We go to Cheltenham and many musical things happen...

In June 2012 I got my degree in Speech and Language Therapy, which was fantastic in many ways. I’ve started several degrees but, for a number of reasons (usually financial) was not able finish them. They all seemed to lead to speech therapy somehow, the key word is communication. That said, the job opportunities with the NHS have been dire for a number of years, you are discouraged to set up your own practice as a newly qualified, I’m not able to dash off to other parts of the country just like that, and I prefer working with adults, not children, so schools are out. So…no perfect therapist job for me. (It’s all worked out fine, really, don’t despair!)

While I was doing my degree I learned to play the autoharp and the ukulele and one of my schemes was this – if there were still no therapist jobs by the time I graduated (check), I would learn to play well enough to be a fully-fledged busker. A licenced speech therapist/busker! How cool would that be? Well…that didn’t happen either, as a science degree turned out to be a bit more demanding than it seemed at first, and I found that I really didn’t have enough brain capacity to memorize lyrics, melodies and chords on top of all the management, assessment and therapy information I needed to retain to graduate.

However, by summer the degree was mine and I could devote some quality time to music, so in August I joined a ukulele band, the SpaStrummers. A genial fellow named Dave started the group in October 2011, playing their first gig in May 2012. The membership has grown to 50+, but not everyone attends practices at the same time and there is a core group of about 15 or 20 who do most of the gigs. The group is about having fun, not virtuoso playing, which suits me fine. I’m a fearless singer, but I’d never really mastered an instrument well enough to feel really comfortable playing in public.

I played my first gig with the group on a lovely day in September at a Ukulele Day in Presto Classical, a local music shop. Absolutely hooked.

The group gets more and more popular, we were invited to support a choir at a Christmas concert where the Lord Mayor of Warwick wondered where we had been all his life. We play weddings and birthday parties and fetes and festivals. We are hosting Leamington Spa’s first ever Ukulele Festival on the 20^th of July. And we're playing at the Warwick Folk Festival on the 25th and 27th of July.

I have calloused fingers, despite the nylon strings. My playing has improved to the point that chords which seemed impossible are now just sort of tricky. I’ve done solos at band practices and even got to lead the band at a gig. I may even have a go at picking, who knows. My busking days are closer than ever could be imagined.

On the 23rd of June, Dave organised a coach that took a passel of us to the Ukulele Festival of Great Britain in Cheltenham. Besides the booked acts there is endless opportunity for the amateur uke-ist to play there. We arrived in time to set up for the Big Busk, hundreds of players in the pedestrian zone led through a 20 song list. We had downloaded and practiced this the week before, as many of the songs were new to us, one known only to me, so I got to lead it (I’ll Fly Away – it’s on the Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack that woke us up every morning for months on the CD clock/radio). There was also a curious emphasis on cowboy songs – Rawhide, Ghost Riders in the Sky.

Truly, I can say that the Big Busk was possibly the most fun I ever had with other people (clothed or not) ever. More was to come…

The rest of Sunday’s events were at The Exmouth Arms pub, with an open mic and stalls. Dave didn’t put our name down to perform, however we all ended up in the pub itself and led a jolly sing/playalong with anyone who joined in. We discovered that there were groups quite nearby us that we’d never heard of (the brilliantly named Moselele, from Moseley in Birmingham, for example), so we could do a bit of publicity for our uke festival as well. And the general consensus was that the Spa Strummers know a heck of a lot of songs and that they are darn good at starting and ending together. For a fun band this is about as good as it gets.

What I’ve learned: I can actually play an instrument in public without embarrassing myself too much; it’s more fun to play with other people; I could still achieve my dream of being a busker, and there could even be a busking partner to do it with; nothing is too silly; I have the best husband in the world – he carries my music stand, gets me coffee, takes photos, rejoices in my silliness, and encourages me to do things that I want to even if sometimes they scare the heck out of me…

First gig with the Spa Strummers at Presto Classical

I'm in the front row, second from right, bobbing about. Who can sit still when you're playing the ukulele? And who would want to??

Leading the band at the Dunchurch Fete

If you look quickly near the end you can see a glimpse of me in my red hat and Alun with two gigantic coffees (one for me)...

Beverley and me doing a kazoo duo (me on my fantastic Frankazoo)

Tending the family tree...

Families, past and present, are interesting concepts. Many of us define ourselves by our nationality, by our culture, by the configuration of our immediate families – number of siblings, birth sequence, presence or absence of extended generations. For me family was a pretty tight little island – two much older half-sisters (one gone now), only one grandparent alive during my very young childhood, parents gone much too early, and then I left America nearly 30 years ago and haven’t been back to visit very often since.

Things I regret: Not asking my parents more questions about their backgrounds – though I have the feeling that there were some topics they really didn’t want to discuss; not staying in better touch with cousins, aunts, uncles – though many of them died when I was quite young. We were not a family of letter writers. Well, I was in my day but with penfriends, not family members. And I’ve moved house so many times in the past 40 years that I’ve discarded or lost papers and mementos along the way.

In 2008 on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas Day for my non-UK readers) we were in a café in Kenilworth after watching a duck race (that’s another story…) and started talking about family history. My sisters had a different father who I never met – the family story I had heard was that when they were very small he was struck by lightning in a rowboat on a lake at a church picnic. Was this true? I wanted to find out more. I also knew very little about my grandparents and no knowledge of any of my family beyond my parents parents. On New Year’s Day 2009, still in our pyjamas, we sat on the sofa, fired up the laptop and discovered the joys of Ancestry.com’s free two week subscription.

