Firedance CD

Last year, we had a beautiful opportunity to record some of the rhythms that we play at Firedance jams. It was a bizarre way to come across an opportunity, a friend of 25 years, also one of my favourite metal drummers called me and asked if I thought a few of my drummers would be interested in drumming on a jazz cd. He met a guy through his work in trucking who was looking for a rhythms section for a jazz singer. Glenn called me, and we set it up that if I could bring in 5-6 drummers to record his songs for him, we could have free recording time. It was at Nowhere Studios, in Scarborough, in a tiny little warehouse unit. Seedy, dark, and cramped...but Glenn was really nice, and so was the engineer, Ben. Cool guys who had been working with rock bands for years.

At the time, I was working with a small group of drummers and friends from our jams to plan out our opening ritual and performance for the first night of the festival, and we were working with Catherine Starr to perform our main Saturday night ritual. We had pulled a beautiful ritual together in less than 2 weeks before the festival of 2008, and it was incredible. We found as a group that we worked well together, and jamming together was fun. We were renting a studio that bombed on us, and having this new studio gave us an opportunity to use it for our weekly jams as well as record some of the stuff we were working on.

We jammed, we practiced, we laughed, we stressed, drank copious amounts of tea and coffee and did the best we could with what we had. It turned out to be a great cd.

Of honorable mention, is one jam called Summer Garden. I started it out just practicing a heartbeat rhythm, and one by one, the members that were there that day, all joined in and put in their voice. Mike was playing one of his flutes, and we made it up in the moment. There was absolutely nothing planned about it, and we loved it and said "Let's record it!!!" We have never played it together again. It represents the spirit of Firedance, beautifully. We decided to call it Summer Garden because we each had different nature type visions while playing it, imagining sitting in a park surrounded by the sounds around us...butterflies, bugs crawling, birds in flight, the earth pulsing, trees blowing in the wind, children skipping through the flowers, and so on. It seemed a perfect name for the vibe we had while trancing to the music. It was spontaneous, and a true group effort to create something beautiful by each of us adding our own voice to it.

Bouree is a medieval french song, that we also only played together one time. Micheal Franklin, one of the members, is a musican who specializes in ancient reed instruments called the Shawm, Grallia, as well as Elder wood and Stag bone flutes, and in this particular song, he plays the Hurdy Gurdy. Rikki La Coste, who had played this with Mike before, began the rhythms, and we all just joined in on it, and Natalie Rubyhill lent her voice as a back up throughout the song.

Familiar rhythms that we play that we also recorded are Shae, Rhumba, Baladi,and Nowhere(named after the studio). Two other vocal songs that we recorded were "The River is Flowing" and "The Earth is Our Mother" both native chants that are sung at pagan festivals, and in many pagan/wiccan rituals.

The cd was a wonderful experience with many members of the drum circle participating in different recordings. In total, we had 10 different members who came out and joined in. This was just a really cool chance to record and have some fun. We enjoyed every moment of it. We have used the cd's for fundraising prizes, giveaways, and have even sold a few. I am planning to add a link somehow on my website for people to be able to order them. All in good time, the website is currently under reconstruction, and some of our information is outdated, but will soon be brought up to speed.

Soon I will also see about posting little videos of our songs filled with photos from the many events Firedance has been a part of over the last 4 and half years. Hope you enjoy the music and magick....Peace~