Flying Shoes Radio Hour Episode 5 – Trip to Norwich

December 23, 2025 Flying Shoes Radio Hour 1:04:2058.91M

In the Flying Shoes Radio Hour podcast, we explore the roots and branches of contradance music. And, so, building on that metaphor, for me, talking with Carol Compton and Thal Aylward of Trip to Norwich was like digging my roots into a fertile bit of soil. There was so much uptake of nutrients, like the metaphorical minerals and water that I, particularly, need to thrive. We did this interview the day after they played for an English country dance here in Belfast Maine, and this podcast merely scratches the surface of our exchanges. By way of explanation, after the dance, the three of us had dinner together. It started off just that I was going to have an appetizer, but then we went on. And that meal was literally peppered with wild stories about each of their paths to playing trad music, and specifically contra dance music. But you will just have to track down Thal and Carol yourself if you want to get any of those tidbits. Still, there was plenty of good fodder left for the podcast chat. They are both very personable and easy to connect with, and I loved all the intersection points that we discovered along the way, whether it was places we’d been, people we knew, tunes we loved, et cetera. And I hope that all of you listeners will have that same sense of connection with Carol and Thal, in this Episode 5 of the Flying Shoes Radio Hour.

Show Notes

Trip to Norwich

Some people and places mentioned in the conversation: 

Tunes:

  1. Glise de Sherbrooke (trad) / Flop Eared Mule (trad)
  2. Cliffs of Moher (trad) / Cat Man Dew (Thal Aylward)
  3. Tawyard Hall (Carol Compton)
  4. Eddie’s Reel (trad) / Air du Saguenay (trad) / Joys of Quebec (trad)
  5. Emilio’s Rag (Thal Aylward)
  6. Covid Free (Thal Aylward) / Lady of the Lake (trad) / La Grandeuse (trad)

Transcript

Click here to download transcript

[00:00:00] Chrissy Fowler: Hi there. This is Chrissy Fowler welcoming you to the Flying Shoes Radio Hour podcast, which is produced by Belfast Flying Shoes and the Country Dance and Song Society. In cooperation with WBFY, Belfast Maine’s Community Radio Station, where the show airs weekly, mostly using music from the station’s digital library.

This podcast version of the show features contra dance music and conversations with musicians whose talents catalyzed joy and connection wherever they play, including here in Maine where this program was recorded. Enjoy this episode and thanks for listening.

In the Flying Shoes Radio Hour podcast, we explore the roots and branches of contra dance music. For me, talking with Carol Compton and Thal Aylward of Trip to Norwich was like digging my roots deep into a fertile bit of soil. There was so much uptake of the nutrients, like the metaphorical minerals and water that I particularly need to thrive.

We did this interview the day after they played for an English country dance here in Belfast, Maine, and this podcast merely scratches the surface of our exchanges. Uh, by way of explanation, after the dance, the three of us had dinner together. I started off just only going to have an appetizer, but then we went on. And that meal was literally peppered with wild stories about each of their paths to playing trad music and specifically contra dance music.

But, you will just have to track down Thal and Carol yourself if you want to get any of those tidbits. Still, there was definitely plenty of good fodder left for the podcast chat. They are both very personable and easy to connect with. And, um, and I loved all the intersection points that we discovered along the way. Whether it was places we’d been, people we knew, tunes we loved. And I hope that all of you listeners will have that same sense of connection with Carol and Thal in this Episode 5 of the Flying Shoes Radio Hour.

[00:03:00] [00:04:00]  (tunes)

[00:04:28] Chrissy Fowler: Well, podcast listeners, I am psyched to have here in our recording space a band called Trip to Norwich, which is Carol Compton playing the piano, and Thal Aylward currently playing the violin. And I’m really glad that you guys are here.

[00:04:50] Carol Compton: Glad to be here.

Thal Aylward: Thanks.

[00:04:52] Chrissy Fowler: We brought you over here yesterday to do an English country dance, which is a new thing that Belfast Flying Shoes is doing.

And even [00:05:00] more fun is that both of you were also in a band together playing for contra dances.

[00:05:06] Carol Compton: For a number of years.

[00:05:07] Thal Aylward: So, yeah. So we were,

[00:05:07] Chrissy Fowler: I would love to hear more about how each of you came to that path and maybe even a little bit about how you ended up in the band together.

[00:05:15] Thal Aylward: You wanna start, Carol?

[00:05:16] Carol Compton: I grew up in a fairly musical family. My mom actually taught international folk dance. My dad sang. We all did lessons of various sorts. And so, dancing, we went to local, then they were just called dances. They weren’t called contra dances ’cause they included contra squares, couple dances, all kinds of things.

I grew up doing that. And then in college, the short version, zoom forward, in college there were a couple of folks who wanted to do dances, on campus and they were working with recorded music and a couple of us said, “We can probably, maybe, do something a little bit better than that.” And that was sort of the beginning of the downfall and I gave up classical music and completely [00:06:00] went over to the traditional dark side, um, playing for contra dances, English dances, family dances.

When I moved back to New England after college, somebody said to me, oh, there’s this band, Northern Spy. They’re looking for a piano player. And that was the beginning of a, a long association with that band, which is actually how I met Thal, but turn it over to you.

[00:06:21] Thal Aylward: I started out playing violin and going to college for it and conservatory, and doing stuff like that, and somewhere in there, things got interrupted.

And I ended up out in San Francisco with my fiddle and was walking around in the streets and encountered the guy who taught me how to play “St. Anne’s Reel”, and uh

Chrissy Fowler: Wow.

Thal Aylward: One of the first fiddle tunes I learned and I would play that and a couple other things for the folks in my apartment. And when we had a party, and that was kind of fun.

And somewhere in there I went back to home to Boston where I’m from and joined a couple of different groups playing country music and

[00:06:56] Chrissy Fowler: –like country western kind of music?

[00:06:57] Thal Aylward: Playing country. Yeah, country, Western, traditional [00:07:00] stuff. And, there was in Cambridge, of course a great bluegrass scene. They would have these massive get togethers. And I went to one of them and met some people. And we were in a band called, uh, what were we called? Northern Comfort. That’s right. Which was a big name for maple syrup. And, uh, a reference to Southern Comfort, of course. But, uh,

[00:07:17] Chrissy Fowler: Of course.

