Greetings from the Yorkshire Dales! Rehearsing in All Creatures Great and Small country (literally in the town where they film the show) for a few days.
Friends! We arrived yesterday after a long travel day (10 hour layover in Atlanta, but I bought the plane tickets on credit card points and that's just how it goes). We flew into Manchester this time because our shows ended up being all in the north or in Scotland for this tour. I'm pretty bummed we couldn't make it down to the south to see pals Neil, Lou , Diana, Duncan, Sid, and wow I could keep going with all the people I am going to miss this time round ... better planning next time, I think! But I'm thrilled with the people we *are* going to get to see.
When I first started touring in 2008, I did every tour with a different performer ... my favorite thing was bringing other Kentucky artists abroad, showing them off to the world. Steve Cooley was supposed to be a one-time thing, but it turned out that people turned out in DROVES to see him because: he's already a big deal over here. It also turned out he's a total delight to tour with, he ...
Goodness, it's been almost a year! I've been updating folks over on my Patreon page, which is not entirely behind a paywall now that Patreon is offering a FREE tier. Join me there if you don't mind, please:) But that's not why I come to you today ... today I'm just updating because I realized there is a whole crew of you who still get updates when I post here and that may be the only place you receive my updates. So!
I'm going on a music tour in England and Scotland beginning January 31. Tour dates and ticket info click here I'm playing a lot of smaller towns this time, so take a look at this map and see if I'll be anywhere near you. If you can't be at a show, but you'd like to help out some indie musicians touring Kentucky music abroad, consider being a Tour Sponsor ... any amount buys us tour sustenance.
Steve Cooley, Banjo Legend, will be joining me on this trip, and we're thrilled to bring my quirky tunes and Steve's banjo pickin' to folk clubs and house concerts and even a couple of theatres all around Yorkshire, Merseyside, and Edinburgh.
Graham's film, Monica, had a great theatre release and is now making all the awards blogs as the most-snubbed-film of the year it seems ... not exactly the accolades one wants, but Hollywood doesn't seem to be ready for a trans-lead just yet. Shame! He's proud to be part of a film that is opening doors, nonetheless.
Angus's film, Unsung Hero, produced by For King & Country and distributed by Lionsgate, will be out April 26 in theatres everywehre. It's going to be huge ... like, really, really a big deal. He's even got a line in the trailer:
That's me with quick updates and sending lots of love to you!
My new single came out at midnight - i didn't set my alarm to wake and midnight and check the iTunes charts, which meant by the time I saw the charts it was at #180. I'll never know how high it started, but I don't care ... because honestly i didn't expect to break onto the charts at all. I pushed the pre-save campaign on this one, but i didn't ask people to buy the iTunes song. Bandcamp is more of a help to artists, but it's still pretty cool that enough of y'all (I assume it was y'all?) bought the song that I squeezed into the charts at all!
Unexpected victories making me feel great - thanks.
I'm busy packing and freaking out ahead of my UK Tour. I leave on Tuesday, and I'm SLAMMED with To Do Lists. But I got my taxes filed, my recording files completed (i do a lot of recording for other musicians and film composers), and am now packing my merch and compiling detailed homeschooling tasks for my children for when I'm gone.
Today I delivered Matzoh Ball Soup to a dear friend with COVID and after that porch drop-off, Graham and I stopped by the secret graveyard where my ancestors are buried. We talked about genealogy and Russian armies and the persecution of Jewish people and all kinds of history. Hands-on schooling is the best schooling.
Thanks for the love and support! I'm so thrilled to be back to doing what I love. The last time I was on tour, my dad was dying, but he joined me for 3 weeks of shows in Scotland. Since then I've had cancer treatment myself and somehow managed to survive a pandemic (so far), so believe me when I say I take nothing for granted.
It's been over a year, and we are all itching for live music.
