Swannanoa 2015

This July started out with our yearly trip to North Carolina for Swannanoa Gathering. We broke up the trip this year with a couple days in the beautiful mountains of Virginia visiting Haley's friend, Kitty, and her mother, Noel. Haley experienced her very first Old Time jam, we took a hike in the local park looking for beautiful spots, stopped to see Wayne Henderson's guitar shop, and barbecued. 

Haley's first Old Time jam experience.

Cool tree at Grayson Highland State Park!

What a view!!!

From the mountains of Virgina, we drove through Bristol, TN and made a quick stop to see our friend, Tom, for lunch and a walk through the Bristol Sessions museum. The museum was being built last year when we were in Bristol so we were excited to see the finished product. It was a really neat museum.

From Bristol, we went to Knoxville, TN to spend the night so we'd be there the following morning. The kids played on the WXPN Blue Plate Special to promote their new CD. 

After the kids' "gig," we had lunch with friends then drove to Asheville, TN for a house concert featuring Open the Door for Three. If you haven't heard this trio and like Irish music, then find them and listen. They put on a wonderful show! After the show there was sessioning and Haley had a chance to fiddle around on Liz's Hardanger fiddle for awhile. She loved the instant accompaniment the drone strings provided!

Sunday we woke and headed over to Swannanoa Gathering. I love doing volunteer work and get to help out with registration all day on Sunday then take a period in the office each day. Swannanoa is our favorite week each year. We look forward to seeing our Swannie family and the kids favorite part is staying up nearly all night playing tunes with fabulous World Class musicians. I don't think Haley and I slept more than 4-5 hours each night and she helped out in the early morning guitar accompaniment class by fiddling tunes for them so had to be up early every day. Not quite sure how she ran on so little sleep all week but she was always ready to go the next day. Here are some pics of the week.

Dylan chilling between classes.

Porch session with John Doyle watching Dylan and Quinn on guitar.

2:30am session in Bryson gym.

St. Clair impromptu house session with Liz and John.

Haley helping out with the ceili band. Can you see her in the back behind Cillian?

Haley with John, Kevin, and Quinn.

Haley had great fun meeting Quinn again and sharing tunes!

Alan, Haley, Liz, and Dylan at doing a performance at the Student Showcase.

John invited Haley to play with him and Eamon on stage for the final staff concert of the week.

Haley was very single-minded in her pursuit of great playing opportunities at camp. She never wanted to leave if a session was going strong no matter how early in the morning. Dylan had the perfect roommate for him during the week. Both boys liked to stay out nearly all night and play tunes. He made a few really good friends this year. Even though we barely slept, the week went by way too quickly and we were headed back north.

We stopped to see my new baby grand-nephew and his brother (my 1st grand-nephew) on our way north. Then drove about halfway home because the kids were invited to play on a radio show in Charlottesville, VA (WTJU).

WTJU radio program host Peter with Haley and Dylan.