[00:07:18] Thal Aylward: And we, we had a summer playing in a club down in Rockland, Massachusetts with a mandolin player, guitar player, pedal steel player, and myself. And that was fun. Go forward about 30 years. And a friend of mine who, well, he is now a friend, but back then he wanted to take some fiddle lessons. And I was living in Vermont. And I said, okay, and you know, I know how to play the fiddle and I can teach you, maybe you tell me about the fiddle stuff and I’ll do that. So we learned some fiddle tunes from him and he was in a band called Northern Spy and said they might need another fiddle player.

And so I went to hear them and I heard them, and I thought, wow, that’s good. Piano player’s really good. And uh, so the next season I joined that band and was playing with Carol and the crew for about seven years.

[00:08:03] Chrissy Fowler: And Northern Spy is a band that played for the dances in Norwich, Vermont?

[00:08:08] Carol Compton: That’s where it wound up.

[00:08:09] Chrissy Fowler: In the Upper Valley?

[00:08:10] Carol Compton: Yeah, Upper Valley. It played in a number of halls over the years. It actually had a 35 year career as an ensemble. At the end there was only one of the original members. The rest of us had all come in a little bit later at various times. Bill Shepard was, one of the original fiddle players and he was there at our very last 35 — we got to the 35th year and said, “That’s a great celebration, let’s have a big party and go home.”

[00:08:33] Chrissy Fowler: Uh-huh. And that’s when you decided that you would move on to other things.

[00:08:35] Carol Compton: We had already, Thal and I were already doing some other kinds of, we had already started playing English together, so–

[00:08:40] Chrissy Fowler: Oh yes. No, I meant, I meant the band, the giant–

[00:08:42] Carol Compton: The various band members. Yeah.

[00:08:44] Chrissy Fowler: The Northern Spy always impressed me because well, I’m friends with David Millstone who called with Northern Spy for a lot of years. Always? Or just a lot of years?

[00:08:51] Carol Compton: Pretty much all of it, I believe.

[00:08:54] Chrissy Fowler: Okay. In the Upper Valley of the Connecticut River Valley. I always was impressed because it was a band, I mean, not of thousands, like an open all comers band or even a festival orchestra, but there were quite a few of you on the stage with lots of different instruments. It always just had this really large, joyful energy to it because all of you were there together, and clearly enjoying each other and the music. And there just were a lot of you, I just remember thinking, “wow!”

[00:09:21] Carol Compton: I think the smallest it ever was, was six or seven.

[00:09:22] Chrissy Fowler: Yeah. Which is a chunky size for a band. To say that the band is small was seven members. It’s quite something. So tell us about those first two tunes that you played. I recognized both of them, of course.

[00:09:35] Carol Compton: “Glise de Sherbrooke” is a tune I enjoy playing for family dances ’cause it’s nice and clean. One could call it a traditional New England tune, in terms of how it’s been used. Its source is a little uncertain, as you know, most, if you see traditional next to a tune online, it could mean anything. It could mean it was written modern, but in a traditional style. It could mean [00:10:00] nobody has any idea. It varies. You have to be a little careful with tune research.

[00:10:05] Chrissy Fowler: Yes, we play fast and easy with that here on the show, and in the contra dance world too, of course.

[00:10:11] Carol Compton: And then, “Flop Eared Mule,” which was the second tune, that’s sort of a classic New England tune. Ted Sannella had it in his book– one of his early books– I think it’s in Randy’s, New England Fiddler’s rep–

[00:10:22] Chrissy Fowler: Randy Miller?

[00:10:23] Carol Compton: Randy Miller’s collection. And it’s just a really fun tune. It doesn’t get a lot of use, but if you have a, a fiddle player who can really make the most of, of the mule braying, it’s worth playing.

[00:10:33] Chrissy Fowler: Here in Maine it’s a known tune in the Maine Fiddle Camp repertoire.

[00:10:37] Carol Compton: Ah.

[00:10:38] Chrissy Fowler: And is super fun. And I think –not being a fiddle player– I feel like it’s accessible… the version I heard you playing, Thal, was more complicated than the one that I have tried to play on my ukulele.

[00:10:50] Thal Aylward: Oh yeah, well, I add stuff to it ’cause it’s kind of fun to do.

[00:10:53] Chrissy Fowler: Improv is a beautiful thing. Okay. Well that is a great little start to our conversation together. Are there more things you wanna add to your kind of origin story as dance musicians? Anything about you know, playing with Northern Spy or playing for other dances in a smaller configuration or playing for other types of dances in a smaller configuration?

[00:11:15] Carol Compton: Thal, you’ve played for a wide variety of other kinds of dancers, dance music.

[00:11:20] Thal Aylward: Yeah. I have actually, when I was, well before I moved up north to Vermont I used to play for a dance group in Cambridge and it was a sort of improvisatory dance group. It started off playing for the classes and then Deb Weaver, who ran the group, would do organized performances for us. There was a piano playing friend of mine, Joe Mulholland, who’s a wonderful jazz player these days. And there was Jan Nelson who played congas, and there was for a while a saxophone player named Jeffrey Ernstoff. There might have been one or two people who drifted in and out. There was a woman who played drums, whose name I can’t remember now. That was a real fun thing. It was very improvisatory and just, you know, play what you want. I mean, if you’re playing for dancers, you have to keep some kind of pulse going so that they know what they’re doing. But, it was pretty loose. And there was also a woman I knew, Annie Louie, who now I think she’s still teaching out in California, I think at Irvine. And she was a wonderfully creative person. I played for some of her classes. Just she would say, “Come in and just make stuff up.” So I got a chance to do all kinds of odd things.

[00:12:26] Chrissy Fowler: Yeah.

[00:12:27] Thal Aylward: Nothing to do with tunes or anything. I loved watching dancers move, and that’s always fun to do. Yeah.

[00:12:34] Chrissy Fowler: I really appreciate, and it happens very often when the people who are playing for the dances and the dancers are, are actually looking at the dancers and tuning into that back and forth. So that’s really fun to imagine like, I’m, I’m picturing a kind of a dance studio setting with people moving around in a different way than at a contra dance.

[00:12:52] Thal Aylward: Oh, yes, definitely. Yeah, and some of the dances had a storyline to them, when they became more formalized and we were doing a performance, they’d have specific things that they were doing and we would just be supporting that.

[00:13:02] Chrissy Fowler: So you were like feeding off them. So they were dancing and you were kind of riffing off other—

[00:13:06] Thal Aylward: Yeah, well we, after a certain point, if you’ve done a, when there was a number to be done, we would kind of know what they were gonna do and have some idea of what we were gonna do. But yeah, it was never written down.

[00:13:16] Chrissy Fowler: Yeah, that’s so relevant. It’s so relevant –.

[00:13:17] Thal Aylward: It was never written down.