I, a professional musician, am desperate for an audience -- live eyeballs I can connect with and not just busking on Facebook. I'm also still not comfortable accepting gigs indoors at events that are slowly coming back in America (while the rest of the world is still very much locked down). But there is a certain situation that I'd be happy to play, and also happy to host: The House Concert: Pandemic-edition.
Now is the part where you ask: Brigid, ARE YOU OKAY??
Why, thank you for your concern! I am. I think. Adulting is hard.
Last month I glanced at the kitchen calendar and noticed my 7-year-old had scrawled “Grandude’s Death Day” on one of the boxes. It made me smile, which was nice on a day I certainly didn’t need reminding of.
And so, rather than weep on that one-year-anniversary, I demanded time alone, sat with my musical saws and decided to conquer something I’d wanted to for over twenty years: record track after track, overlaying sounds and pitches, using my 20”, 26”, and 30” saws to see exactly what an orchestra of thirty musical saws would sound like.
Why musical saw and why thirty? My dad was the first to show me the saw, around the time I started playing the cello in elementary school. When I eventually read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, a paragraph jumped out at me, something that most readers likely just glided past:
It was an incredible sight. The dungeon was full of hundreds of pearly-white, translucent people, mostly drifting around a crowded dance floor, waltzing to the dreadful, quavering sound of thirty musical saws, played by an orchestra on a raised, black-draped platform.
The main characters had gone to the dungeon of Hogwarts to a ghost’s 500th Death Day party. It was apparently a weird and spooky event, as you’d imagine a crowd full of ghosts would be.
It was also the first pop culture reference I’d seen to the musical saw, and I swore one day I’d make a video like the one I’m releasing today.
This was 1998, before Harry Potter had been licensed, before the films, etc. I hoped that maybe I’d be able to record 30 musical saws for the movie someday, if ever one was made. (Imposter Syndrome struck hard: I know now that I absolutely could have found a way to get to Warner Brothers and create a musical saw orchestra for the film, if I’d been more confident!)
I hope y’all enjoy the video and find it charming, useful, maybe a little tearful, but not flippant. My mom’s 2nd Death Day is several weeks away, but I’m releasing this on her birthday instead.
Recorded on my dad’s Death Day; released on my mom’s birthday. My birthday is at the end of July (just like JK Rowling’s), and I acknowledge that this a weird way of dealing with grief. It took me trying to celebrate my first birthday without my parents to realize that birthdays are not a celebration of the day you are born; they are a celebration of the day you meet your parents.
As I’m not particularly looking forward to a birthday without my parents, let’s do this year in a minor key.
***
The Making Of!
How did I do it?
From a musical standpoint, I switched the melody from a major key to a minor key. People tend to associate sad things with minor keys and happy things with major keys. I typically play "Happy Birthday" in Ab major on my favorite Stanley 26”, so I switched to Ab minor (G#minor if you are a transcription-geek like I am) flattening the Fs and most of the Cs. That’s why the song itself sounds mournful rather than joyous.
From a video/audio standpoint:
There’s not really a way to record THIRTY split-screens easily, but the ACapella app has 9-part and 6-part screens templates. Basically I made four separate Acapella videos, each set to the same metronome tempo. 9+9+6+6=30. Yes!
I recorded the melody once, then put on headphones, switched saws and played along to my first recording while recording a second video. The Acapella app makes split-screens a LOT easier, but it does require you to do a perfect take; no mistakes, no “punching in” or auto-tuning. Here’s a link to a Tutorial on How to Use the Acapella app.
I arranged 3-5 melody parts (each slightly different depending on the saw) and layered track after track. There are 6 videos playing some version of the melody, but in various octaves on different saws.
Next, I created a new 9-part split-screen entirely composed of some alto lines.
Repeat for tenor harmonies, with 9 videos, since the tenor parts are typically the most interesting to me.
Repeat for bass harmonies, only six videos of these, and most played on my 30” baritone saw.
I added some reverb and mixed the audio -- I wanted the melody line a little louder, and for the bass & tenor parts to come at you from both sides (which only really matters if you’re listening with swanky swanky headphones, but, hey, I am a music geek!).