Things I learned: It’s good to have an unusual name with multiple spellings; Canadians are mad about genealogy; old census records are a fascinating read; California is much better than other states at putting up its birth and death records (more on this in a moment). When you find an interesting document or bit of data you react just like the people on the TV programme Who Do You Think You Are, except no one is filming you (thank goodness, considering the pyjama aspect) and you’re not famous.

I’d forgotten my father’s mother’s maiden name, but I found a Californian death record of his sister Rita. She had been a country music performer with her husband, who I remembered had an Italian name. The death record pulled all this together and also pointed me to two birth records, a daughter and son. The son was born the same year as me, I’d never heard of him. A search of his name revealed that he was also a musician. I contacted him through his MySpace page and discovered that not only had he played with Johnny Cash for a number of years, he also occasionally toured the UK with a singer, Eve Selis.

Eve visited the UK in 2010, but without her full band. We met her in a little village hall in Tingewick, Buckinghamshire. She is a powerhouse singer, a real force of nature. She is also one of the most outgoing, positive people I’ve met. If you haven’t heard her, you must do so now.

Finally last year in July my cousin Jim was on the tour and one of the gigs was in Oxford, near enough for us to go. And the band had an evening off in Stratford upon Avon, just down the road from us. We joined them for an Indian meal with lots of chat. I brought some papers and info about my father, the uncle Jim never met. Eve took a photo. Having so little close family, I’m not used to looking like other people. The resemblance is striking (see below).

Eve and band were in the UK this month and we got to see them again at The Stables in Milton Keynes (super venue, you must go there sometime). It was great to have the opportunity to chat with Jim again and the band was astounding, as usual.

Things that amaze: One of Alun’s early jobs in the 1980s was with the Milton Keynes Development Corporation, which took the area from countryside and villages to a modern urban centre. He hadn’t seen it years and we were agog at the huge-ness and “American-ness” of it; the amount of genealogy information available now on the internet – not only was the lightning story that started this search true (on-line newspaper archives, bless), but eventually I was able to go back through even more generations and the number of people I’m related to has increased exponentially. 

Does an interest or ability come from nature or nurture? I would have thought the latter, but my parents were not especially musical (OK, they would burst into song now and then, but neither ever played an instrument or performed), and I've flitted around the edges of the music world most of my life. We people are complex little pumpkins, aren't we?

Eve Selis and me, Tingewick Village Hall 2010

 

Title song from "Family Tree"

Cousin Jim Soldi and me, July 2012

We were at this gig in  2012 in Oxford...

What is it? You know you want one...

You may or may not know that I play music enthusiastically if not particularly skilfully. It’s important to do things you like with no thought for the result. I remember reading a story a long time ago about a therapist who helped a gentleman get over his perfectionism. The gentleman wanted to paint pictures but felt he wasn’t good enough so he didn’t. After he completed his therapy he began to paint for pleasure, lots of paintings. The therapist had one of the paintings in his office, it was terrible, but on handing it over the gentleman said “I present you with…not my best”. It was hung in pride of place.

I took piano lessons for six years when I was little, gave it up at 13 because I really wasn’t getting much of anywhere, though switching from classical to jazz did help a bit. Then I had a go at guitar for a long time and even managed to play actual chords in an actual bluegrass band on actual stages in my late 20s. Then my musical engagement went underground for a long time, nearly 25 years. (I still have the guitar, it’s a really nice Yamaha that I got for a good price because the guy in the music store thought it was a less expensive model than it really was – but that’s another story).

Singing without accompaniment can sound a bit naff, unless you’re a very fine singer, indeed, and even then it can sound a bit naff. After watching the film “Walk the Line” about six years ago I became fixed on the idea of having an autoharp, like June Carter Cash played. And being an old 60s sort of person I admired The Lovin’ Spoonful, the only rock band with embedded autoharp player (and I always thought John Sebastian was really cute).

On with the quest. A quick internet search tossed up lots of autoharp sites and a lot of autoharps, some looking pretty cheap and cheerful and others, custom jobbies, rather expensive. What to do? A gentleman in Hereford was the ticket – Mike Fenton. Mike not only sells the very respectable Oscar Schmidt autoharps (and will replace broken strings if needed), he also conducts workshops and master classes, performs in schools and is a full inductee in the – wait for it – Autoharp Hall of Fame.

We contacted him, discussed my autoharping needs and for Christmas 2007 Alun bought me a very fine Schmidt 21-chord Centurion in a spiffy padded case. It has a lovely rich sound that less well-made harps don’t have.

It also came with an instruction book, “It’s an Autoharp” by Cathy Britell, named that because it was the answer to the question she was most often asked. (This eventually was my experience as well.)

If you play guitar you can get the measure of an autoharp in about 5 minutes. If you don’t play guitar it might take 10 or 15 minutes or so longer. Never was there an instrument that could provide such musical joy in such a short amount of time. 

Naturally, it takes a bit more time to play well, but even a beginner player can create recognizable music quickly. Anyone can strum, but it’s the picking that makes the most beautiful sounds.

It can go all technical, with chromatic models or diatonic models, you can even have left-handed harps made, but you don’t need to deal with that at first. 

Consider the autoharp. Once you play one you want one. Trust me.

 

It was a ukulele day at a local music shop, but I brought the autoharp as well. The shop manager had never seen one closeup before...

 John Sebastian himself will teach you to play!

Jo Ann Smith is a brilliant player.

Mother Maybelle Carter (June Carter Cash's mother) who was the inspiration for Mike Fenton and many other autoharpists.

Put "autoharp" into a YouTube search and prepare to be overwhelmed...