Tag Archives: Music

Not my Mother’s Irish Music, Doolin’ and Skerryvore at Tulsa’s Irishfest

Last weekend Heather and I ventured out to Tulsa Irishfest. One of those long time events that came to an end when covid hit and this year they brought it back for the first time since. We were in the mood for a little Irish beer and some music. The only Irish music I know is the jigs and such and they are okay but nothing I could get excited about. Did I get woken up by what I heard.

There is this Irish band out of France, what? They call themselves Doolin’. And wow, they can play. They can rock!! We and the rest of the audience loved them. Check the link for their facebook site. Check the videos. Their songs are not about drinking and such, they are about life and love. The message is great.

The other Irish band we saw was Skerryvore. They are actually from Scotland. Again, they can rock and their songs have a great message. The lead singer has such a voice.

We saw some other bands as well but these were my top two. Heather and I went home and downloaded a ton of their music and that is all I have been listening to since. We are going back to Tulsa’s Irishfest next year and hope that these guys are returning.

Shadowy Snuggles

I’m always on the lookout for shadows. Heather and I were at an Irish Festival here in Tulsa on Saturday evening enjoying listening to Irish Music. It seems like that even the most modest of music events now days there is a huge investment in lighting and video stuff in addition to the sound. Anyway, I noticed a shadow formed by a security barrier and a snuggling couple near the stage. (What is it about music and alcohol leads to snuggling? Asking for a friend, wait a minute, I already know, forget I asked).

I am linking to Shadow Shot Sunday

The Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma

In 2016 the Tulsa based George Kaiser Family Foundation purchased Bob Dylan’s archives from him and several years later opened up the Bob Dylan Center in the Arts District just north of Downtown Tulsa. I visited it recently.

The archive consists of over 100,000 items. Everything from clothes, to piano frames, to manuscripts, art works, music recordings, diaries, all sorts of records. Dylan was some sort of pack rat it appears and now his collection is in a place where it can be cataloged, preserved, and put on display.

The center starts with Bobby Zimmerman from Hibbing, Minnesota and goes on from there through all his various personal permutations and tribulations.

One of the supercool features of the center are these Ipods that are activated at dozens of touchpoints throughout the facility. You can hear interviews, music footage, reviews and all sorts of stuff. I thought these were very nice and worked lots better than similar things I have used at other museums. And it is covered under your admission price.

I’ll have to admit that I was never much of a Dylan fan. He was about half a generation ahead of me and so he and I never synched up except for a few songs.

What I learned about Dylan though was that he was all about the music and not so much about sales. He morphed several times in his career, folk music to rock, to country, to gospel. Sometimes his fans didn’t really want to go with him, he didn’t care, he did what he had to do.

The center picked out several songs and displays in detail the painstaking process that Dylan went through writing and rewriting the songs, sometimes it would take years. The guy put everything he had into his music.

He kept his scribblings as he worked things over and over and changed the songs over time.

They also have many of the costumes he wore over the years in his concerts.

There is a gigantic virtual juke box machine curated by Elvis Costello containing almost every song he ever did, or wrote, or collaborated with somebody else on. Turns out he wrote lots of songs for other performers.

I was there for a couple hours and went over everything twice and listened on the ipod to at list a little bit of dozens of songs and interviews. It was overwhelming. I told me wife about it. She is all about music and now she is all excited about going, so I get to go again!!

He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016 for his body of work. Reading his thoughts about it, it took him a while to understand that. He just couldn’t figure out why a songwriter was deserving of the honor. He accepted it though.

I strongly recommend the center. I loved it. And right down the block is the Woody Guthrie Center. Go check it out. I did a few years ago.

Here is a musical interlude. I told you that I wasn’t much of a fan but I loved Hurricane from 1975’s Blood on the Tracks album.

Coldplay brings their “Head Full of Dream Tour” Concert to Tulsa

Heather and I attended the Coldplay Concert at the BOK Center here in Tulsa Thursday night.

