Playing the contra dance with the new fiddle

For the past several Decembers, we've played the Christmas dance for the Boise Contra Dance Society. We have a lot of fun with it, throw a few Christmas tunes in the sets, and get good, happy response from the dancers. And this was the first public performance on the new fiddle, strung up last week (as described in the previous post). It worked, I could hear it, and I had no disasters. For a less-than-a-week-old fiddle, I call that a success.

Rachel sat in with us, on fiddle, and off to the right, you can just make out Dana's face -- she's playing keyboard. A fellow violin-maker, Tim Black, of Silverton, Colorado, was visiting, and got these photos with his cell-phone.







This last photo shows Gary, one of the callers (the other being Denise), as well as Julia on cello. You can almost see Bill on mandolin, and the left-hand of Tim S. on guitar.

And here's a shot of Tim Black and I, back at the shop, the day before the dance, holding fiddles we've made.