Swans Island

I am writing this update from the Bolt Bus between New York and Boston. I played a contradance last night in NYC and will be in Boston this weekend getting ready for the BCMFest Celtic Music Monday show that I'm organizing this coming Monday. But this post is actually about the 10 days I just spent on BEAUTIFUL Swans Island where my lovely girlfriend Kate is currently working.

Swans is a fairly remote island by most people's standards, requiring a 40 min ferry ride that leaves from the more well known Mount Desert Island (the island with Bar Harbor on it). Luckily Mount Desert Island is connected to the mainland by a causeway so there isn't a double ferry ride involved at least... Swans has about 300 year-round residents and another 300 summer residents. The year round population is predominantly fishing and lobstering families and Kate is working for their historical society doing things like conducting oral history interviews and organizing community events. This meant that as part of my trip I played for a community dance Kate had organized.

The dance was a great success and it was wonderful to see a folk dance taking place in a rural community where everyone knew each other beforehand instead of meeting at the event. It felt more true to the old folk dance traditions than most contradances and country dances we have these days. The band was myself on piano and the great Irish fiddler Alden Robinson (from Portland, ME based band The Press Gang) and the dance was called by my mother, Laura Pearlman. In addition, my dad jumped up at the end of the dance to play some fiddle with us and there was also a featured performance by a community band organized and led by Kate.

The rest of my trip was a chance to relax and explore the island before my touring schedule really takes off on Wednesday when I'm headed to New Mexico to start a 3 week tour with my dad with a bunch of really exciting new music we've just come up with for our duo. I got to take a number of beautiful walks around Swans and eating awesome food including Swans Island seafood--the last night on the island we gathered mussels ourselves from a rocky beach nearby!  I don't currently have most of the photos from this recent trip but here is a picture Kate took when I was on the island last October:

And on the food note, here are the mussels we gathered and steamed!

Covered in barnacles and such (the rock at the bottom we used to scrape em clean)

Cleaned and ready to steam

Ready to eat!!

Cheers for now,
--Neil

Pennsylvania

Welcome to my new blog! I'm very excited to launch the official Neil Pearlman tour blog. Over the next few months (and beyond) I will be going to a lot of different places and I will be regularly updating this blog with photos, thoughts, updates and more as I travel the world playing music!

This first post comes on the heels of a weekend playing for contradances in Harrisburg and Bethlehem in Pennsylvania with the new contradance band "Party of Three" which consists of my sister Lilly on the fiddle, Joe DiPaolo on many different drums and myself on piano of course. The dances were wonderful and I'm excited for the future of this band. We received generous hospitality from the dancers in both towns and the drives were full of beautiful PA hills and farmland. I look forward to playing there again in the future! Here are some photos:

 Joe and myself with the beautiful PA scenery ahead of us on the road.













Lilly studying while packed in the back with all the instruments and baggage!

And a couple shots of PA from the road--the sunset and farmland