"Natural Bridges" by Celtic Stone A Brief History Part 3, The Natural Bridges Story, 1984-1985 After "Druid Wood" was recorded, mixed and sent off to the duplication company, the band travelled off to the Minnesota Show. When they arrived, Jim and Joyce Lillquist had formalized The Gypsy Guerilla Band with Rio Blue, David Ballard and Mark Dawson, a friend of Robyn's from the earliest days of the Bay Area Renaissance Festival in Florida. Typically, the Hammered Dulcimer is played with a very light touch, allowing the hammers to bounce off the strings, creating the "Dulcet" or sweet tone of the name. Both Lillquist and Clauss played the instrument HARD, with a driving, high energy approach that gave the instrument a whole new sound. The two were a natural together, and would refer to their playing together as "Duelling Dulcimers." Celtic Stone and The GGB would often play together at the '84 Minnesota show, drawing huge crowds and helping to sell a metric ton of Celtic Stone recordings. Jim saw the potential, and after consulting with Robyn over many a late night session, decided to go into the studio to do his first tape, that would become "Ernie's Journey." Mark Dawson, Rio Blue and David Ballard also dual-booked the MRF with Puppeteer and stiltwalker Ray St. Louis. Ray choreographed dance routines to be done on 4 to 6 foot stilts and wild, brilliantly colored costumes, which they also wore during the Festival parade every day. It was an impressive performance, and The Gypsy Guerillas were the soundtrack, assisted sometimes by Celtic Stone. It soon became apparent to all involved that a tremendous show could be put together, so Ray, David, Robyn and Todd worked to find a suitable venue for the "Sticks and Stones" show. It was done in a church in South Minneapolis, and had only one performance, but everyone who saw it agreed that it was a spectacular entertainment. With his 6' stilts and his Phoenix bird costume, Ray's topknot feathers towered nearly 15 feet off the floor! Imagine something nearly twice the size of Sesame Street's Big Bird, with bright orange, yellow and scarlet plumage and you'll get an idea of just one of the five dancers at Sticks and Stones. The new Druid Wood tapes arrived at the tail end of the Minnesota show and the band began to hit record sales figures for their product, sometimes nearing a hundred tapes a day. However, there was a fly in the ointment. When the Sticks and Stones show happened, a friend of Todd's started talking to him about forming a Punk Irish band like the Pogues, to be headquartered in Minneapolis. Todd liked the idea of staying near Leila all year 'round (though the romance was sadly on-again, off-again), and so he announced that he was leaving the band at the end of Texas Ren Fest. Bruce, worried that his traditionalist ally in the band was leaving, started to re-think his direction as well. Todd and his friend, Drew, later formed "Boiled in Lead" and produced several albums with that band, some of which are still available. Bruce would go to the Berklee School of Music in Boston, travel the world and marry a Japanese lady and is now doing street performances in Tokyo and other venues world wide. Texas Renaissance Festival, 1984, was pretty hard for all of us. We knew that there would have to be a revamping of the core sound of the band and wondered who we'd get to fill in the missing spaces of Todd and Bruce. Both Celtic Stone and Druid Wood were selling really well, and other than performance royalties, the band owed nothing else to either of them, so the parting could be amicable. Then, in the last two weekends of that show, Simon Spalding showed up to audition for the festival. He was asked to join in for Celtic Stone performances, which were often also enhanced by guest spots by Jim Lillquist, Rio Blue, David Roe and Mick Doherty (a magnificent Hammered Dulcimer player from Portland, OR, and an old friend and teacher of David Clauss). A bit of the old magic from the studio recording of the first album came back, and Simon was asked to join the band, which he enthusiastically accepted. It was then decided that a trio format with this configuration could produce almost as much energy as the quartet, and would generate even more capital. TRF also saw the 100 a day figure broken almost every day, once climbing as high as 140! David and Maria were married at that show by Father Sam of Christ of the Hills Monastery in a full-regalia Renaissance celebration. At the end of TRF, Simon stayed aboard long enough to play all but the last