I was ridiculously excited when Brendan invited me to join the Ramblers for this adventure, and we traveled countless miles to crisscross Russia and present our program at five summer camps. The following is a post I wrote for the group’s blog about our experience at the Gubkin camp. There are many more stories, pictures, videos, songs, bios, teaching materials, etc available online at www.eslfolk.com. Enjoy!

WHERE’S GUBKIN?

One of the best things about this trip has been getting to see towns in parts of Russia that tourists don’t typically visit. At the camps, people are often curious and ask us about the other cities we’re traveling to on the ESL Folk Tour. Whenever we run down the itinerary, there’s always one place that gets the same response: “Wait, Gubkin? Where’s that?!”

with Elena, our trusty camp leader

I was excited to check out this city that so few people seem to have heard of, and waited with no small amount of anticipation by the door of our train compartment with the Ramblers and our gear. We arrived in the middle of the night and our “train mom” had urged us to be prepared to get off quickly since the train would only be stopping for 2 minutes at the Gubkin station before pressing on. We grabbed our bags and instruments and were bundled off the train, and my harp and I fell directly into the arms of Elena, our camp coordinator.

harp sandwich

Elena and her family helped us lug our stuff over to the hotel where we were booked in four single rooms for the first few nights – an unexpected luxury after so much time spent cramped in platzkart bunks and squashed under my harp in the backseats of taxis. We were each handed a key with an ornate swan chain and ascended some sparkling stone diaz-style steps to the chimes of a thousand fire alarm bells set off by sportsmen surreptitiously smoking in their rooms. After some refreshing showers, we collapsed into our fluffed pillows for a few hours sleep.

David Fay, Sarah, and the Ramblers in front of the biggest hole I've ever seen

In the morning, we took a walk to explore this mysterious city. It turns out that Gubkin is a relatively young city, founded just seventy years ago, and built around an enormous iron mine – a vast, gaping crater seven kilometers wide that we visited with some guides from the camp. The town is beautifully laid out, with charming neighborhood apartment complexes each with their own playground and lots of trees. There was a neat park with a mining display and statues celebrating the town’s history and mining practices.

Matt plays with a handicap

We reviewed some new songs, got our materials ready for the next day’s teaching, and then prepared ourselves for the U.S.A. vs. Slovenia world cup match by playing pick-up soccer in the school fields with some of the campers. It was a “no parents, no rules” game that involved all sorts of inventive goal keeping and ball stealing.

The Ramblers practice the Camp Rainbow dance routine

The next morning, we were treated with a visit from David Fay from the English Language Office of the American Embassy in Moscow and his lovely sister Sarah (We’ve been tossing around the idea of re-naming our group the David Fay Tribute Band). They joined us for a rousing set of morning performances by the Rainbow Summer Camp teams. After being serenaded by the four camp groups, who had rehearsed songs for us, we opened up our introduction to American Folk Music with some songs of our own.

Jordan & Brendan getting their teach on

I thought that performing live song examples as we talked about their background was an nice way to break up the opening lecture, especially since listening to a long block of talk can be super exhausting for students who are learning English as a second language. The kids  seemed to especially enjoy an experimental mash-up of jigs in E minor that Brendan and I tried out when we were discussing immigrants from the British Isles and their influence on American culture and music.

the opening lecture/concert

After our presentation/concert, Matt played some samples of traditional folk music from around the world and the students had to try and guess what country each song came from. Brendan had the chance to visit Tuva with some other Fulbrighters this year and brought back some incredible music from that region. It’s always funny when the Tuvan throat-singing track comes on during this game, because none of the kids ever guess that this music is actually from their own country! I think it’s great to bring up Russia’s cultural diversity in these English camps, because it lets us shift the focus off of all the questions we get about life in America and remind the campers about how cool and interesting and vast their own nation is!

with new friends

One of the most remarkable highlights of this trip for me has been getting to experience Russian hospitality. It seems that every camp we visit adopts us Ramblers, and this was especially true at Gubkin. When we asked Elena for a recommendation of a local restaurant to grab some dinner, she responded by inviting us over to her house for some homemade okroshka, a traditional Russian cold soup made from chopped vegetables and hard-boiled egg with a broth of kvass – a beverage made (as I understand it) by straining water through dark rye bread and allowing it to ferment slightly. This is one of our favorite refreshing drinks, but I’d never had it in a soup before!

our family dinner

After a mere two days in the hotel, we were also invited to stay in Elena’s sister-in-law’s parents’ house, which was a welcome respite for both our budgets and souls. Turns out that after living in such close quarters for so long, those single hotel rooms were starting to feel pretty lonely! We were thrilled to do some laundry and cook a wonderful “family” meal, which we ate beneath the approving (I hope) gaze of an impressive collection of Russian icons.

