At the farmer's market today

It was an exciting day at the farmer's market today because there were two good musical performers.

First I listened to the Hill Hollow Band.  Or at least, some subset thereof.  Their style is generally country/bluegrass/traditional folk.

Then, down on the other end of the farmer's market, I listened to Thaddues Gaffer Venar.



It was interesting to note that they had different styles of interacting (or not) with the audience.  The Hillow Hollow Band looked at us and smiled at us, and seemed to really enjoy it when people were visibly enjoying the music by dancing.  They said "thank you" whenever someone put money in their guitar case, even if it was in the middle of a song.  But when it came to deciding what song to play next, then conferred amongst themselves.  Gaffer on the other hand, said, "What mood?" and then went on to explain, "I don't do much from that last 100 years.  If I ask people what song they want to hear, they say Freebird, but if I ask them what mood, they never say Freebird."  He also expanded on the question by saying, "What mood can I help you manifest?"

When one person answered his question with "excited," he said he would try to think of what would be exciting to other people, because what was exciting to him might not be exciting to others.  After he decided what to play, he said, "These were the top four dance hits in London in 1450.  That's exciting to me."

Before each song, he would talk about it a bit, explaining about its history and meaning.

Even though he said he doesn't do much music from the last 100 years, he did two from that time period that I really enjoyed: "What a Wonderful World," and "Dream a Little Dream of Me."  Often, when someone covers a song made famous by someone else, I tend to think their rendition is not as strong as the version I am accustomed to hearing.  But that was not the case for these songs.  The famous version of "What a Wonderful World," has never really appealed to me that much, but it became a beautiful song when Gaffer did it.