[00:13:18] Chrissy Fowler: —to contra dance music. Because I think that the best bands are the ones that are tuning in and paying attention, like, “Oh, we know this is gonna happen, so now we’re gonna do this.”

[00:13:25] Carol Compton: Yeah, and you don’t have to, you know, if you know there’s a particular move coming up, doesn’t mean you have to emphasize it every time through, once, but once you’ve set a groove, you’ve got a lot of latitude to play around with rhythm. Or there’s, there’s a place in the music where everybody’s stomping. Well, you just don’t play that note and see what happens. Or there’s a place where people do “woo!” and you leave that space out for them to have their moment in the sun. And that kind of dynamic between the dancers and the musicians is something that I’ve taken with me into other kinds of– I play for Morris teams, and one approach is you play the tune absolutely steadily and the dancers stick with the tune. I’ve played for the same team for a long time now, and we have more of a dynamic thing going on, where it’s the accompaniment to me, what they now call collaborative pianist, I guess, is the, the term is collaborative now– you’re pushing them, but you’re also supporting them. You want them to pick up their feet at a certain time, and if they’re in the air, you wait until they land to play that next. So that’s, that’s the kind of give and take I think you’re talking about.

[00:14:32] Chrissy Fowler: Yeah, completely.

[00:14:33] Carol Compton: That can be really fun. And it can also be a real challenge if you have a hall that has a real mix of dancers who aren’t on the same page, to me, then it becomes the band’s job to sort of try to get them on the same page.

[00:14:46] Chrissy Fowler: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

[00:14:46] Carol Compton: As well as, you know, working with the caller.

[00:14:48] Chrissy Fowler: Yeah. Like being that foundation too. Yeah. Whoa. Okay. So let’s hear a little bit about the upcoming tunes that you’re gonna play.

[00:14:56] Thal Aylward: Uh, well the next tune is, “Cliffs of Moher,” which is a [00:15:00] place name in Ireland. I’ve never been there, but I know people who have, and it’s, a straight drop from, I dunno how many hundred feet up in the air–

[00:15:08] Chrissy Fowler: It’s very high.

[00:15:08] Thal Aylward: And there’s the Atlantic Ocean and next stop is some part of the U.S. I think, it might be, Bermuda is in there somewhere. But anyway, it’s a long way. It’s a lovely jig, or slide, depending on what you’re gonna call it. And the tune after that is a tune called “Cat Man Dew,” which is a kind of pun ’cause it’s a tune I wrote. And I think I had my cat hanging around while I was coming up with this tune, back in 2019.

[00:15:36] Chrissy Fowler: I happen to know how that tune is spelled. So interested folks can tune into the show notes to really get the joke.

[00:16:00] [00:17:00] Tunes

Chrissy Fowler: Oh my, that’s really fun. Knowing a little of the backstory of the joke Meow! Lots of images. Yeah. Meow!

[00:18:09] Thal Aylward: It was a white cat, anyway,

[00:18:11] Chrissy Fowler: But, we were talking last night about, or I was trying to convey the imagery at the English dance of how to turn single. And that imagery of making the big loop, and somebody had suggested that one could imagine a cat on a circular rug that you were walking around. And, and at the end of the demonstration, or at the end of the practice, where I had people just, you know, try doing that with that imagery, one of the dancers, my friend Anne went, Miaoowww!

[00:18:37] Carol Compton: It was perfect! It was perfect.

[00:18:40] Chrissy Fowler: Oh, oh. The world we get to live in. It’s just so beautiful. Oh. Well, and you do, so the two of you do play for, together, for a variety of things. You play for English, obviously. Mm-hmm. Because you came here for that and, um, Trip to Norwich is another sort of pun in a way because right, because both of you are…

[00:18:59] Carol Compton: Our home hall is, is the Norwich Town Hall in Norwich, Vermont.

[00:19:02] Chrissy Fowler: Right. And you took many a trip to Norwich.

[00:19:04] Carol Compton: Yes, I still do!

[00:19:07] Chrissy Fowler: And, um, you guys have played together in a bunch of different configurations, and obviously for English, which is so fun. Other places that you’ve played, you know, you’ve done some family dances and, and.

[00:19:17] Carol Compton: Little family dances, weddings, alumni gatherings.

[00:19:21] Thal Aylward: We’ve done outdoor, we’ve done outdoor. We did recently did a trio with our friend Chris Rua, who’s a wonderful wind player, plays the oboe and recorders, and that was in Sharon. They were starting a music festival and we did a, a lovely set out there as a trio.

[00:19:37] Carol Compton: Sharon’s not a very big town, and they decided they wanted to have this music festival. And they had craftspeople and food, and it was great to be part of something sort of being on the ground floor. Kind of fun.

We’ve played, let’s see, early on we played, um, we’ve been out to the Isles of Shoals. We’ve been to the New England Folk Festival, we’ve been to the Flurry.

[00:19:56] Chrissy Fowler: Oh yeah, you did the, so you played on the Isles of Shoals for the Star Hampshire dance weekend?

[00:20:02] Carol Compton: Yeah. With Jay and Molly.

Thal Aylward: Yeah.

Carol Compton: They were, they were the other pair that was there that weekend.

[00:20:06] Chrissy Fowler: That was, Jay Ungar and Molly Mason. That was one of the early, I think that might have even been the first year that we resumed the weekend after the founder, after the, after Patrick, uh, Stevens passed away. They did a quick little one, and I was part of that committee. And that was a memorable time. Now I remember both of you out there! As we get older…

Carol Compton: Remaking connections

[00:20:29] Thal Aylward: –and now I know why you look familiar!

[00:20:31] Carol Compton: With that. We just had to go far enough into the dim, dark past.

[00:20:35] Chrissy Fowler: I’m so glad you referred to that. Uh uh. Yes. All of us here, we do so many different things, and it’s so great to have those little “aha” moments. That was a magical weekend.

[00:20:47] Carol Compton: It was, it was, it was fun.

Thal Aylward: That was fun. Yup.

[00:20:47] Chrissy Fowler: Star Island is a beautiful place off the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Isles of Shoals. I’ll put a little reference to that in the, in the, um, show notes, just so people can get a glimpse of where we were all together there. Yep.

[00:21:00] Carol Compton: It’s a special place.

[00:21:01] Chrissy Fowler: So yeah, you’ve played a lot of places, and of course on Star Hampshire, for that weekend, it’s a contra dance weekend, and, um, so you played contra dance music, right?

[00:21:09] Carol Compton: I think we, there was an English session in there somewhere. Maybe. It was a long time ago.

