“one of the great voices in American storytelling”–WIRED
Mercer is the engineer. O’Reilly is the fireman who shovels coal next to him in the engine’s cab. Only these two men behold the banshee, the fairy woman who warns of death, wailing in the air above Irish homes.
Only this isn’t old Ireland, this is Colorado, and a phantom steam train is chasing them through the high Rockies. The banshee is there, however, only this time she’s in the black plume of smoke above their pursuer. Between her behind him and a washed out bridge up ahead, Mercer must make a decision. What does he do? Come hear The Banshee Train, based on my children’s book, accompanied by fine flat-picked bluegrass guitar, and find out.
Not only that, we’ll learn to whistle like a train and howl like a banshee as part of this music-filled story. Kid tested. Lots of fun.
Two more fun, spooky tales with happy endings fill out my upcoming show at The Burren in Somerville MA this coming Saturday, October 21st at 4 p.m.
Other music on Celtic harp and 12-string guitar.
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The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, known as the PEM, is one of the finest mid-sized museums in the world, and this October 15th, for their Lunar Imaginings Opening Day Festival, I’ll be in Morse Auditorium at 11:00 a.m. with a very special show, Tales of the Moon.
The Twenty-Seven Wives of the Moon is a Hindu tale of how Soma, the Moon, asks Daksha, a powerful god and sage, to marry twenty-seven of his beloved daughters. “Twenty-seven wives?” Daksha responds, dubious Soma can treat each one equally. Soma insists he can do it, and what follows involves Ganesha, the Elephant-Headed God, Shiva the Destroyer and his wife, Parvati, and a host of other gods. Not to mention twenty-six angry wives. How it all works out, and how Soma survives to ride his chariot past the twenty-seven mansions of the stars is the tale itself, and in places is hilarious. I perform it with a sitar-tuned 12-string guitar and voices.
Spinners of the Moon is from Germany and is even funnier. It’s a Grimm’s fairy tale told with Celtic harp about Kelsa, who hates to spin. In fact, she hates everything about flax and the linen that comes from it, in a very smelly process. Never having learned, she’s grabbed by the Queen with the promise that if she can spin a dungeon of raw flax into linen thread in three days, she’ll marry the prince, but if she fails, she’ll lose her head. Kelsa despairs until three of the strangest looking beings–a young woman, a mother, and a crone–appear in the full moon’s light and offer to spin it all if she makes them a promise. Each has an outsized bodily feature connected to spinning. The outcome is very funny, especially when the prince meets them.
The last tale, told with alto recorder, is The Monkeys and the Moon from Tibet. It’s a parable about what happens when we follow a bad leader. Considering the election, it will hit home. In a non-partisan way, of course.
Plus I’ll add all manner of lunar lore to fill things out.
Come enjoy the show!