Songs for Saturday: but really from last Thursday

Thursday N and her kids came up for an afternoon of music and conversation. Since N and her oldest kid, m, are the other two-thirds of Kaleidofolk, you shouldn't be surprised to learn that much of the afternoon was spent working on arrangements. I suspect the audience (Colleen, S, and j) may not have had quite as much fun, but...

We did it all outside on the deck, of course, with masks and 6' distances, N having picked out the one day this week with a forecast of clear weather. It was comfortably warm most of the afternoon, but eventually it got to the point where my fingers were uncomfortably cold. (I suppose I could have put on nitrile gloves -- after years of playing in hospital rooms I've gotten fairly good at it.) I made a batch of mulled cider, but drinking through a straw while trying to keep a mask on turns out to be more annoying than I'd expected. We had mulled cider apple pancakes for brunch Friday morning.

We started the afternoon's music with "Bells of Norwich", followed by "The October Country". Those were the two we workshopped, both for harmony (mostly m's department) and lead-lead-who's-got-the-lead scripting (mostly by N). The October Country has never been the subject of an s4s post -- I'll have to do something about that.

We then proceeded to sing "Lock Keeper" by Stan Rogers and "Gentle Arms of Eden" by Dave Carter. N and I hacked Lock Keeper for two voices, with her as the sailor and me as the lock keeper -- it works perfectly as a duet. I'm almost certain that we sang one more song in between The October Country and Lock Keeper, but I didn't take notes and can't remember what it was. Might have been Lord of the Buffalo. Blerg. I worry about myself sometimes.

By the time we finished "Gentle Arms of Eden" it was too cold for me to play, so we had to cut it short. Otherwise we would probably have finished with "The Mary Ellen Carter", "Ship of Stone", or both.

Right now I'm at nOVFF 2020, with something like five different tracks in separate zoom meetings and a Discord server. It is basically impossible for me to listen to music and write simultaneously, so I'll stop here and go back to the con.