[00:21:12] Chrissy Fowler: There would have to have been. Yes. No, David was in charge of the program. I’m sure there was, if there was

Carol Compton: To get that variety in there.

Chrissy Fowler: That’s right. Yep. Oh, that’s so good. Do you, what are some of the things that you, I mean, you talked a little bit about the interplay between the dancers and the musicians when you’re playing for dances… if you had to explain to somebody what you enjoyed– some of the pluses about playing for dancers– are there any things that sort of pop into mind, in terms of what makes it satisfying as a musician, or what makes it fun to be in a band that’s playing for dancers? Is it different than playing like for a concert or for a more structured musical setting?

[00:21:50] Carol Compton: Oh yeah. There are all kinds of differences. You can get away with a lot more at a live, at a dance, than you can in a concert!

[00:21:56] Chrissy Fowler: Meaning? Meaning? Meaning what? You can experiment more? Or you can…?

[00:22:03] Carol Compton: Well, you, if you’re playing a tune, you know, a significant number of times through– let’s put it that way– one starts to try to find other things to do with it. And finding those things that are fun and engaging and don’t distract the dancers too much– although that can have a satisfaction of its own in the right setting– you still want them to be picking up their feet.

Chrissy Fowler: Yes.

Carol Compton: So going to some completely bizarre time, you know, doing a time signature change or whatever is probably not in the cards unless it’s intentional. Um, but the energy’s very different when you’re playing for, for dancers and, you know, you’re, you’re getting the energy back from them off the floor. I mean, there’s also a lot to be said just in terms of playing this kind of music with other people. LikeI, yeah, I could sit at home and play these tunes on the piano by myself, but there’s also the interplay with the people that you play with that’s sort of key to why it feeds my soul, at any rate.

[00:23:00] Chrissy Fowler: Yeah. Feeding souls is important.

[00:23:02] Thal Aylward: Yeah. You get to make stuff up more.

[00:23:05] Chrissy Fowler: Uhhuh.

[00:23:06] Thal Aylward: Just because you’re playing the tune so many times, you know, I don’t know how many, I never counted, but, you know, it could be 8, 10, 12 times.

[00:23:15] Carol Compton: Preferably not the latter, but it’s happened!

[00:23:17] Thal Aylward: But you know, if there’s a large crowd and yeah, you know, there’s a long way down the line and they want everybody to do the dance for themselves, it can be a long time. And, and so you, they go, what can I do this time around? How can I make this sound a little different?And still maintain you know, the movement that needs to be maintained. And also you can kind of throw things that are entertaining and the dancers will go, Oh, wow! And move a little brighter, perhaps, in their way around the, the set.

[00:23:43] Chrissy Fowler: I think what you’re both speaking to is the kind of spice that makes it really fun as a dancer who’s tuning into the music. And, and not all dancers have that space in their brain, especially if they’re newer dancers. They can’t necessarily be like, oh, that was a counter melody. And, uh, you know,

[00:23:59] Carol Compton: Even the experienced dancers don’t necessarily think that. Unless they’re musicians.

Chrissy Fowler: Well, anyway, you get my point

Carol Compton: But you, you know what, what an inexperienced dancer will notice. If you play the tune the same deadly way. Yeah. Ad nauseum. Every dancer will notice that. They’ll also notice and not know why. If you are out of tune the whole evening mm-hmm. They won’t know why they go home tired. So there are things that, you know, the people are maybe not conscious of on the dance floor, that as, as musicians, we’re aware that we have more of an impact if we pay a little attention to what we’re doing.

[00:24:30] Chrissy Fowler: So there’s a fair amount of responsibility in addition to the space for playfulness.

[00:24:35] Carol Compton: I think so.

[00:24:35] Thal Aylward: Yeah, and the other thing about playing for like English dances in particular is that they like to do waltzes every once in a while. And you know, so you get to play a waltz now and then, and usually at the end of the dance. And that’s always lovely to do.

[00:24:47] Chrissy Fowler: Well, speaking of which, do you have a waltz?

[00:24:50] Thal Aylward: Yeah. Right in front of us is “Tawyard Hall.”

[00:24:54] Chrissy Fowler: Is that a place?

[00:24:55] Carol Compton: It’s not a place. Well, maybe in my head it’s a place.

Chrissy Fowler: How’d it get its name?

Carol Compton: Actually if you rearrange the letters, you come up with, “Thal Aylward.”

Chrissy Fowler: Oh, it’s an anagram.

Carol Compton: It’s an anagram. And, uh, it’s one I wrote back in, scarily enough, 2008.

[00:25:12] Chrissy Fowler: Oh, that’s when my child was born.

[00:25:13] Carol Compton: Well, there you go.

[00:25:14] Chrissy Fowler: A significant time…

[00:25:15] Carol Compton: A significant time

[00:25:16] Chrissy Fowler: …for me,

[00:25:17] Carol Compton: For us

[00:25:18] Chrissy Fowler: And perhaps for the world.

[00:25:23] Carol Compton: Yet to be determined.

Chrissy Fowler: That is great.

Carol Compton: Shall we?

[00:26:00] Tune

[00:27:43] Chrissy Fowler: Wow. I like that waltz. Woo. Just made me, I was transported to a dance floor, and having a great time. There was a lot of pivoting happening. Oooh boy. Thank you, Carol, for bringing that out into the world. Wow. One of the things that we talked about at dinner, I think, last night, I’ve particularly noticed it in English country dances, well, and particularly when there’s a piano player, the interplay of trading off who’s doing the melody and what instrumentation is happening when there’s melody carried by one, then a little counter thing, or then the support of the chords. It makes it really rich and it’s not like playing through it a bunch of times, which can feel so delightful. Consistency is great too, but boy, having that variety just makes you tune in a little bit more, I think.

[00:28:30] Carol Compton: It’s leaving an anchor there somewhere as you do the variety, that, to me, is what makes variation work. Some, some little underpinning of continuity, or if you wander off, you come back once in a while to sort of reground.

[00:28:44] Chrissy Fowler: For me, I think one of the great things about contra dance music, and maybe trad music in general, is that you’re really learning it from people, ’cause you’re playing with people. We talked earlier about the fact that playing in a dance band, that part of that collaboration is with the other people that you’re with and playing alone isn’t quite as satisfying. As a dancer. I’m learning things from other dancers that I’m dancing with, and picking up a lot of my skills that way. Callers certainly share their skills with, in a deliberate way, in a, you know, people can be mentored and, but there’s also just the informal picking up skills, carrying around a little notebook so that I can write down like, oh, that’s a very clear way of explaining that thing. I just think that that interplay and that, and that passing on is so crucial. And, I’m wondering if that resonates at all for either of you in terms of playing for dances, like were other people who have, that you just were inspired by or influenced by in particular ways? Or are there things that in general people did?