The trickiest bit was lining up the sound wave files from each video, but i did that by stretching out the media files and making sure the wave forms matched, then listening obsessively just to make sure.
I used the “picture in picture” function on iMovie to make the 30 videos go together. I’ll make a youtube tutorial on that someday because it’s too complex and boring to go into that now. It involves exporting the mixed video four times and layering it.
I added some title cards! That part was mostly easy, though would have been much faster in Adobe or FinalCut. (I had to create some transparent PNG files in Google Docs to layover the final video in order to get the titles in the right part of the screen. The title cards that come with iMovie weren’t cutting it for me.)
I’m now just THRILLED to release it, and I’m even more thrilled to release it on my mom’s birthday. She was born in summer, and she died in summer. My dad was born ten days after the winter solstice and died before the summer solstice. There is so much magic in dates, even when we’re not looking for them and even when we don’t believe in them.
*The reason I’m proud of this video is NOT because of the musical prowess it took to arrange and perform; I’m proud that I finally recorded it. You see, I was taught by the music and business world that I should play dumb, and I’m tired of that. I’ve got skills, y’all, and I’ve wanted to arrange a thirty-part musical saw orchestra for YEARS.
Here's the thing about having a horrible year: you are slapped in the face with your own mortality. It's an obvious life lesson, but to have both parents -- a generation -- wiped from your family tree in a matter of months maybe just makes that whole Life Lesson font a bit more bold.
Last summer, just days after my dad died, I started to escape. First, I buried him on Father's Day (not the brightest thing, but I didn't have much of a choice), and a few days later I left town. The family and I drove to Florida. We played in pools and beaches and cast magical spells upon each other. We drove north and took the long way home, coastlines and mountains. We came home, then packed and hit the road for a tour of a few shows I had booked in Scotland and Switzerland. Then I played in Colorado, had Christmas in Texas with David's family and finally went on one final trip, a writing retreat near Glendalough, Ireland.
I returned on February 26, played a few private parties, and promptly went into lockdown.
I am so grateful for the trips I was able to take. Most of them were for work, yes even that four-week jaunt around Europe last summer, which I'm going to start blogging about. It felt weird to write about joyous trips when I was grieving so deeply, but I have photos and thoughts to share. And since we are all on lockdown, we can travel virtually, right?
I am so grateful that I was on a Life is Short kick when we decided to cash in our airline points and take the boys to Europe while I played music festivals last summer. I'm so grateful my kids got to stay with family and friends in Scotland, France and Switzerland.
Last night at family dinner, we spoke of travel plans, and I'm realizing that I'm not sure when we'll be able to to travel again. It is hard for me, but it is also forcing me to engage in my reality: that both my parents are gone and I'm still dealing with "their crap," from taxes to Corningware.
Something that DELIGHTED me was when Angus said, "Remember when we were in Switzerland and we went to Lakeside? Except it wasn't the Kentucky Lakeside, it was actually a real lake?" He was only three last summer, and he brought up these memories. And however ridiculous it may have been to take two small children on a worldwide trip that they probably won't remember, well, guess what? I think they will remember. Because our memories, our photos, our travel stories -- that's all we're going to have for a very long time.
Look at this teeny tin of tea I've managed to make last FIVE YEARS by rationing.
I've been in an abusive relationship before, and I am now starting to believe I’m in another one: with caffeine. (#clickbait , ha ha, sorry!)
I want to quit. I have quit. I start again, usually because when I’m on tour in Europe, the coffee just tastes SO GOOD. I dislike American coffee, but an Italian espresso? SWOON! My naive Kentucky childhood was pretty closed-off when it came to worldly foods. I grew up Jewish and had never even heard of falafel until my first week at NYU, when my sophisticated Californian roommate took me to Mamoun’s.
