🎻 Does snow make you do this too, [FIRST NAME GOES HERE]?

Hi, Reader!

We had our first real snow of the season this past weekend in southeast Michigan. I've become accustomed to snow despite spending the majority of my life living in North Carolina and Georgia, but it still has a way of breaking up routine!

Case in point... I was ten steps out of my car walking towards the gym when I promptly realized I had snow boots on my feet and the tennis shoes I had placed front and center by the door were right where I had left them.

Mildly cursing myself at the time, my next thought was... ooo! This is going to be next week's Sunday fiddle newsletter topic!

If you've been reading these letters for a while, you know by now that I love a good metaphor. It's the anthropologist in me that loves making cross-cultural comparisons and recognizing patterns.

So what is our proverbial "forgetting of the tennis shoe" in Irish traditional music?

What routine are you holding onto that works fine... until something happens to throw it out of whack?

Do you play through your tunes A to B without pausing to check any trouble spots?

Are you relatively comfortable playing tunes on your own, but when faced with the pressure of leading a tune in a session it all goes to pot?

Do you take the time to prepare for all upcoming gigs that may fall back to back, rather than just focusing on one at a time?

I have been guilty of all three of these, Reader, and am only now resolving the third one! I have five gigs this month, and need to be in prep mode for all of them -- not just the two next week.

(By the way, if you're in the Detroit/Ann Arbor area and want to attend any of these, hit reply and I'll get you the details!)

One of those gigs is virtual through QuaranTUNES next Monday December 15th! My partner, Bear, and I will be playing a couple of Christmas-y Irish sets as part of the line-up and would love to see you in the Zoom comments. You can register for tickets here!

Here's a video of us from our recent gig at the Gaelic League in Detroit (follow Bear's channel to see the rest as they release):

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I also just want to say a huge THANK YOU to all our new and existing Tune Library members. 5 Days of Lilt was a really fun way to turn a weekend I used to dread (Black Friday/Cyber Monday) into an event that felt more celebratory than sales-y.

We also wrapped up with a $50 donation to Forgotten Harvest -- they buy wholesale and can turn this into $350 worth of groceries for people in need, while also preventing good food from going to waste. Every little bit helps, and I will definitely be doing an event like this again next year!

Here are the tutorials I'll be filming and adding to the Library for you this month before taking off for the holidays:

• Dr. O'Neill's (jig)
• Bill the Waiver (polka)
• How to be more flexible with variations in Bill the Waiver (bonus vid)

I can probably squeeze one or two more in before Christmas, so if you have any additional tune or bonus tutorial requests now or for the new year, I'm all ears!

Happy playing this week! And don't forget your tennis shoes. 😉

~Hannah