Yeah, just curious about maybe mentors and influence. That is, that’s a nice thing to chat about in this podcast.

[00:29:50] Carol Compton: So for me it probably started when my mom was teaching dancing. I remember she had these fabulous old tin boxes full of records. And then in the 70s, a  New England Band, Apple Jack, put out a recording. I still occasionally play with Laurie Indenbaum, who was a member of that band. And the Canterbury Country Dance Orchestra put out an album. Those were two moments in which, you know, live music had been happening at dances in the intervening years between the 40s, but an awful lot of stuff was being done to recorded music as well. So when those recordings came out, and I also was going to dances in Fitzwilliam where, before Bob McQuillen took over on the piano, Bob, when I was first going to those dances, Bob was playing box and

[00:30:43] Chrissy Fowler: Was it Johnny?

[00:30:44] Carol Compton: It wasn’t Johnny Trombly.

[00:30:46] Chrissy Fowler: Trombly, yeah.

[00:30:46] Carol Compton: It was not… Mr. Lawrence! That was his name, and he sat at an upright piano that faced the wall of the stage, and he spent the entire night with his head cricked to the right. I often wondered whether he went home facing the other way just to keep from… But, if I remember, and this is digging in the dim, dark past, Mr. Lawrence’s was a fairly basic style. It was not as unique as Mac’s style, which was appropriately, heavy left hand, and very distinct. And mostly, in his earlier years playing as we all do, you know, as keyboard people, a relatively limited set of chords that he was using. That changed over the years, as did his tempos. They got faster over the years. As have mine, I think. Thal will tell you probably, but, so those were some influences when I was living in Philadelphia. Gosh, there was the Summit Pick Up Dance Society open band, better known as SPUDS. And early leaders there were Lucille Riley, Bob Pasquarello, John Krumm, Bob Stein. I learned a lot from John Krumm. One of the best things I learned from John Krumm, I’ll be eternally grateful, life lesson, something would go wrong and he just had the most amazing hearty belly laugh. And then you moved on. And it was a real lesson. And I didn’t learn it right away. You know, when something goes wrong, you just let it go. Go on, keep playing. Something, yeah, something better will come next.

Yes, I learned a lot of tunes from them. And actually one of the, one of the tunes, we’ll, we’ll play shortly, is one that I picked up from John Krumm. You learn some life lessons along the way too, and working with others

[00:32:36] Chrissy Fowler: There’s so much to apply!

[00:32:37] Carol Compton: Absorbing…

[00:32:38] Chrissy Fowler: I think in the contra dance and any, yeah, for example, in the contra dance community, so many life lessons. You know, you don’t like that person that you’re dancing with right now. Well, guess what? In 30 seconds you’ll be onto a new neighbor.

[00:32:51] Carol Compton: And you don’t have to ask them. That’s right.

[00:32:53] Chrissy Fowler: And you can be nice to them for 30 seconds.

[00:32:57] Carol Compton: Yeah, there’s a lot of, a lot of community things happen on the dance floor.

[00:33:01] Chrissy Fowler: So much, so much, so much.

Chrissy Fowler: Belfast Flying Shoes is a participatory arts nonprofit with a mission to build community and cultivate wellbeing through the joy of traditional music and dance for people of all backgrounds and identities in Midcoast, Maine. In addition to this radio program and podcast, we have concerts, workshops, a monthly community and contra dance series, other dances, school residencies, and programs for incarcerated men and for older adults. Learn more at belfastflyingshoes.org.

We are also a proud affiliate member of CDSS, the Country Dance and Song Society. They connect and support people in building and sustaining vibrant communities through participatory dance, music, and song. To find out more about their camps, affiliate services, other programs, and resources for music and dance throughout North America, visit cdss.org.

Let’s get back to the show.

[00:34:16] Chrissy Fowler: Thal, do you have any, anybody that comes to mind in terms of playing for dances that you picked up anything from, or especially enjoyed playing with or get a lot of tunes from?

[00:34:26] Thal Aylward: Well. I learned a lot of tunes when I joined Spy because Spy had its own repertoire. And you know, they handed me these cards and said, okay, these are the tunes. And I would go home. Some of ’em I actually learned. And I’m a pretty good reader, so I tend to rely a lot on still looking at things, probably more than many fiddle players. But, and in English, you know, there are reams of stuff and you’re always getting new tunes. I think I’m up to like 400 at this point. Or something like that. I was looking at my files the other day. And so yeah, you, you just have to learn to do things. I was thinking about things that you learn from playing over and over again, is that maybe sometimes you don’t have to get really fancy. You just have to do something really simple and it works really well. And so you’ve learned to do that. And then you can apply it in lots of different places. Simplicity is pretty good.

And the other thing I played in a country band in Vermont called the Stone Cold Roosters, which was a, a wonderful band. Colin McCaffrey started it in the early 2000s. It went for quite a long time, up until Covid pretty much. And. We had a great time playing around and I learned a lot from playing with all those guys who were all wonderful musicians. And, and you know, as, as a fiddle player, what do you do in a band like that? You have to make up your own parts. And the simpler you can do it, the better you are. In fact, at a certain point it was like, look, the best guy to play with is the drummer. Just play the rhythm and you’re fine. You don’t have to play a lot of this or that, especially in a band with three guitar players and a bass player, and you’re a fiddle player. There’s a lot of people doing a lot of stuff. And you just keep things simple and everybody will be happier, including me. So, yeah, and that applies to playing dances too. And keeping the time going is, of course, totally essential, so you’re doing what is basically necessary.

[00:36:22] Chrissy Fowler: Yeah. And foundational. Well, what do you have a tune set that you could do next? And tell us a little bit about that one?

[00:36:30] Carol Compton: We’ll go a little bit well, sort of a cross between New England and our friends further north. We’ll start with “Eddie’s Reel.” Which will probably be quite familiar to listeners of the podcast, at least some of them. The second tune is “Air du Saguenay,” named after a river in a city in Quebec. And that’s the tune that I learned from John Krumm. And the third one is “Joys of Quebec,” which is a tune Thal and I frequently get to play because it’s a really wonderful match to one of the dances that a lot of family dance callers use, called “Le Brandy,” better known as “Un, Deux, Trois, Poussez”

[00:37:08] Chrissy Fowler: It does. Fit it perfectly.

[00:37:11] Thal Aylward: Perfectly!