Anyway, recently I was down to one cup of okay coffee a day, after having run out of the Illy espresso that I got for Christmas. We bought a 3-pound tin from Costco, except that I didn’t notice it was … DECAF! Ergo, I unintentionally quit caffeine in late February (yes, I’m aware there is still caffeine in decaf). I was sick anyway and jet lagged from a writing retreat, and then I didn’t sleep at all because I was counting Angus’s breaths as he struggled with pneumonia. I didn’t even realize I had cut caffeine for almost a month, when I wondered why I was still so unmotivated.
Then I embraced it! I was able to sleep better. My anxiety even relaxed a bit — or maybe that was just because, as a lifetime member of the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Club, Pandemic just PROVED that I was right to be worried all along, like a big nanny-nanny-boo-boo to the neurotypical world.
I was also extremely impatient and uninterested in my children.
So one day I made a cup of TEA! I have this thing of TWG tea that I bought on tour in 2015. It cost £28, for a tiny tin of Couture tea purchased at Harrod’s food market (which, if you’re wondering what heaven looks like: it is Harrod’s Food Market). It was the most extravagant thing I’d ever purchased, completely unnecessary. Tea is tea.
But this tea, my friends. It’s loose. Five years later (I have rationed it, like Londoners rationed dried eggs during the war),it is barely half empty yet. It still smells so good I want to wear it in a locket so I can inhale the Earl Greyness all day long.
And friends, I know you're not supposed to have Earl Grey in the morning, but I did (it was afternoon in Scotland-time) and do you know what that caffeine did?
It made me HAPPY. Ah, a natural and immediate anti-depressant.
I don't have it daily, but on the days I avoid it, I'm a big jerk. And I feel guilty for it. I don't feel guilty for the prozac or the multi-vitamin, but ugh, the knowledge that caffeine immediately makes me an eager, hands-on, creative and fun parent is just too much! Shouldn't I want to play with my kids without the cuppa?
No. I know better. It's just a weird co-dependency thing that I don't want to be involved ... flashbacks to my past!
Anyway, I recommend splurging on some good coffee or good tea, y'all.
Today's livestream concert comes from THE BATHROOM! 3:00pm Eastern, that's 8p in Scotland. Watch it LIVE on my Facebook page
Every spring I do a long tour of Europe, where I play a show every day from a different city. Last year was particularly memorable because my dad bought a last-minute plane ticket to tag along. He died six weeks after the trip, 11 months after his stage 4 cancer diagnosis.
This year's tour has been similarly dramatic, but I've worked tirelessly with promoters and publicists and managers to come up with THE PURPLE HAIR TOUR! May 2020: coming to you from a different room in my house every show.
Well, the official kickoff was on Friday, May 1: a special show brought to you from the European House Concert Hub ... with a live show from the AMAZING countryside that is ... MY STUDIO!
It was a fun show with some mild audio issues (4-year-old roadie who changed the gain on my microphone unwittingly), but par for the course on DAY ONE OF A WORLD TOUR!
It's so exciting to be back on the road. (lol)
Sweet David wanted to surprise me yesterday with a last-minute drive to Versailles, Kentucky, so I would still get to see a castle on my tour. I asked too many questions and ruined the surprise though, so instead we just walked up with our facemasks and ordered a To Go Mint Julep from a local pub. Please enjoy some photos of The Kentucky Castle taken on my 40th birthday instead:
This evening I'll be coming to you from the sweet Facebook land of AdathJeshurun, where the wonderful promoters have been providing weekly Sunday night entertainment to people of all faiths (and no faiths).
You can pop over to AJ's Facebook page and watch the show live at 7p Eastern. There are simple ways to virtually tip. (And if you want to watch the show, but are busy at 7p, you can pop back on at any time and watch it!)
It's kind of amazing the ways we've all managed to up our tech game during quarantine. Like, two months ago I worked with some volunteers who refused to learn how to copy and paste because they "don't do computers," and now everybody's grandma is hosting Zoom surprise parties.