Heather is a big, big fan and I was a kind of well, you know, I like their song Clocks, and they are okay, you know, they don’t suck.

I’m a fan now. We have been to some great concerts over the years and this one ranks up there with the best. Heather said it was “the best” she had ever been to, even better than Sting. Sorry Sting, you are now second best in Heather’s eyes I guess

The lead singer, Chris Martin is a dynamo. Not only does he have a great voice and stage presence but he is very athletic. He was running and jumping while singing the whole show. And the special effects were timed perfectly with his leap and jumps. Confetti, flame, lasers, and big balloons. They spent a fortune on expendables that night.

They had an “A” Stage at the front of the Arena, a “B” stage in the middle, and a small “C” stage in back. They were everywhere.

Playing their heart out without a break for over two hours and 24 songs. Here is the set list.

They played rock songs and ballads, their new songs and some of their old songs, and everything in between.

The fans loved them!!

We’ll be back and I will trying to find where Heather hid her disk.

As an aside, they had four light people hanging from the ceiling. They looked all strapped in and belayed so probably OSHA is okay with it.

We missed the first opening act but the second, Alessia Cara is a dynamo who can really sing.

Official, by gum video released by Coldplay for the tour.

Skywatch Friday – at the Hanson Brother’s Hopjam

Tulsa had a Craft Beer and Music Festival last Sunday sponsored by the Tulsa’s own Hanson Brothers. It was quite the shindig. The music part was free and featured some great bands including the Hanson Brothers. We couldn’t stay for them but we sure had a good time listening to the music, sampling the beer, and just hanging out. It was all happening on under a big ole Oklahoma Sky.

Here is Isaac Hanson at the family beer tent. He was very gracious talking to fans and getting selfies taken with them.

Linking with Skywatch Friday

Song-ography – I Can See Clearly Now by Jimmy Cliff

This week Song-ography is featuring one of my all time favorite songs. “I Can See Clearly Now” by Jimmy Cliff. It is one of those songs that just makes me happy and has been doing so for decades.

“…I can see clearly now the rain is gone.
I can see all obstacles in my way.
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind….

“…Oh yes, I can make it now the pain is gone.
All of the bad feelings have disappeared.
Here is the rainbow I’ve been praying for….”

I Can See Clearly Now by Jimmy Cliff, written by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff.

Linking with Song-ography

Song-ography – “Ordinary Day” by Vanessa Carlton

I apologize in advance for cheating on this post.

Double Exposure with a 35mm film fisheye camera

“…And he said take my hand,
Live while you can
Don’t you see your dreams lie right in the palm of your hand
In the palm of your hand…”

(Written by Vanessa Carlton)
Complete Lyrics

Linking with Song-ography

Katy Perry at the BOK Center

Heather and I went to see Katy Perry at the BOK Center here in Tulsa Monday night. We get lots of really nice concerts here in Tulsa and they are mainly on weeknights because the big popular guys and gals like to spend the weekends in the big cities where I guess they can make more money.

Anywho here we were at the concert late Monday night along with half the areas teenage and pre-teenage girls and their moms. Including our next door neighbor’s teenage daughter who sat right in front of us. We each pretended to act like we didn’t see the other.

I bet that there were lots of tired grumpy girls in class on Tuesday!! The concert didn’t let out until 11:30. That was late,even for me.

Anyway Katy Perry sang, and danced, and changed costumes, and then sang, and danced, and changed costumes again.

She sang loud and she sang soft, she sang while standing on the stage, laying on the stage and sitting on thrones.

She even sang wearing a cat suit.

And she sang while wearing a birthday suit (fully clothed of course, she is very classy)

Her guitarists flew through the air. I missed the shot where the guitars shot flame. Darn!!

She sang while adjusting her costume.

Did I mention something about flying through the air?

Oh yes, and she sang on a horse.