[00:37:12] Chrissy Fowler: If you can keep the dancers on the phrase for sure! All right. Take it away.

[00:37:20] Carol Compton: So Eddie’s, should we do chops?

[00:39:00] [00:40:00] Tunes

[00:40:48] Chrissy Fowler: Oh boy, that was, yeah, that’s how I feel. Wow. Oh golly. They’re such happy tunes. And the middle one! It struck me then, that, you know, Eddie’s is familiar in my brain. And of course, Joys of Quebec, I mean, little known secret or, maybe commonly known secret, that that is perfect for that “Un, Deux, Trois / Brandy” dance, and a couple of others that have this sort of 1, 2, 3 in the something one, yeah. Unbelievable. Or the B 2. But the middle tune! What an interesting little tune.

[00:41:20] Carol Compton: It’s, I love that.

[00:41:21] Thal Aylward: It’s a fun tune.

[00:41:21] Carol Compton: Yeah. I love that tune.

[00:41:23] Chrissy Fowler: And you got that from John Krumm? Mm-hmm. In Philadelphia ?

[00:41:25] Carol Compton: Think it was Mary Trembley was where that particular transcription of it came from. It’s an underappreciated.

[00:41:33] Chrissy Fowler: Underappreciated, but wow. They’re sort of just, I guess you were, we were talking about things that people would unconsciously pick up on, and there were several points where I went, whoa. And I, I was trying not to be too distracting, but there were some interesting things there. Are there any considerations that you guys think about, when you’re choosing your tune sets beyond like, we like the tune and we wanna play it?

[00:41:54] Carol Compton: It feels a little different when it’s just the two of us than it did when, for Spy, with the larger group, there was more of a, you know, if you’re gonna do a whole evening, you want some smooth jigs, you want some bouncy jigs, you might want a set of marches on tap, you want some major things, you want some minor things. It’s nice to have, and some people feel very proprietary about southern tunes should only be played with other Southern tunes. I, I’m not quite that way. To me, it depends on the feel of it. If there’s a southern tune that sounds nice with a French Canadian tune, I’ve got nothing against that.

But for some people, that’s a serious consideration. What’s the genre? And there are some reasons for keeping to that, because if you have really smooth Irish jig doesn’t necessarily wanna go back to back with “this is a dopey New England tune”, you do want. When you can provide a lift, that’s a great thing. Sometimes that means you start major with something kind of simple. You go minor, and then you go some really flashy, not necessarily notey tune, but something that has a real lift. So you, you can be as scientific about it as you want, in terms of key changes that kind of thing. When it’s just the two of us and we only need two tunes because the family dance crowd is kind of small, and you can do what one of my colleagues, Amy Cann, calls a, a poor man’s medley. First tune. Second tune. Make sure the transition back works so you can go back to the first tune if it goes on too long. Very useful tool, and something else you might pay attention to.

When it’s just the two of us, it’s sometimes, oh, what do we sort of have on our list that we’ve played recently, and the keys go together? And one of us will say, oh, this transition works. Or it doesn’t. I mean, we did that this morning with one of these. We found a transition that really didn’t work, so we

Thal Aylward: Yeah.

Carol Compton: Did something else. So that’s, yeah, that’s the, that’s the long take on it.

Thal Aylward: Yeah.

Carol Compton: Um, and there are people who are perfectly happy playing three tunes all in the same key.

[00:43:51] Chrissy Fowler: And there’s people who play one tune a lot. You know, and then, and then that’s another thing I appreciate when people are prepared to improvise a little bit or change the arrangement, particularly if they wanna play one tune.

[00:44:04] Carol Compton: If the person you’re working with is new to you, you know, if I’m working with a caller I’ve not worked with before, I’ll, I’ll watch the hall at least for the first probably couple of dances to sort of figure out. So how long do they let things run, and what does that mean? Do we really need 3-tune sets? Sometimes not. They letting things go quite long? And so you want more variety? There’s some observational skills that are useful if you’re a band.

[00:44:29] Chrissy Fowler: Yeah. Living in the moment. When, we were talking about the, doing the show. We were talking about the kinds of tunes that you might play, and I think an underrepresented tune type, but should be played a little bit more– and there are a few people who will toss them in. Nat Hewitt was one of them. I worked with Nat a lot when I was first calling, and danced to ’em a ton. Am I correct that you have a rag that you can play?

[00:44:52] Thal Aylward: Oh yeah, we do. We do. This is one that, uh, I wrote sometime about five years ago, four years ago. Yeah. Nowadays it’s called Emilio and I really don’t know why. ’cause I know that when I first wrote it, it was a rag and it was in A minor, so I called it “A Minor Rag.” And uh, somehow it became Emilio’s. I don’t know who Emilio was.

[00:45:12] Carol Compton: And you never told me, so I can’t help you out on that!

[00:45:14] Thal Aylward: Yeah, yeah. Maybe it’s another cat. I don’t know.

[00:46:00] [00:47:00] Tune (Emilio’s Rag)

[00:47:08] Chrissy Fowler: Oh, that makes me so happy. There’s something, there’s something delightful about a rag! It just makes your heart lift. I’ve been at dances where people would play rags and, you know, Rodney Miller had some rags on his albums, and I feel like he even would play them sometimes at dances, but is there an instance when you couldn’t throw in a rag? Or is there an instance when you could? Is it particular?

[00:47:32] Carol Compton: There are certain dances that would work better with a rag than not. And you know, every once in a, I forget what we pretended was a rag in Northern Spy. Every once in a while. You know, David had a dance that he liked to call on occasion that needed something raggy.

Chrissy Fowler: Yes.

Carol Compton: I think maybe we ragged up “Ragtime Annie” or something like that. Oh no, we used Colored Aristocracy. And that was, what else

Chrissy Fowler: That can have that same swingy feeling.

Carol Compton: You get something just swingy inside.

[00:47:57] Thal Aylward: There was another tune that we used to do with it.

[00:47:59] Chrissy Fowler:  But that swing is particular, you know, that kind of… shoulders move in a different way… your hips move in a different way–

[00:48:04] Carol Compton: If the dance is sort of driving and linear, horizontally, not so much. Yep. There are also places where you might start with a rag and then go into something more straightforward, as a different energy feel. I mean, I think of some of the other bands in the 70s and 80s, you’d start with, Swallowtail– that’s who I’m trying to think of. You start with a slow groove while the walkthrough was still happening. That was almost their trademark for a while. They were the ones who all, you know, you. At least once every evening, they would start doing something slowly during the walkthrough, and then at some point they would lift into the actual tune. There’s a type of variation that, that takes a little practice, and working with the same caller, who’s also a musician in the band doesn’t hurt. It just was true for them.

