Weekly Gig at The 406

Come to the 406 Brewery in Bozeman on Tuesday afternoons!

101 East Oak Street, Bozeman, Montana

The 406 Brewery supports local musicians, and has invited me to play on Tuesday afternoons. I'll start right around 4:30, or maybe a little earlier, and play until I run out of tunes.

Enjoy great beer, welcome and friendly atmosphere, and traditional Scottish fiddle music.

(And if you play cello, bring it. The cello is traditional in this genre, and sounds really good!)

New Job

With little fanfare I left my job of seven years last Friday and started my new job on Monday. New job woes: discovering who does what, policies, tricks, quirks, and perks. Been a long time since I started a new job, and now I remember how stressful it is. And exciting - so many new things to learn in short order, and then the long climb up the learning curve. Change is good...

Big Changes

Early this week I gave notice to my manager that I'm leaving the company. It's been severn productive, educational, difficult, and rewarding years.  But I've reached a point where working full time is keeping me from doing more important things with my life.

Anyway, we've decided that we can afford for me to work part-time at a reduced salary. I'll work 24 hours a week to start, as a technical writer for another local engineering firm. The rest of my time will be spent working on the house, working on the landscape, biking, gardening, and fiddling.

There's a lot I'll miss about my job, particularly the people I get to work with in Sales. Great bunch of people, and it almost hurts to leave them. They've certainly made it known this week that they'll miss me, and that makes it even harder to leave.

New adventures await. It's time for a change and a new challenge. I'm not really closing doors, I think. Just opening new doors. We'll see where this goes, eh?

First Paying Gig!

Saturday was a big day - my first paying gig!


Tom, my fiddle instructor, started priming me about a month ago - with five new strathspeys - for the Bozeman Scottish Country Dance Club annual dance party on Saturday 5 March. At the dance he and I played fiddle, and Hallie played piano.


We played the first 4-by strathspey set (Jessie Smith, The Warlocks, Lord Banff). It was such a hit the dancers asked us to play it again, and we played it even better the second time 'round. The second set was a 6-by strathspey, playing Lime Hill, Castle Newe, and Captain Campbell's. Tom launched into some pretty wild harmonies, so I held the melody together. We tore it up! 


The mic was positioned such that I couldn't very well watch both the dancers and Tom, so I missed watching most of the dance. Kind of a bummer because strathspeys are really beautiful dances. Maybe it's time I get my fiddle mic'd with a wireless???


At the end of it, the president of the dance club handed me a check, thereby making this my first paying gig!


I'll tell you, though, the richest part of this adventure is playing music that makes people move. This is dance music anyway and it's designed to get people moving. But for me to be able to play it, and they dance and are excited and appreciate my music ... THAT is what it's all about!

Bozeman Scottish Session

Announcing ...

Bozeman Scottish Music Session

Homepage Cafe

242 East Main Street

Bozeman, Montana

Sunday afternoons

3:00pm - 5:00pm

Free and open to the public!
(And they have good coffee there.)