Home

This was Scottish weekend at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival. I could tell shortly after arriving at 9 in the morning that this was going to be the crowdedest day so far this season when by 9:30 a steady and unbroken stream of cars was coming in and the area in front of the gate was filled with people as the pre-gate show was going on. The weather was sunny and destined to reach the 90s before the day ended.

After going thru the gate at opening I was soon tapped on the shoulder by Bruce the Bruce, who was playing with the maypole dancers' musicians. He provided what they had been needing all season long, a good strong guitar to give them the rhythm. The massed musician's jam over by the tree was rather disjointed this morning, no number really clicked. I went to the stage by the pub and listened to a madrigal choir from a junior college in Oklahoma, and they certainly weren't bad, but they didn't quite have the spirit that the high school groups had had. It felt like the day was starting on only three cylinders and I was starting to feel a little down, but that was soon to end at 11 at the Da Vinci crane.

A few weeks previous I was disappointed to learn that the Rogues, that excellent and electrifying bagpipe band from Houston, were not going to return this year. But their place was more than adequately filled by Tartanic, a group also from Houston. They had two pipers who played their grace notes with the same mechanical precision, a man playing a big fiberglass djembe, and Adrian, a master of ceremonies who was a show by himself.

He got up and yelled in a Scottish brogue, "Do you want to hear a PIPE TUNE?", and didn't stop asking until the audience yelled "yes" at the top of their lungs. During the first number he did a very proper bow with hands on hips, then showed us a highland fling where he flipped his legs about and pointed his toes like a ballet star. Thruout the set he jumped around and sometimes played a bodhran or a fiberglass dumbek, and even started to freak me out with such antics as throwing them in the air to roll across the ground after they landed. After one time, he informed us all that that was "a drum roll".

Then he got the drummer to dance. He put on an act like he was being real shy and having to be cajoled into it. He also did a very proper bow with hands on hips, then did a few John Travolta disco moves. He also turned his back to the crowd and shook his booty, and lifted his kilt to show some leg, to lusty cheers from the ladies. The pipes then played a medley that included the opening riff from "In a Gadda da Vida", the theme from "Star Wars", where he grabbed a bodhran beater and wielded it like a light saber, and closed with "Limbo Rock", where the pipers stood back to back and leaned backwards so that their drone pipes came together to make a bar for him to limbo under.

Then the pipers returned to more traditional jigs and reels. He encouraged us in the audience to dance if we wanted to, and even tho I was more than a little bit awed at following those two acts I figured what I don't have in precision technique I can more than make up for in élan. I did a bit of flinging and pony stepping myself, and other people on the fringe started shoeing it.

At their second set at Merlin's Berm, a stage near the front gate, I saw in the audience Donald, who danced with me last year in front of the Rogues last year. After the show I went over and asked him if he was going to dance again this year. He said he could, but he wanted to first ask the musicians if it would be all right. I pushed him into asking Adrian, and he responded with a hell yes.

So at their next show in a perfect place for them, the Seafarer's Beergarden that has a poop deck wrapping around behind the main stage, I let him do a solo first, then joined him in the following number. We were soon joined by a lady in sort of a gypsy princess garb, and we went on for a few tunes in a row. The pleasure transistor went into saturation current, and all of la onda of last year with the Rogues came back and held steady.

The bagpipes pretty much occupied the main focus of the day, I dropped in on a few other bands as I was strolling by. My feet were in joyful pain as I walked out to my car at about 4. It took a while to get out of the grounds and home because there was a race at the NASCAR track nearby.

Sunday didn't start out as populous as Saturday, but by noon a respectable number of people showed up. The weatherman had predicted a high of 93 (which it did actually achieve, a record high for the date), so I took out my playtron's license and dispensed with overskirt and hat and added the terrycloth sweat towel. I abandoned my previous plan to wear the nobles. The ground was dry from it not having rained for over a week, and a Kansas south wind kicked up a lot of dust.

This morning, for the first time, the fireworks man launching the opening "cannon" didn't get the signal right, and as the King was saying "on the count of three" the sound of the rocket going up didn't come as it usually did. His Majesty then said, "Well, maybe I should have said thirty-three," and the entourage up on the balcony looked around at each other, trying not to break out giggling. The King then said in a loud chastising voice, "Mayor, this is ALL YOUR FAULT," and the Mayor tried to come up with some excuses, showing a flusterment that wasn't all acting. Then one of the Spanish guards on the platform at the other side of the courtyard by the gate suggested a "countdown by the assembled guests here." The crowd shouted out together, "ten...nine...eight...," and this time the rocket got launched so that the boom came perfectly at the time the crowd got to zero.

The jam by the tree made up for yesterday, they played a lot of danceable rhythms, and I was joined by a few women as I kicked up my heels. At the Da Vinci crane was a high school choir from an affluent school in the north of Kansas City, I liked the vibe among them. When a few of the people muffed a few of their lines in the scripted dialogue introducing the songs, there was lighthearted laughter and a director who was enjoying it all. It seemed like a group I would have liked being in myself. And the singing was tight and clear, another performance where the environment had psyched everyone up.

Then Tartanic came on and dazzled everyone again. I caught them again at the Beergarden, but spent the afternoon listening to another excellent bagpiper from Kansas City as he played for an Irish dance troupe that I watched intently, looking for new steps to try. I stayed later than I usually do for the Royal Smoker on the top deck of the pub since Bruce the Bruce had promised his presence, and it ended with rousing performance of "Moose, moose, I like a moose" by Three Pints Gone with heavy audience involvement.

- Butterfly Bill

"Greetings, milady...or is it milord?...or..um...."
RenGeek with pewter computer imputer
IWG reject
"So did you lose the bet?"..."No, I won it, he bet me I wouldn't"
First Rogu'ench of Renntopia
Solarus Juvenillius Pastritis of Sarcastica. He who Grouches
while Biting the Wax Tadpole.
"possunt vincere nothi solum si facetias tuas a te tollunt"
http://www.grapevine.net/~butterflybill/BB.htm

Go to next act