SOUNDTRACK: RHIANNON GIDDENS AND FRANCESCO TURRISI-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert (May 28, 2020).
Rhiannon Giddens has a really amazing voice. It is powerful and full and easily commands your attention. She’s a practitioner of traditional music and loves to share the history and the culture. She also writes her own songs. However, introducing the second song Rhiannon Giddens explains “We’re not doing my original songs, ’cause with these kinds of emotions, the old songs say it best.”
They start with “Black as Crow” a lovely traditional song starting with Giddens’ mournful violin and then Turris’ plaintive banjo. It’s amazing how rich and deep her violin sounds Which makes me think it is a viola.
Rhiannon talks a bunch about how the pandemic has effected them.
They canceled their tour of Japan and returned home to Ireland; Rhiannon lives in Limerick while Francesco lives a few hours away in Dublin where they recorded this Tiny Desk (home) concert.
She says it’s hard for them as musicians because to do anything they have to be videographers and engineers and everything. There’s a reason why people do that as the thing that they do and we appreciate them even more.
For the “Spiritual” mentioned above, Rhiannon plays the banjo and Francesco plays a bodhrán. It starts with Rhiannon singing a capella, then she starts playing with great banjo picking (even some groovy slide work).
Food and art are the basis of what we are as human beings. And those are hit hard. She started a website ArtLivesOn.com.
They end the set with two songs, “Carolina Gals” segues into “Last Chance.” Rhiannon plays a violin (fiddle) while Francesco gets an amazing variety of sounds from the tiny hand drum he plays. It’s like a tambourine with a skin on and there’s wonderful diversity of sounds. The lyrics of “Carolina Gals” are familiar but different: “Carolina girl’s won’t you come out tonight.” But my favorite part of the set comes at the end when Rhiannon just takes off on the fiddle playing the super fast instrumental “Last Chance.”
[READ: May 25, 2020] “Everyday Parenting Tips”
I love Simon Rich, he makes me laugh out loud pretty regularly. Although this piece fell flat to me. The premise is okay but there’s not enough to do with it, so it kind of runs out of steam pretty quickly.
This comic essay is all about how to help your children who are afraid of monsters.
It starts off easily enough with the calming assurance that it is normal for children to be afraid of monster. It shows a sign of a healthy imagination. By five they should be convinced that monsters aren’t real.
The problem however is that some monsters are real. Ever since the Great Monster Uprising, when the monsters arrived from the Dark Place, monsters are an unavoidable part of out lives.
Nightmares are normal, unless your child has been “marked” by a monster who is using her dreams to try to form a covenant with her.
How about a night-light? Well, they can disrupt a child’s circadian rhythm. Worse, they might act as a beacon for the Gauntwings.
What if my husbands makes jokes to try to cheer my child up?
Your husband is probably a monster. Get him drunk and strip him naked. If he has the Mark of Corthar, cut off his head.
By he end, the essay tells you to give up or learn too fight. to take those monster bastards down.
Leave a Reply