Scotfest Oklahoma
WOW!!
It was an INCREDIBLE weekend down in Broken Arrow OK – home of Scotfest Oklahoma! Tullamore was a fixture there for thirteen seasons, and this past weekend featured my solo debut there! There was plenty and to spare going on… from performances to reunions to all-around good-times… and even to a few epiphanies. This recap will comprise several posts – for reasons that will become readily apparent. This one will suffice for the overview…
The weekend began with an 11:00am departure, being properly underway after a quick errand to Total Wine for bottles of the Balvenie Caribbean Cask 14 and the Bunnahabhain 12 (“Sicut parari”), and completing four hours later with the arrival at Broken Arrow’s Central Park, the temporary home of Scotfest (while Events Park is shut down for the construction of Sunset Amphitheatre). Unloading was followed by parking the van offsite and changing into a kilt… and eventually the Festival kicked off and the fun started!
There were minimal changes in the change of sites… the ScotRock and Celtic/Folk Stages still had their own tents… but the Whisky/Comedy and Pub Stages were combined into one tent. One great upside was the presence of a large air-conditioned Community Center that was used for dance-space, vendor-space, and a green room for the musical acts! SCORE!!
The Festival had a great line-up of performers. The Celtic/Folk Stage featured Chambless & Muse, Colin Grant-Adams, the Flowers of Edinburgh, Jamie McGeechan, and your man. The ScotRock Stage featured Albannach, Celtica ᚻᛰV⟑, MUDMEN, and Flatfoot 56. And the Pub Stage featured Barleyjuice, Waxie Dargles, River Driver, 6'10”… and the whisky-loving wit and wisdom of Rubright & Hardagain. All three stages were managed in similar fashion – with (generally) each band turning in one performance on Friday and Sunday, and two on Saturday.
I was originally scheduled for a 6:45pm set on Friday evening, but heavy rainfall in the Tupelo area produced a hydroplaning misadventure for Jil and Jack that delayed them, and required them to complete their drive from Tuscaloosa in a rental-car. They wouldn’t arrive in time to perform the opening set at 5:30pm, so I kicked off Friday evening’s entertainment in their stead and Chambless & Muse took my set. Afterwards it was time for a dinner of brisket and pulled-pork sandwiches and mac-and-cheese at the VIP-area, and hanging out visiting with friends and listening to bands. Then it was over to the Hilton Garden Inn to cool down and rest some weary bones (and watch The Rise of Skywalker) before nodding off to sleep.
Saturday morning saw a stop at the Scottish Restaurant before arriving at City Park an hour ahead of time – to score the same nearby parking-spot at Veteran’s Park (a whopping 150 yards from the stage). Saturday would be the long haul, being out at the Park all day. The weather reached 91° both days… and that temperature would’ve been a little easier to manage had the Stage and its audience-tent not been sitting on an asphalt pad. But the pad retained the heat and pushed it back up in spades… which made for a wearying day. Once again, I kicked off music on the Stage, this time at 10:00am (when the temperature was a lovely 75°), and played a second set at 5:30pm (when the temperature was at its peak). In between, there were visits to the bandstand for Opening Ceremonies, the Whisky/Pub Stage (for a sampling of Arran, the Old Pulteney, the Writers Tears Double Oak, and the Writers Tears Copper Pot), the Clan Lindsay tent (where I’ve become an adopted son), and the VIP-area (x2, for a grilled-chicken-wrap lunch and a bangers-and-mash dinner). Finally it was back to the hotel for a well-earned night of rest.
Sunday morning started a little earlier with packing and loading to be done before grabbing some McBreakfast and returning to Central Park. Chambless & Muse eventually got things cooking with a great final set on the Celtic/Folk Stage, then made their goodbyes and set off on their 10-hour trek back to Alabama. The Flowers of Edinburgh took the stage and turned in a fine set of their own before handing off the stage to your man and heading over to the Clan Lindsay tent. I turned in my final set and left the stage in Jamie’s talented hands before making one last round of the festival site, spending a half-hour with the Lindsay clan, rounding up Liam (our stage-manager) to ferry me over to the van in his mule), and hitting the road. Colin would close out the stage… and no doubt his set was great (notwithstanding I wasn’t present to hear it).
The 4-hour drive home actually flew by… what with a handful of conversations with folks about how well the weekend went, and what that promised for the future (more to come in another post). And finally I was home. Alas, Michelle was at work and I wouldn’t see her until Monday morning.
