-speech court case. The fund-raising still has a long way to go even though last night was an unqualified success. There will be a second concert in the series on July 18, again at the Harmony Bar here in Madison. The line-up is completely different (not us, but Lou & Peter Berryman, KG & the Ranger and Chris & Ann Plata) and it should be a great evening. If it's anything like last night it will be a night that reaffirms your feelings that there are a lot of truly good people in the world. We'll be there, and we'd love to see you there. If you can't get to the concert but want to support the cause you can go to the Brave Voices web site to learn more.

March 2004

We're now just past the St. Patrick's Day festivities, which included an appearance on Wisconsin Public Radio's Higher Ground and a set out at the annual St. Pat's Eve celebration (and fundraiser for the Celtic Cultural Center) at the Park Ponderosa in McFarland. A few of us spent Wednesday itself watching our friends West Wind at the Harmony Bar here in Madison where Elizabeth joined them for a few tunes and a couple of songs. Now it seems we're continuing on with fund-raiser season with two coming up in the next week and a few more in discussion...

On a happy group completeness note, Elizabeth is officially back from Germany (has been for a while now, really) and we're in full swing putting together tour dates for this summer/fall. Paul has taken over as our main booking agent and has been landing us gigs left and right, finding all manner of interesting festivals. In an early surprise move by one planning committee, we are already officially confirmed as headliners for a festival in August 2005!

Teaching and workshops are becoming a bigger part of life. Sheila was asked (three days in advance!) to teach a course on Celtic Song for the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, and if plans continue as they are she'll be a guest next fall at the University of Limerick "Lá na nAmhrán" (Day of the Song) focusing this year on sean-nós singing in America. Elizabeth will be traveling to France next winter for a few weeks of concerts and teaching singing and drumming workshops in a school with a scattering of other musicians from Ireland.

Joan, meanwhile, has taken over bookkeeping joys. She took a semester of business management to give us an up on keeping the government happy with us. She's also been finding the goodies on upcoming Gymanfa Ganus (traditional Welsh hymn sings) - we'll keep you posted on those.

We're probably a third of the way through putting together songs for our next cd, and will be working up the rest and tweaking them all through the festivals this summer. Navan will also be featured on an upcoming compilation disc to be put out by Celtic Crossings. We'll let you know once that's available. Thanks as always for all your support!


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Last Updated13 June 2004