Ramblers reacting to some local press

On our last night, we were also invited out to a dacha for some sensationally delicious shashlik (Russian bar-b-q)! We enjoyed the evening sun, homemade pickles, samagon, and – in addition to the scrumptious chicken and pork skewers – some of the best grilled carp I’ve ever tasted; a veritable feast! With Masha, Olya, Nastia, and Elena among the guests, the feeling was of a family reunion cook-out. Brendan wrote an experimental shashlik ballad on a makeshift guitar, and we finished off the night with some more crazy, hybrid ball games.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN3l6UW8UMg&hl=en&fs=1]
The morning came too soon, and with it the time for us to leave for Ufa. Our goodbyes were heartfelt and teary, but we took with us many memories – and some sweet camp T-shirts the campers signed!

The next time someone asks me where Gubkin is, I’ll just point to my heart.

-Gillian

Group shot!

my kupé berth on the transmanchurian K19

Excerpts from a letter written on May 24th, 2010

Today I bought a small container of sour cream, thinking it was yoghurt, and ate about half of it before deciding it couldn’t just be that Russian yogurt is funky in a way not unlike how Greek-style yogurt is funky. This reminded me of the time I was making dinner for my host Ralf and his five year-old son Raphael in Berlin – a nice gnocchi dish with sautéed bacon and mushrooms in what I’d intended to be a cream sauce, only I’d bought some weird soft German cheese thinking it was crème fraîche and the whole thing curdled in the most disgusting way; it tasted fine but looked awful. Poor Raphael, who is a picky eater to begin with, had a meltdown at the kitchen table and refused to eat the stuff. I couldn’t really blame him and felt bad because he got in trouble for the tantrum when it was really my fault. Oh the joys of buying dairy products abroad.

The train is remarkably empty. Perhaps because we’re just a week or two shy of tourist season or perhaps because we’re on the less popular transmanchurian line (people like seeing Mongolia more). It’s a good thing too, since it turns out my harp simply will not fit in any convenient way in a kupé class cabin. When I had the cabin to myself for the first two days, I left the harp out and played it some, but I got a bunkmate on the third day and had to store it up to the bunk above me. This train seems to travel in ¾ time.

The view out the window could be Wyoming. Plains and hills with brown, gold, and green (almost) grasses, a bit marshy in parts, with cows and sheep and goats occasionally grazing in clusters, and ill-maintained barbed-wire fences, tiny outpost towns now and again, and even the odd Russian cowboy or two. They gave me a bit of trouble at the border for bringing my harp, but not too much. The weird thing was they had to switch out all the wheels on the train when we crossed over from China – apparently the tracks are set wider apart in Russia, something to do with World War II.

Lake Baikal

Even though it is the end of May, winter is only just beginning to ease its grip on the land here; lake Baikal was a cobweb of floating ice. There are field fires everywhere, blackening the white trunks of the birch trees. The kind German/South African man in the berth next to me, who lives half of each year in rural Siberia, told me that the Russians light these fires to clear the dead leaves and grasses, since the seasonal shift between Summer and Winter is too short to allow proper decomposition. Sometimes at night the glow of the brush fires can be spectacular, and also disturbing, like how I imagine land might look during War Time.

My bunkmate is a kind-faced Chinese man. He doesn’t speak English and I hardly know any Chinese, so we can’t really talk, but we share our bags of nuts and dried fruit and can manage some basic friendly communication via gesticulations and context. I wonder what it will be like when I get back to the United States and can understand everything that is being said around me – snippits of conversations in the park or on the street. I wonder if it will be overwhelming. Not long now. I’ll be back July 30th.

Sorry I’ve been so terrible about updating this blog – I’ve been on trains for thousands of miles with little internet access this past month. I promise I’ll post more later, but I just wanted to put up a quick note letting you know what I’m up to for the month of June!

