Crankin' up/Crankin' out

Years ago at the Catskills Irish Arts Week (1999?) in East Durham, NY, I was sitting in the big festival tent on a day of about 100 degrees when James Kelly, who I'd met that week while sitting in on his "advanced" fiddle classes (after having gotten thrown out of the banjo class, in the nicest possible way, for being "too advanced"), during his solo set got stumped for the next tune to choose to play. So he said to the audience "what should I play next?" and I, having just purchased his great Ring Sessions CD (great fiddle-playing even if the guitar "accompaniment" damned near drowned it out), yelled out the name of my favorite tune from that disc, a real "let's get this session started" pedal-to-the-metal D reel called "Crankin' Out."

That's kind of what this chunk of time feels like: Dharmonia and I returned from points East on Wednesday, crashed Thursday, played a session last night, host a Capricorn birthday party tonight, and report for work (10am faculty meeting!!!) on Monday. It's been a damned short break and it's a damned early start to the Spring 2009 semester and, while I expect I'll be really glad of it on April 28 when things finish, right now it feels damned early to be cranking it up again already.

Oh well. "Let's get this session started," I reckon. Time to start doing what we do.

Below the jump: Raccoon-Boy's coat in full winter splendor.
----------------
Now playing: Solas - The Yellow Tinker / Cranking Out / Master Crowley's #2
via FoxyTunes