And she sang to everybody. She has quite the connection with the audience. That is what I like the connection. She can do it. Not quite like Michael Buble and Taylor Swift (nobody connects with her fans like Taylor Swift!) but Katy puts on a great show.

Now lets switch over the other people. This guy with the Murse is Katy Perry’s father Keith Hudson. He is a preacher!! He has a blog and made a very interesting post about meeting President Obama at the White House. Check it out!!

And I’m sorry, if you are taking a selfie, then I get to take a picture also. Its one of Newton’s laws of selfies. Something about for every photo taken then an equal an opposite photo must be taken. So I’m just representing the balance of nature.

I know this is a cute couple. I hope they don’t get mad. I don’t know why they would.

Ah, yes, well, ahem. Okay

Here is a little youtube of Katy. She really is quite talented and comes across as very grounded.

Edit this setlist | More Katy Perry setlists

And of course the set list. Gotta have the set list.

All in all, one of the better concerts we’ve been to in the last few years.

So, what do you think of Katy Perry?

The Great Tulsa Campout at Turkey Mountain

If you know anything about me then you know that I love Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain Wilderness Park. A sizeable plot of land in Tulsa right on the Arkansas River. It contains miles of trails for people who like to walk, hike, run, bicycle, unicycle, geocache, picnic, and other things. The one thing you can’t do legally on Turkey Mountain is camp. Saturday night though the Great Tulsa Campout was held. One night this year where one could go camping. So I bought a pass, signed up to volunteer and headed for the mountain.

I got there, checked in, got my volunteer tshirt, and set up my tent. I haven’t had it out since Logan graduated out of Cub Scouts years ago. It still works just fine! Goes up and down easily, small to carry, holds all my stuff.

Here’s a 360 degree panorama. As you can see there were tents everywhere.

I rotated among several jobs. For a short while I helped people with parking. I also helped for a little while at the bounce tent.

Mostly I spent the time helping at the Atlatl demonstration helping Jason. He was a very patient teacher especially with the little kids. I tried it a couple of times, I’m needing practice bad.

Jason was pretty good. He ought to be. Plus he had the best tee shirt at the event. I got my work out in. I ran up and down the range fetching the spears. I got in my 10,000 plus steps in on my fitbit at least.

I also provided a little moral support to the firebuilding effort.

The smores crowd early, followed by the late night beer drinking crowd later, really enjoyed the fire. You can’t go camping without a campfire right?

For dinner Louies Dawg House was there with hot dogs and hot links with any topping you could think of. I had two!

There was lots of great music at the camp. Green Corn Rebellion, Ali Harter, and Grazzhopper played to an appreciative crowd.

I also helped create a glow walk through the adjacent woods. About 1600 glow sticks along the trail handing in the trees and strewn on the ground provided a magical effect while walking on the trail.

The next morning the sunrise was spectacular and everybody kind of slept in, others attended the yoga class. The beauty of an urban campout is that for coffee I went to a Starbucks about a mile away and got breakfast. I know that is major slacking but hey, the coffee was good.

The event was well organized and I think that everybody had fun. The guys that ran the event, Ryan Howell, Matt Carver, and Tyler Hanes were here there and everywhere making sure that everybody had a safe good time. If they have it next year I’ll be there again.

Explore Tulsa put together a nice video of the event narrated by Ryan Howell. You can get a little more of the flavor of the event.

I’m going to close with a video by Grazzhopper. They are good!!

Linking with Our World Tuesday

Have you been camping lately?

Turkey Mountain – Still Saying No to the Mall

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Come to Tulsa with Steve Winwood Opening

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers came to the BOK Center in Tulsa for a concert last Sunday night.

We were a little out of sorts when we got there but he put is in the mood right away. Heather is the Tom Petty fan in the house at least up till Sunday night, now I am also.

There is something about seeing a band live that makes it all makes sense in a way that listening to the same music on radio doesn’t really bring. The personality of a performer comes out in a concert, for good or bad, and with Tom Petty it is for the good.