[00:48:50] Chrissy Fowler: Totally true. Swallowtail, Wild Asparagus, and I have definitely worked with bands who are excited about that thing and want to do it, but spring it on me at the last minute, or

[00:48:57] Carol Compton: Yeah. It doesn’t always fit what is going on on the [00:49:00] floor either.

[00:49:00] Chrissy Fowler: Oh, no, it doesn’t always. That’s a plan ahead kind of technique. Once there’s a fiddler, we were chatting it, was a duo and we were just talking a little bit about little tricks that you can do to make that, that, that really inspire the dancers to react and respond.

Thal Aylward: Mm-hmm.

Chrissy Fowler: There was a comment about, like it being a cheap trick or something, like, oh, well you do that and they’ll just go wild and it’s so easy and simple like that kind of thing. So I was once working with this duo and something happened and the dancers went wild and I said, “Whoa, excellent cheap trick!” And the fiddler was like, “Nope, I practiced that a lot.”

Carol Compton: Oops.

Chrissy Fowler: That was,

[00:49:37] Thal Aylward: But it sounds simple!

[00:49:38] Carol Compton: But it sounds simple, well, and then–

[00:49:40] Chrissy Fowler: It got their reaction!

[00:49:41] Carol Compton: –because they had practiced it.

[00:49:43] Chrissy Fowler: So it was,

Carol Compton: That’s funny.

Chrissy Fowler: It was an incredible, um, it was, it’s always good to be awakened to what it’s like to be the other person that you’re working with, you know? I will never forget that.

[00:49:54] Carol Compton: Well, one of the, one of, one of the cheap tricks that gets used both on the contra side and, and probably more on the English side, is there are some tunes, the way they lie in their key, you can change one note and have it suddenly be the minor version of that tune. That’s a pretty cheap trick, frankly.

[00:50:10] Chrissy Fowler: It doesn’t seem that cheap to me, but I’ll take your word for it!

[00:50:14] Carol Compton: Well, and it needs to be a simple tune that’s not going by at, you know, lightning speed.

[00:50:17] Thal Aylward: Yeah, you can often do major to minor. It’s not without, I’m looking at this next tune, but I’m thinking what that would be like if it was minor. You know? (plays a little bit of a tune) That’s sort of a minor version of a tune that I wrote a while back.

[00:50:40] Chrissy Fowler: We’re coming up close on the end here. Anything that else had that bubble up about what, what it’s like playing for dances? What you’ve enjoyed over your careers thus far, playing for dances.

[00:50:51] Carol Compton: Oh, it’s a terrible hardship.

[00:50:56] Chrissy Fowler: I know. Long suffering, Carol Compton. Just know you just dragged into this world. Carol, you in your day job, are involved with people who are doing trad music and dance, as well, right? It’s not like it’s been a compartmentalized part of your life.

[00:51:14] Carol Compton: No, not exactly. After working for the Country Dance and Song Society for a number of years, I went and moved on to the Brattleboro Music Center, where we’re lucky enough to have Keith Murphy and Becky Tracy and Laurel Swift and a bunch of people, Louisa Engle, doing, doing traditional music as part of the music school’s program, along with all of their other classical and other kinds of music. So, definitely, yeah. It’s, it’s, yeah. It’s sort of all around me. I can’t really get away from it. Don’t want to!

[00:51:40] Chrissy Fowler: No. You’re enjoying swimming in the pond you’re in.

[00:51:43] Carol Compton: Ocean! Ocean!

[00:51:44] Chrissy Fowler: Right, right. Ocean. Ocean, yes. Much more varied maybe than, well, ponds can seem big depending on how big you are.

And Thal, you’ve done a variety of things. We were chatting –we had great dinner last night– but you’ve played in so many different kinds of bands, and with different people

[00:52:02] Thal Aylward: Yeah.

[00:52:03] Carol Compton: Tangos, all kinds of things.

[00:52:04] Thal Aylward: Oh, yeah. I was in a, it’s no longer active, but yeah, I played for tangos. Yeah. We had had about, uh, what was it, what was our name? Tango North or something like that uh, with Bob Merrill. And, um,

Carol Compton: Was that Jeremiah?

Thal Aylward: Peter Concilio? Mm-hmm. And, uh, Jeremiah was in it. Jeremiah McLane was in it for one part in the beginning, although, you know, he went on to other things and was, was busier than would, would allow for him to play.

But that was fun. And, one of the things in answer to your other question was that you get to travel a bunch, you get to go different places. Like today, here I am in Belfast, Maine and having a great time and seeing places I’ve never seen and meeting people that I didn’t know before. And, you know, you get that chance to do that and it’s great.

[00:52:49] Chrissy Fowler: Those connections are definitely a huge part, I think of playing for dances. Of dancing too. The fact that it happens in so many diverse places. And that there are all these different opportunities to either: be part of leading it, as a caller or musician or a sound provider. Or as a dancer, you can go and experience a different vibe at a different dance series. And it is delightful that there’s some consistency, but there still are quirky things about each different dance community. Whether it’s a newly developed dance community that is just a little bit rough around the edges, or it’s, uh, been–

[00:53:21] Carol Compton: Exuberant! Exuberant!

[00:53:23] Chrissy Fowler: Or it’s one that you know, is long established. Whether the dancers are super skilled, or whether they’re really expressive, or whether they’re just extremely confused. I mean, there’s a lot of, you know, I, I would think that there’d be a lot of fun that you could see as a musician as well.

[00:53:38] Carol Compton: Absolutely.

[00:53:38] Chrissy Fowler: Yeah. We’re, we’re pretty lucky. And I think that the future is good! I think that people are still, you know.

[00:53:44] Carol Compton: Oh, there’s some, yeah. There’s some wonderful youthful dance communities. There are also some extraordinary young musicians. And, and for me, at least as a musician, that’s, that’s the real payoff is having young folk come up, who are gonna carry it forward.

[00:53:59] Chrissy Fowler: A thread is continuing. Yep. Yeah. It’s a good feeling. And we still get to be part of it too. Our most in common friend, David Millstone, I think was the one that I can attribute this to, but he talked about it being a real wake up call for him when he realized in his younger years when he started doing this kind of dance, that this was something he could do, not just when he was in his twenties, but when he was in his eighties or nineties. He could still be part of this community, because it has that intergenerational aspect. And so seeing younger people come into it doesn’t mean that those of us who are not as young as we used to be, have to leave! We can still be part of it too. That we’re all welcome under that tent. It’s a really– I think that’s a special aspect of this kind of dance community.

