The National Tartan Day Festival in Old Town Alexandria was one of the more challenging gigs we've played this year, mainly because of some very Scottish weather! Despite a forecast of 18% chance of 0.01" of rain through the day, we alternated between bouts of pouring rain and sunshine through the whole day. Much of the day was spent waiting for breaks in the rain to bring out our performers. Scheduling conflicts reduced our turnout of performers this year, but we had good crowds considering the weather.
The City of Alexandria Pipes and Drums put in a fantastic performance during one of our dry spells, and we did a long set early in the afternoon and a short set to wrap up the show. It was a lot of fun to have our friends at the Carlyle House, Celtic Society of Southern Maryland, and Virginia Scottish Games in the audience to hear us, and we appear in the video that the Washington Times put up, shown below:
Especially fun was having fiddler Rosemary Hall play with us again, and we've invited her to join the band for all future gigs for which she's available (what with starting college in the fall!).
We've taken something of a hiatus, performing only two public events, plus a birthday party and a Burns supper, in the last year, but we're back and trying to get into venues and festivals, and are hoping to be playing a lot more in the last half of this year. We've added new songs to our repertoire: Hi Ri Him Bo, John Barleycorn, and Craigieburn Wood; and are working on some new instrumentals, specifically some slip jigs, a hornpipe/jig set and a hornpipe/reel set.
And it's finally that time. Soon we will sit down and begin to record our first album.
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