I went to a concert a few weeks ago at the Grove in Oak Ridge. Not sure if I posted about it before.
Anyway, the main act was an Irish group called Bua. They were decent, although I wasn't a huge fan of their vocalist. I think I've come to expect most of my Irish/Celtic vocalists to be these women with amazing voices, so the American dude from Chicago just didn't quite live up to my expectations. Suh is life.
However, I was really impressed with the opening act. It featured a local artist, Evan Carawan, and a couple of his friends. Evan played the hammered dulcimer and was accompanied at various times by a fiddle, an acoustic guitar, some irish pipes, and a bodhrán (an Irish drum). They were pretty damn good. I'm getting to be a pretty big fan of the hammered dulcimer in particular.
It seems that, through some amount of luck, in the past couple of months I've gone to see what appear to be 2 of the 3 most well-known hammered dulcimer players in the US. John McCutcheon being the other I saw maybe 4 months ago. McCutcheon, IIRC, learned a lot of what he knows from Evan Carawan's father, Guy Carawan. Guy being the guy credited with bringing the hammered dulcimer back to American folk music.
I picked up their (Evan Carawan and Friends) CD, The View From Home, after the show, and it's gotten a lot of playtime in my car and now on my desktop. Lots of good music featuring the dulcimer.
Trivia for the locals: Evan Carawan is one of the older guys who works at McKays. GIS him and you may recognize him.
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