Christmas show, including Dickens on the Strand in Galveston, TX, which would connect him to the sailing ship "Elissa", square-rigged sailing being one of his many historical passions. That winter in Austin was the first time that the guys were reasonably well off for the entire season, even though there was little work. They began playing Texas area trad clubs on a regular basis, including The Pig and Whistle in Fort Worth, Kineally's Pub in Houston and Callaghan's in Dallas. They also began sharing stages with Texas area Irish bands like Tinker's Dam (Dallas), Four Bricks from Hadrian's Wall (Houston) and St. James' Gate (San Antonio) and doing dual St. Pat's Day gigs at Callaghan's with The Irish Texans. Shortly after St.Pat's, they performed at the second annual "North Texas Irish Festival" in Dallas. The 1985 tour began great guns, with Scarborough and Colorado both being terrific. Wanting to have a new recording for TRF, they decided not to go to King Richard's Faire that year, and booked a six week engagement at Callaghan's in Dallas and at January Sound Studios for the recording. Russ Alvey, of Tinker's Dam, was hired as the engineer. One Scarborough Faire annecdote...the band, like all of the music acts at the show, were required to do the pub sing at the end of the day. They had to hike across the entire festival site, carrying instruments, tapes and other paraphernalia, to a show that was highly unlikely to generate any income. The real irritant was the assistant to the assistant music director, a nice enough but rather insensitive young lady, who would always signal the end of the pub sing with her high pitched and rather whiny cry,"Let's do Wild Rover"...one of those old, St. Paddy's Day standards, anathema to a Irish trad afficionado. We hated it! One day, the band was hiking across the field with new friends Buddy and Jamal Mohammed (tremendous jazz bass and drums, as well as authentic middle eastern music) and David Roe when inspiration hit Robyn. "Look, when she says 'Let's do Wild Rover', Buddy and Jamal will break into a Reggae beat, between A minor and G major, and we'll do the song like Bob Marley!" Everyone thought that it'd be great...we'd do the song, do something totally unexpected and have a bit of a laugh watching her reaction. The response went WAY beyond all expectation! The crowd hooted and howled, broke into dancing, laughing and tossing their beers around. The music went far better than expected and the young lass was stunned and totally mortified. We had stolen 'Her Moment' and assulted her authority. Precisely what we wanted to do in spades! "Reggae Rover" has become another one of those Ren Faire standards you might hear at any of the shows. Returning to the Dallas area after Colorado brought them from the 65-75 degree Colorado Rockies to Dallas in late July where the temperatures rarely dropped below 100, even at night. Scarborough was kind enough to allow them to camp on the festival grounds, but there was no electricity (Luckily, however, there was running water and the plumbing system was in order. Again, it was an intense period, with the Callaghan's shows running Wednesday through Saturday, 8:00pm to 2:00am, with many recording sessions scheduled from 3:00am 'til 10:00am. The idea behind Natural Bridges, was that it would express the natural bridges that the band perceived between the kinds of music they played. Robyn's background in rock is expressed in "Oh, My Dear Rose" and his contributions to "Pink Floyd..." and "Jigoid Units". David's long time interest in 'old-timey' music can be heard in the arrangements of "The Galway Races", "A Bunch of Ugly Polkas" and in the instrumental bits of "Hard Road to Shiloh." Simon, ever the historian and world traveller, contributed "Scandomania," "Bully in the Alley," "Hard Road to Shiloh" and his original tune, "Macedonian Midnight." All of these influences take a piece of "Pink Floyd Goes to Limerick, take 2." The recording sessions were long and tiring, but the tracks were all tight and well produced. The band, however, tends to think of Natural Bridges as its "White Album." As in the Beatles' case, almost every song is readily identifiable as a David tune, a Robyn tune or a Simon tune. Only a few of them, "Pink Floyd...", "Yellow Rose", "Galway Races" and perhaps the "Ugly Polkas," come across as Celtic Stone tunes. Songs, Players & Commentary Celtic Stone History, part 4 Back to Celtic Stone Semi-Official Home Page Published by Celtic MP3s Music Magazine, text courtesy of © 2003 Robert Hilliard