I have been fiercely creating content for all kinds of outlets, almost all of it unpaid (thanks to Kentucky Performing Arts/Brown-Forman and AJ for providing an honorarium). I've been collaborating on huge projects like that Jim James/Will Oldham song "Lift Up Louisville," which has gotten something like 100k views (some outlets credited me and others credited me as "and many more"). My kids are in the video, and the video is completely adorable.
Last night I was a convocation speaker at the Kentucky Governor's Scholars Program. I've performed/spoken at GSP many years running (I'm an alum ... NKU '95), and it's consistently one of my favorite gigs, making me think I should reform my typical gig into a motivational speaker career or a TED talk at the very least (I mean, I've unintentionally gathered a pretty good story). I love a theatre. I love an engaged audience. I love a grand piano. And I love telling stories.
It mystifies me what gives some people the confidence to believe their story is memoir-worthy or TED-talk-worthy. Or even speaker-at-a-conference-worthy. I've seen trust-fund kids stand on a stage in front of photos of them taken in Peru while they were out searching for themselves for a year. I've seen them share the NPR-moment of what I learned is that we aren't that different after all, my father and I ... or whatever the message or resolution is. I've wondered what makes them think that it's a compelling enough story to deserve a stage, an audience, a platform, a book deal, an honorarium.
I've decided it's a confidence. Specifically, I've taken to calling it White Male Confidence or WMC for sure, which my poor husband has taken the brunt of my annoyance. It's the weird trait that makes people confident enough not to ask directions, or to just assume they are making the right decision in life, or to ask for a raise, or to negotiate a salary, to stir the pot when others wouldn't dare, to believe in their core that their message is innovative and important to share.
I'm not saying that their messages are not important. I'm saying that we all have stories to share, and imparting them on others is a gateway to understanding each other. And we need to take breaths and command a microphone and offer up pieces of our lives to new crowds.
Last night I wasn't sure I was engaging at all with these teenagers. They were so respectful and well-behaved that it was a difficult room to read. I talked through a lot of my story, skipping over parts that I used to dwell on because I have had so much more happen to me in the past year than I could have expected. But the Q&A part of the evening was incredible and the hour-long receiving line of scholars eager to talk to me after the show was a reminder that connection is possible if you're willing and confident (not brave, but confident) enough to stand on a stage and tell people what you're thinking. It may not be the deepest thoughts, but it's real. People appreciate real, and we learn more from each other when we are open and honest.
I'd like to do more of these speaking/performing type gigs, and I think ... no, I know, I've got a compelling story. Without looking any further than my own backyard, I've got a beautifully bookended narrative that gives me the illusion of control, or at least of a script.
Who needs me to come speak at your festival/event/work/conference? Here I am throwing myself out there with WMC saying that I have wisdom to impart, and I can do it in a compelling way.
And yes, it involves the musical saw too, so there's that if nothing else.
I am desperate for travel, and also keenly aware that this is a terrible time to be traveling. My kiddo had a tonsillectomy last week. He should be fine by the time I leave -- 14-days post-surgery -- but I'm still nervous to leave if he isn't 100%. My dad is feeling the effects of his most recent immunotherapy, and I'm nervous to leave him.
LUCKILY, he's decided to join us on this tour -- be customer #1 for Brigid's COACH BUS TOURS OF SCOTLAND where all my friends join me on a pub-tour. (Someone out there, please organize this because I have organized ENOUGH things for enough people this past month to last a lifetime.) I'm hoping he'll be able to take some photos too, so that we'll have more than just weird selfies and a bunch of pictures of a banjo.
In other fun news, my little guy's commercial from last year has been airing primetime basketball tournament slots:
My little guy has fallen deeply in love with acting despite my best efforts to encourage the MBA instead.
Are you in the UK? Will I see you on this tour? Message me if I won't. Just say hello. I have been a bad blogger because I've been spending 25+ hours a week on a volunteer job instead of my, like, career. Turns out that's bad business all 'round, both for the bills and the spotlight. Look for me to be back here more often.
