Jennifer Kimball

HOME from Ireland

GIGS (in Cambridge) THIS WEEK WITH SOME OF OUR IRISH FRIENDS! -
Mon. 9/20 The Druid - Ry and Jenn and Kate and Seamus and Finbarr 10pm
Tues. 9/21 Lizard Lounge - Session Americana w/Kate O'Callaghan & Finbarr Doherty 9:30pm
Wed. 9/22 Lizard Lounge - Session Americana w/ Kate O'Callaghan & Finbarr Doherty 9:30pm

We're back... hello! How lovely to have some of last spring's Irish weather here in Somerville now! This morning was windy and coolish (maybe high 60s?) with deep slate gray clouds, then one heavy downpour followed by what seems to be a persistent sunny spell. Aah, 'tis garjus. We knew it would be hard to leave - but it really turned out to be fairly devastating. Living on the Inishowen peninsula in Donegal for almost 1o months, it's hard to imagine we ever thought that we would not fall deeply in love with the place, the people and the tangled net of cultural history which grows up through every field. I can finally hear Irish traditional music - I mean actually HEAR and sort of understand it! I love having my ear tuned into that kind of music - and the new deliciousness of it. I miss the front room at McGrory's in Culdaff - a km walk from our house by the sea in the 10pm light of latitute 55 and the sound of our friends singing and playing - Karen, Lorna and Joleen Henry, Finbarr Doherty, and Kate O'Callaghan.

All the same it's good to be home - to feel what home means. To live in our house, sleep in our beds. Weed the weeds and touch the plants that are native to New England. Wish I could say that I'd written lots of songs - but I do have at least 4 new ones cooking up. They've been relegated to the back burner while I finish writing up my landscape design thesis. I designed a 20 acre forest park of native Irish plants in Carndonagh and have some distant hopes that one day some or all of it might be built.

But this is a music newsletter! I'll be playing a couple of gigs coming up - some with Laura Cortese at her Wednesday Lizard residency, a couple opening for Patty Larkin in NJ and PA, and a couple more gigs around town, Alastair Moock's Pastures of Plenty on Thursday, and then a little sitting in with some of our Irish musician friends who will be sitting in with Ry's Session Americana next week! I'm going to play a bunch of solo gigs as well - my music, I mean - but don't have the dates yet.

I'm also hoping to record some of the new songs I'd been playing with DukeRichardBillandKevin at the Lizard over the last few years. I think last year's December gig was one of our finest ever! There will probably have to be some kind of fan financing plan. If anyone has any ideas, please feel free to share them.

See you in the clubs -
thank you for supporting local music -
even when it moves overseas for awhile -
cheers,
Jennifer