It was an INCREDIBLE weekend overall (though not without the predictable growing pains of new material, new arrangements, and new guitar-styling)! It was great to meet up with performer-friends, fan-friends, and the Festival-team-friends after many weeks and months! And it’s ALWAYS a genuine treat to be welcomed by the loveliest of folks at the Clan Lindsay tent!
A very, very special thanks to Steve and Kris and Scotfest for putting this great festival on, bringing together such a great slate of musicians, AND for including me in the mix! And I’m confidently counting the 360-ish days to my return!
(Photos courtesy of Alan Myers, Ethan Russell, Jeremy Biggs, Jil Chambless, and yours truly.)
SW Missouri Celtic Festival
It was a GREAT weekend! For the eighth time, I returned to Buffalo MO to perform at the Southwest Missouri Celtic Festival (a BIG THANKS for bringing me back!!) This is a festival Tullamore performed at for seven years (most recently in 2019), and this go-'round marked my return to the world of solo-performer (which I last did in Fall of 1990).
The weekend kicked off mid-afternoon on Friday for the drive down to Chez Worman on the northern fringe of Springfield. Lee and Lee Ann graciously welcomed me into their home for the weekend – a gesture that would (among other things) dispense with the dark-thirty drive from Blue Springs to Buffalo on Saturday morning to be at the site on time. I arrived shortly after 5:00p and got settled, and Lee Ann arrived home from work shortly afterward… and after a brief amount of jibber-jabber we piled into her car to head over to Umi Sushi Bar, a very nice Japanese restaurant (where else would we go?), for an evening of exceptional and tasty overeating. Then we headed back to the house and hit the sack.
It was still a bit of an early morning. Driving onto the site to park required being there by 9:00a, the Buffalo City Park was 35 minutes away, and the drive to it would require stops at Walmart (for a belt absentmindedly left behind) and at the Scottish Restaurant (for McBreakfast). The van’s clock changed from 9:00 to 9:01 while I was talking to the police-folk manning the gate, but they let me drive on anyway. SCORE! It took a couple trips to get everything in the barn behind the stage (new since my last appearance there in 2019).
It was a B-E-A-UTIFUL day. The External Combustion Orchestra, the band that was sharing the stage with me, was setting up sound-gear and sound-checking. They kicked off their first set at 9:30, and I followed them an hour later. Kudos to Sasha MacLeod for showing up late in the set… she was down manning the MacLeod Clan-tent, and managed to sneak away to catch some of my set! Noon brought the day’s formalities – the Parade featuring the Central High School Kiltie Drum & Bugle Corps, and the Calling of the Clans. I kicked off the afternoon sets at 1:30. Lee and Lee Ann had arrive shortly beforehand and were there for the entirety of the set, and Sasha managed to return for a little more music. The ECO followed me an hour later for their second set, during which I made the rounds of the Festival-site and visited with Sasha on her turf. When the ECO was done, we had a half-hour of some hootenanny action between us all, and then the music was a wrap. We packed up – visiting all the while, and then made our goodbyes and went our separate ways… me back to Springfield, and the ECO to Bolivar.
Lee and Lee Ann had bolted right after my set was done to head into Springfield to attend a 50th Anniversary Party by KSMU (that host’s Lee’s Celtic music radio-program “The Gold Ring”) where they were celebrating 50 years of broadcasting in the Ozarks. They got home shortly before I did, and we promptly jumped in the car, and headed back into Springfield for some fine Italian food at Nonna's Italian Cafe. Fortunately we got a lot of visiting in while we were at dinner as, once again, we hit the sheets immediately upon arriving at the house.
By the time I got up this morning, Lee was already up and off to work… so I SSS-ed, packed the van, and hit the road for the 2½ drive back to Blue Springs.
The performing was a bit of a mixed bag. I’m truly, very proud of the material I’ve compiled, the arrangements I’ve created, and the mountain of work I’ve done to overhaul my playing style from standard to DADGAD. I knew it would be an undertaking to cold-turkey fifty years of muscle-memory in front of an audience – it was very confronting, and there were several handfuls of time (mostly when I was mentally focused on remembering new lyrics or new arrangements) when my hand would revert to playing chords “the old way”. 😲😬🙄 But the audience was a friendly one, I had let them know in advance the evolution they’d be witnessing, and they made space for those moments. So it was a major win AND a very positive foretoken for how the solo gig will go.
I am stirred but not shaken. 🤣