[00:54:47] Carol Compton: I watched a lovely version of that happened in Nelson, near where I live in New Hampshire, when Gordon Peery, who had sort of stopped playing much in the way of piano, and a couple of the youngsters came along and wanted a backup player, and all of a sudden there’s this recording with Gordon Peery and a couple of– I’m not sure they were even 20 somethings when they did that recording, in fact, I know some, at least one of them wasn’t– that was a really special thing and it sort of reinvigorated him to have a new life as a, as a dance musician, which was really fun to see. And they learned an inordinate– a huge amount– from him.

[00:55:23] Chrissy Fowler: Yeah. Bob McQuillen, whom you mentioned earlier, Mac, I mean, he was– case in point — playing right up until–

[00:55:31] Carol Compton: Pretty close to the very end. Yep.

[00:55:32] Chrissy Fowler: But bringing along so many young people. Yeah. Starting at the beginning.

[00:55:37] Carol Compton: Dancers and musicians.

[00:55:38] Chrissy Fowler: We’re lucky. Well, with that continuing thread in mind we probably should close so that you can get, ’cause we are doing this in a place that is far from your home, and so we can wrap up the show. Before you play the tunes, I would be curious to hear about them.

[00:55:52] Thal Aylward: Oh, okay. So, let’s see, what are we doing here?

[00:55:54] Chrissy Fowler: This is the one you have the minor version of just a minute ago?

[00:55:56] Thal Aylward: Oh, yeah. That, that was a tune I wrote after returning from Ireland and catching Covid on the plane and coming home with Covid and going, oh dear, this is terrible. And about a week later, I was fine and I was like, yes, Covid free! And this tune came out of that, because I wrote it one day and I was like, Hey, what am I gonna call it? Well, let’s see. I don’t have Covid, so I’ll call it “Covid Free.” Yes. The other tunes are tunes we used to play in Spy, that are part of the set that we used to play, this very medley, except without “Covid Free,” with “Old French”. Let’s see, “La Grandeuse,” that’s a, what is that? Is that a French Canadian tune?

Carol Compton: It’s French Canadian, yeah.

Thal Aylward: It’s got a French Canadian name. Yeah. Although, you can’t always tell.

[00:56:35] Carol Compton: No. Some of them come up as, as “Irish traditional tune” if you look on the internet. Beware the internet.

[00:56:42] Thal Aylward: And the, the last tune, is that really what we’re ending on?

Chrissy Fowler: The “Lady’s” in the middle.

Thal Aylward: Lady’s in the middle. Well, I’ve got them backwards. That’s good.

[00:56:48] Carol Compton: “Lady of the Lake” was a tune that we played a lot in Spy and it just, it’s actually on the one recording that there is of Spy, which was part of the Smithsonian Festival, one of the years that New Hampshire was part of that.

[00:56:59] Chrissy Fowler: Did Northern Spy go down for that?

[00:57:00] Carol Compton: We did not actually go down–

[00:57:02] Chrissy Fowler: But you’re on that recording–

[00:57:03] Carol Compton: But we’re on the recording. And “Lady of the Lake” was one of the tunes that we did with that, and it’s, it’s sort of a long time scene.

[00:57:09] Chrissy Fowler: Oh! I had that recording! My housemate had that recording. Such richness.

[00:57:13] Carol Compton: Only one of us had ever been in a recording studio before. The flute player, David Murray, had actually done recordings before. And for the rest of us it was brand new. And it was actually–

[00:57:24] Thal Aylward: –it’s a different world being in a recording studio.

[00:57:25] Carol Compton: It’s a very different world. And actually it was the first time listening, as we were listening to, to it afterwards and doing some of the mixing of it, the sound engineer turned to me and said. Wow, you have a real style! And it was the first time I’d ever thought of myself as having a particular style. It’s evolved a bit, but, but it was one of those enlightenment moments. You’re listening to it in a different way, when you’re in a booth listening back to it.

[00:57:54] Chrissy Fowler: It’s not as common, I don’t think either. I, I mean, it’s very useful, I will say as a caller, it was so useful to record myself and be like, oh, interesting. I think I won’t do it that way again. Or like, oh, that landed!

Carol Compton: That worked.

Chrissy Fowler: Yeah. And really anything you’re doing that is, uh, teaching too, you know, as a teacher, interesting to record yourself, but when you’re playing for dancers, you’re in the moment, as we were saying earlier.

Carol Compton: Yeah.

Chrissy Fowler: You’re really living in the, like here and now and and so you’re not gonna necessarily go back and painstakingly listen to each little improvisational section and see if it works. Unless you are certain bands– there are some bands who do that. And have highly arranged and planned sets, which can be very effective. Yeah. Anyway it has been such a pleasure. Carol Compton.

Carol Compton: Oh, our pleasure.

Chrissy Fowler: Thal Aylward, to be doing the Radio Hour with you today. And, and as I like to remind people, it’s really important that people continue to keep on supporting community music and community dance, and also other community building institutions like community radio, where our program airs each week, but also community based arts organizations like Country Dance and Song Society, and Belfast Flying Shoes, which are out there in the world to try and help keep sustaining these important traditions. So, with those exhortations and reminders, please, let’s launch into the very timely titled tune: “Covid Free”

[01:00:00] [01:02:40] Tunes

Chrissy Fowler: Thank you for listening to the Flying Shoes Radio Hour podcast. Go to cdss.org/podcasts for show notes for today’s episode, which will have info on the musicians and the tunes they played, a transcript of this show, and links to other CDSS podcast episodes. Thank you to Great Meadow Music for the use of tunes from the album Green Mountain, by Mary Cay Brass and Friends. Please note that the views expressed in this podcast are of the individuals, and don’t necessarily reflect those of CDSS, Belfast Flying Shoes, or WBFY. This podcast is produced by Ben Williams and me, Chrissy Fowler. Until next time, please keep on supporting community music and dance, community radio, and especially your local community arts organizations who, like the Country Dance & Song Society and Belfast Flying Shoes, help sustain musical traditions like these.

_______________

Chrissy Fowler (Belfast Flying Shoes) and Ben Williams (CDSS) produce The Flying Shoes Radio Hour podcast.

Trip to Norwich is Thal Aylward & Carol Compton. (Thal Aylward plays fiddle & viola, and Carol Compton plays piano & recorders.)

Recorded in Belfast, ME on November 24, 2025

The audio was edited by Chris Battaglia of Torchlight Media in Belfast, ME