ALSO -- I HAVE A NEW SINGLE COMING OUT ON FRIDAY!!! WFPK is premiering the video on their website on Thursday, April 5, so you can be the first to check out the new song.
It's not been a fabulous past year, which has clearly affected my mental health ... and therefore my writing frequency, which then circles back around and affects my mental health negatively. Losing your mom isn't something I would recommend, though it's been living with my dad. I don't post a lot of super-personal stuff (hard to believe, I know) on the internets, but my dad's got cancer too. His is a rare form of sinus cancer, and despite surgery, chemo and radiation, it's popped back above his eye. In true Kaelin spirit, however, he's decided to not let that stop him from doing, well, anything. In fact, he's bought himself a plane ticket and will be official videographer and merch person on my UK tour in four weeks!
I typically don't allow my family to come on business trips with me, but this is a very different situation. Plus, my dad is a silent, stoic type, so I can't imagine him being anything but fun on this trip. It will also be fun to point the audience to a merch person with an eyepatch!
Those of you who are reading this in the UK, please come say hello!! The shows in Strathpeffer, Southern Skye and Beverley are house concerts, so email me if you want details about that. The other shows are listed in more detail on our Facebook event tour. It would be FANTABULOUSLY helpful if you shared the Facebook events/graphics with your feed or tagged your friends who live in the UK. We all know that music is essentially free these days, so the best way you can support a musician is to TELL YOUR FRIENDS! Please help spread the word?
I even made Steve sit down for a silly video to promote our new tour. It shows that our cinematography is very weak, but that we are generally fun people to be around. Come say hello, UK friends!!
Well, there’s a beautiful segment on me on KET that premiered this weekend, and there’s a sound byte about how when I don’t write, I don’t feel well in the head. Funny how I had to watch myself say it on TV before I realized maybe that’s why I’ve been feeling so bad lately.
It’s been a month since I blogged!
To be fair, it’s been a year, and we’re not even two months in yet. My dad’s cancer has had a recurrence, this time as a tumor in the sinus above his eye. Graham’s taken up acting (and booked a few gigs!), our au pair went on vacation (she’s back, yay!), and I’ve taken on a volunteer gig that turns out to be a full-time job, all the while trying to work my actual job, finish an album, promote my upcoming UK tour and sort out a summer Europe tour as well. I get that whole ADHD panic of I-don’t-even-know-where-to-begin and then somehow prioritize designing a graphic for a Facebook event cover of a show I’m not even singing on. FACE PALM.
Anyway, in general, life is fine. We aren’t skipping meals. We can afford childcare. The wee boys are gorgeous and sweet and lucky and privileged as anyone could wish upon their children.
My dad seems in good spirits, though we aren’t a family to talk about our feelings (that’s David’s job). I think we’ve given up on the idea of adding on to his house and are now talking about just moving the entire family into his house so we can spend every waking and sleeping second as a family.
That’s my update. I’ll write more, so I can take fewer meds.
I played a thousand gigs last week, and here are some of the settings. From Churchill Downs, to Turtle Run Winery, to the Speed Art Museum, and various other private parties, it was a blast making music with many friends. I also sang too much without enough vocal ramp ups, so I'm hoarse this week. But, oh, what fun!!
Only 3 gigs this week, 3 next week, and then I'm taking some time to focus on lessons and recording so I have new product to TOUR in 2019!!
Are you in Scotland? England? Switzerland? Germany? France? The Netherlands? Could you help me think of cities to play? Even house concerts or pubs if you're connected like that? House concerts are a really easy event to put on, so if you're an ex-pat abroad and want to bring a bit of Kentucky music to your new town, send me an email. Let's talk. Maybe I'll come pick some tunes in your living room. It'll be big fun.
This SATURDAY I'm co-hosting KENTUCKY HOMEFRONT. That's a pretty big deal radio show that's been around almost as long as I have. Details here.
Other news? I'm making big plans to renovate my house. This is terrifying, but look for this blog to become DIY and before & after photos for a while. YIKES.
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