I’m currently traveling with a group of musicians to summer camps in Russia, teaching kids English through American folk music! This is our schedule:

June 5th – 8th: Elista
June 9th -14th: Rostov-na-donu
June 16th -19th: Gubkin
June 20th-23rd: Ufa
June 25th-28th: Samara

I stole this expert map from the eslfolk.com site 8)

I’ll have pretty limited web access, but we’re keeping a group blog up on the project’s website: www.eslfolk.com It’s been a really exciting trip so far – can’t wait to share more pics, vids, news with you next time I’ve got wifi

Much love,
Gillian

Check out the trailer, and if you’re going to be in Austin, TX for the festival, stop by the premiere on March 14th.

I’ll try to hit as many of these cities as I can on my Fall tour, but if there’s a specific venue or town you’d like me to visit, shoot me an e-mail at info@gilliangrassie.com. And remember, you can always book me for a concert right in your own living room – anyone can do it! I love playing house concerts.

You can now catch songs from Serpentine playing on the following stations:

AOL Radio National
KXCI Tucson AZ
KOZT Ft. Bragg CA
KWMR Pt. Reyes Station CA
KCMV Breckinridge CO
KDNK Carbondale CO
KBUT Crested Butte CO
KSUT Ignacio CO
KVNF Paonia CO
WFIT Melbourne FL
KKCR Hanalei HI
KDEC Decorah IA
WFHB Bloomington IN
WWHR Bowling Green KY
WFPK Louisville KY
WMKY Moorehead KY
KSLU Hammond LA
WTMD Baltimore MD
Maine Public Broadcasting Bangor ME
WERU E. Orland ME
KAXE Grand Rapids MN
WSGE Charlotte NC
Public Radio East New Bern NC
WNTI Hackettstown NJ
WBJB Monmouth NJ
WFDU Teaneck NJ
Indie SF Santa Fe NM
WEXT Albany NY
WEHM Long Island NY
WDST Woodstock NY
WOUB Athens OH
WCBE Columbus OH
WYSO Yellow Springs OH
KRVM Eugene OR
WDIY Bethlehem PA
WXPN Philadelphia PA
WVIA Scranton PA
WETS Johnson City TN
KFAN Fredericksburg TX
KPFT Houston TX add
KUT Austin TX
KWCR Ogden UT
KRCL Salt Lake City UT
WNRN Charlotesville VA
WRRW Williamsburg VA
Wyoming Public Laramie WY

The Bombay Elektrik Project in association with UTV World Movies is hosting an evening of film and music at Cafe Goa in Bandra on Wednesday, January 20th.

Featuring performances by yours truly and Mumbai’s own Dischordian (nominated Most Promising Indie band of the Year by India’s leading indie-music blog, indiecision.com), followed by a screening of La Femme Nikita (yes, really), the night is sure to be an overload of awesome. And it’s free!

Come on the early side to enjoy Cafe Goa’s yummy food and martinis.

January 20: Mumbai, India
Bombay Elektrik Project & UTV World Movies present
Gillian Grassie & Dischordian
8:30 – 11:30 PM / FREE
Cafe Goa
Agnelo House
Off St. John de Baptist Road
near Mount Mary Steps
Bandra

KXCI Tucson AZ
KCMV Breckenridge CO
KDNK Carbondale CO
KVNF Paonia CO
WFIT Melbourne FL
KKCR Hanalei HI
KDEC Decorah IA
WFPK Louisville KY
WMKY Moorehead KY
WTMD Baltimore MD
MPBN Bangor ME
WERU E. Orland ME
WNTI Hackettstown NJ
Indie SF Santa Fe NM
WEXT Albany NY
WDST Woodstock NY
WCBE Columbus OH
WXPN Philadelphia PA (these guys have been backing me for years…Thanks XPN!)
WVIA Scranton PA
WETS Johnson City TN
KFAN Fredericksburg TX
KPFT Houston TX
WNRN Charlottesville VA
WRRW Williamsburg VA

Most of these are public radio stations, which means they operate at least in part via member support. Consider making a (typically tax-deductible) donation to help keep your local station up and running and bringing you independent music.

Thanks and happy holidays! (next up: a blog about Mumbai, finally…)

-Gillian

“Diese Frau ist wirklich Megaklasse. Die Kombination aus filigran gespielter Harfe zu einer Stimme, die sich mit weltklass Stars vergleichen lässt, und einer Titelauswahl, die einem jeden Zuhörer den Mund vor Staunen offen stehen lässt. Musik zu Versinken in seinen schönsten und/oder auch emotional einfühlsamsten Gedanken. Brillant! Danke.”

