Barn Dance Band for Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Hertfordshire

Kinderhook Barn Dance Band has started another busy Autumn of barn dances which continue through October and November. September brought barn dances for village associations, 40th, 50th and 60th birthdays among the bookings in Bucks and Oxfordshire. October continues with weddings and barn dances for the RSPCA and a Cancer Charity.
Details of Kinderhook can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/kinderhookbarndance

Special Birthday Surprise

Last Saturday, I had the surprise of my life when I was whisked away, blindfolded, to a secret location. It turned out to be a surprise birthday party for me organised by my family. It certainly was a surprise - I knew absolutely nothing about it and as the blindfold was removed there were friends and musicians (not that the musicians aren't also my friends!) dating back to my schooldays. As this is a music blog, I won't dwell on the wonderful food, drink and friendship but concentrate on the music. Being led by son to the venue

The blindfold is removed. Absolute shock at 70 people in front of me

The session started after lunch.

Joining in were members of the Oxford Fiddle Group, The Haddenham Shamrocks, 8 past and present members of the Kinderhook Barn Dance Band and a few others!

3 generations of musicians in this picture - Andrew on whistle in the middle, his father on banjo in the foreground and his grandfather on accordion in the background.

The session continues

Adrian and Rita

The Ian English Boodlum Band doing a spot - keyboard, washboard kit, guitar and phono fiddle!

@'The Sailor with the Navy Blue Eyes' - making me rather wet after attempting to vent and drink water at the same time??

Stuart, all the way from Exeter to play the musical saw. Stuart led the jug band I joined in 1967. You can see a picture of him in 1967 on the 10 Oct 2010 blog. He's on the extreme right, next to me on the double bass.

A duo waiting to do their spot! Eve with her great-grandfather.

Anywhere for a Barn Dance

Kinderhook has played at some unusual venues during its 26 year existence, like school playgrounds, Beaconsfield cricket pitch and even the main car park in Tring High Street. Recently we did a barn dance in a Railway Station! The Oxford Rewley Road station building was dismantled at its original site in Oxford city centre and re-erected at The Buckinghamshire Railway Centre, Quainton. It was here that we did a 60th birthday barn dance. It was actually the second time we'd done a barn dance at this venue. I also performed as a Victorian Entertainer for two days as part of the centre's Victorian Christmas days this month.

The dancers with a coach from the Royal Train of 1901 in the background

Kinderhook playing by the booking office

Me (2nd left) with the other ' Victorian Staff ' in front of the 1901 Royal Train coach

Kinderhook plays at a Schools Folk Dance Festival

Today, 'Kinderhook' played at the High Wycombe and District Primary Schools Folk Dance Festival. This is an annual outdoor event and Kinderhook have played at the festival for the last six years. About fourteen or fifteen schools take part which means over 200 children. As you can see from the photos, the weather was good and all seemed to enjoy this annual traditional event.

Trevor Toms on guitar and me on banjo playing for the dancing

Harping on

The first photo above shows me playing my electric mandolin at a barn dance with Sarah Goss on fiddle. Sarah played fiddle in 'Kinderhook' from 1994 although in latter years she has only played as a dep when available because of her busy career as a solo harpist.
The second photo shows Sarah with the harp at a recent wedding where I was a guest. I'm in the photo with 3 month old grand-daughter Ava.
Sarah's harp playing added a wonderful atmosphere to the wedding reception with a variety of musical styles.
Anyone interested in booking Sarah can contact her at gosssarah@hotmail.com

Kinderhook

My regular band for barn dance bookings is ‘Kinderhook.’ The band has been going since 1982 and the first photo above shows the Kinderhook 25th reunion at Killingworth Castle Inn, Wootten-near-Woodstock, Oxfordshire in May 2007. There have been a number of personnel changes and the photo shows some of the musicians who have played in the band over the years.
Kinderhook is a four piece band and the current line up is listed below with the year they joined and instruments played:
Adrian Broadway (pictured above) 1982 – bass guitar, mandolin, banjo, harmonica, calling; Trevor Toms (pictured above) 1983 – guitar, banjo, drum tracks; and two from the following four: Sarah Gates 1991 – flute, piccolo, recorder; Sali Toms 1999 – flute; Matt Morton (pictured above) 2003 – whistles, soprano sax; Lorna Morton (pictured above) 2003 – fiddle.
Barn Dances are still popular in England as a social event and most of our bookings are for private functions such as weddings, silver and ruby wedding anniversaries, birthday parties (18th -80th!) Village and School Associations. We take bookings mainly in the Buckinghamshire/ Oxfordshire/Hertfordshire area.
Kinderhook can be contacted at adrianbroadway@googlemail.com

Searching for Folk Tunes

If you are trying to find the 'dots' for folk tunes, here are some web sites and information that maybe helpful.
For English, Irish, Scottish and American tunes try http://www.thesession.org/ You can search for the name of the tune. If you find the tune and would like to print it out or send it to someone else, I suggest the following:
click ABC, Highlight all the text & copy
Go to http://www.concertina.net/
click Tune-a-Tron
click ABC Convert-A-Matic
paste, submit, PDF sheet music
You can save it as a PDF file to print off or send to someone else.
Another site for Irish tunes is www.ceilidhsoc.org/music.html

http://comhaltas.ie/shop/detail/foinn_seisiun_cd_volume_1/ has nice versions of a whole lot of Irish standard tunes to listen to played at sensible but not patronising speeds.
There's a lot of other nice stuff on the Comhaltas site too. In particular some excellent videos.
If you've not come across it before Comhaltas is the main Irish traditional music organisation - Full name - Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (Association of Irish Musicians)
This pronounced something like Kool-tas Kool-tori air-ann
There's a pronunciation guide with sound samples as well so one can find out how to say "Buíon Cheoil Fheadóg Mhór" properly!

Please let me know via a comment if you have found this useful.

Many thanks to Tom Bell-Richards (Oxford Fiddle Group and Mizen Ramblers) Matt Morton (Kinderhook) and Tony Blay (Haddenham Irish Session) for some of the above information.