For the music listener peeps (sheet music in today's other post) (Patreon)

And for those of you who are here for the music itself, not sheet music, here's a little background about this tune.

It was around 2001-ish that we set up HQ for the first band I was in, E Muzeki. 

We found a little 1950's house right inside Loop 410 in San Antonio. It was white with a low to the ground grey brick planter out front and two huge pecan trees, one in the front and one in the back.

It had one bathroom that was covered almost floor to ceiling with bubble gum pink tile. I remember my bandmate's 7 year old sister walking through for the first time and when she saw the bathroom she said, "Okay! So this is the reason they were selling it!"

We had decorated the whole place in the same theme as our E Muzeki ren faire costumes, with cushions on the floor, a crystal ball, scarves hung here and there. I don't know if we had a single chair.

The only real furniture at first was a tiny wood carved piece that had to be the worlds-most-narrow-and-uncomfortable-sofa.

We also got this faux paint kit "leather effect" from Home Depot and painted all the walls this red and gold combo, oh my!

It just came back to me that before we painted, we put on a half inch thick textured layer of that wall texture goop stuff and actually wrote secret messages and drew pictures among the swooshy wavy spackles in the small entry way door behind the wall. I wonder if those are still there!

That would have been hell to try and remove all that texturing!!

We were there about six month or less per year since mostly we were traveling out to the festivals.

Our friends who would travel with us back and forth started calling it "the gypsy house" because of all the random things from rehearsals to textile projects that would be going on there at any given time.

I made the cover for Mavra Matia on a 4'x 4' raw silk fabric by painting the design in beeswax and then dipping into vats of dye in the front yard.

The one constant you could count on is that there will be an accordion being played all hours of the night.

The motto was, "We can sleep when we're dead!"

I was practicing feverishly at that time, feeling kinda the same way I do now about singing. Asking, "will I ever really get this?"

My founding bandmate Mark showed me the Last of the Mohicans theme, a while earlier, and I always thought it sounded absolutely awesome. I also thought it sounded wayyy too hard and I was completely mystified by the ornamentations.

My fiddle teacher Judy Hyman had shown me this little piece of software for desktop computer called The Amazing Slowdowner which does exactly that.

I just sat every morning and afternoon slowing down those ornaments so slow that I could hear every note and find them one by one on the violin.

It was a year or two later that I attended Rocky Mountain Fiddle camp where Liz Carol was teaching, and she showed me how to really play those ornaments in an edgy trad Irish way that I now teach all my students.

That tune was always the biggest crowd pleaser. Couple examples.

We once played a gig for this cult in Sedona. They had a big intimidating looking high tech performance venue, but the people just danced and had the best time. For the encore we played a couple pieces but then they begged us to play Last of the Mohicans AGAIN before we would leave the stage.

Another intimidating gig was for Woodsongs Old Time Radio hour, a world wide syndicated radio program that was recorded live in front of an audience of over two thousand people. We chose some of our hardest pieces because we wanted to show our best.

We practiced more than ever, but it still wasn't enough to feel at ease trying to sleep the night before in a big puffy white bed at the nice bed and breakfast where they put us up in Lexington, KY where the show airs from a large historic theater.

My face is hot just thinking about it.

I still remember the host saying with that perfectly regal and calm radio voice, 

"Everyone, this is E Muzeki performing Unknown Gypsy Dance, a piece from their CD Sindh, we on the air alll over the world from Australia to Ireland, New Zealand to New York, such a great BIG beautiful audience out there...."

And then we kick into it at 1.5 x speed!!!

I felt like I was hanging on for dear life and didn't know if my fingers could possibly keep going through the tremors. I somehow hung on to the end. The crowd still roared, but I didn't believe them, I just thought I played so horribly.

They also let us pick an encore piece which was just for the in house audience, after the broadcast was over.

So we played Last of the Mohicans.

After the show the host came right up to us and said, "Oh my gosh, your encore was PHENOMENAL! You should have played that for the main show!"

Moral of the story seemed to be:

When in doubt, play The Last of the Mohicans. If still in doubt, play it again.

The version on Sindh was recorded live in the studio in Austin with just the violin and guitar.

When my later band Circa Paleo wanted to record a version for Tideland, our Celtic album, we experimented with some different layering and production ideas.

One of them included this improvised part that I play in the middle of this version with Kelly. (Sheet music in other post.)

As we were mixing down for the final album we kinda liked both versions we had been messing around with.

And an old motto rang through my mind, "When in doubt, play the Last of the Mohicans."

So that was decided. The final album would include both.

Cheers and thanks for listening!
Jenny