Can’t wait until our paths cross again (and I promise I’ll have worked more on my German by then)…

Vielen Dank,

Gillian

Pippi!

We stayed with some old friends of Doro in this awesome student complex with a big mural of Pippi Longstocking on the front wall and an elaborate squatter camp next door, complete with organized art events, political demonstrations, and its own wash-your-dishes-and-it’s-free “Café,” where I had one of the best cups of Chai in my life (ask me again after India). Across the street was a very modern office building powered entirely by solar panels, which, fittingly, housed a group of dedicated environmental organizations. To say that this university town near the French border is preoccupied with saving the planet is an understatement; Freiburg has become one of the de facto capitals of the international Green movement. Environmental issues dominate the daily news in both print and radio, and the city elected Green Party member Dieter Salomon as their mayor. Bikes rule the streets and a short trip outside the city will lead you into the heart of the Black Forest (think Brothers Grimm).

the patio/balcony. a sign hangs above that reads 'Occupied' in German, and a large banner with a quote from Brecht hangs on the fence

I got to see a bit of the Black Forest in all its winter glory on a drive to a town an hour outside Freiburg where we rehearsed with Doro’s guitarist. As the road climbed up into the mountains we suddenly found ourselves pulling out of the thick clouds into a world of white, snow dusting the conifers and fallow fields and trapezoidal barn roofs. I had the best meal of the trip so far that evening, though it’s hard to say if it was the delicious food or the three bottles of wine or the new friends or the fact that whenever I looked outside I felt like I was living in a fairytale gingerbread land. Before we headed back to Freiburg to lay down some tracks, we took a drive out to see an old castle and stood along the banks of the Rhine River, looking across into the Swiss Alps (don’t worry, Watson, I didn’t cross the border!). The water had that gorgeous glacial glow, a sort of blue-green that seems somehow milky, like frosted sea-glass.

Schwein!

Growing up on a farm, animals –lots of them – have basically surrounded me all my life, and one of the few downers of this year of travel so far has been the critter-withdrawal I’ve been going through. So I was elated when Doro got a phone call from another old friend and asked me if I’d be interested in visiting a little farm nearby that afternoon. I think I was probably even more enthusiastic than the two year-old we were with about seeing the piglets, and the goats, and getting kisses from bulls (seriously, these were the sweetest, gentlest bulls I’ve ever met, a whole pen of affectionate Ferdinands).

the Koes in Normandy weren't into Knufflen, but the bulls in Freiburg were all about the kisses

If anyone can identify exactly what kind of pig this poor, unfortunate-looking dear is, I’d be very curious to know. We found two of these guys in a pen, with curled tusks, a big, bristled back, and kind of squashed, pug-like faces with a serious brow-bone.

poor dear, what are you?

Later that night, we went out to a performance by Lindsey Blount, a jazz singer who came over to Freiburg from the U.S. through the Berklee exchange. If you have a chance to see her perform in the U.S. (Philadelphia, I’m talking to you), you really must. She is a total treat.

doro laying down some piano in the studio

The trip to Freiburg finished with an inspiring day in the studio, tracking accordion, piano, and harp for Doro’s songs. I feel really grateful to have had the opportunity to collaborate with Doro, who writes beautiful, interesting, strong songs with both German and English lyrics. As soon as she finishes mixing down a few of the tracks and posts them online, I’ll put up a link here and you can listen for yourself. It was exhilarating to have the good fortune to meet such a cool artist and be able to take her up on such a wonderfully spontaneous offer – all within the span of a week! Serendipity has been on my side lately, and I hope it sticks around, because one of the most incredible things about the Watson Fellowship is that it has freed me to accept fantastic, last-minute opportunities like this one, and granted me a spirit of flexibility that I’m not sure I’ve ever enjoyed before.

setting up mics for the harp

Berlin has been extraordinary, in part, because, despite a long history, it’s still a very young city in many ways (November 9th will mark only the 20th anniversary since the fall of the Berlin Wall). There is an energy here of constant change and reinvention and opportunity; it’s a very creative atmosphere, and this combined with the fact that it’s still an affordable city to live in lends Berlin a gravitational pull for artists of all sorts. The general consensus is that the arts and music scene in Berlin now is comparable to that of New York City in the 1980s. But there is also a sense here that the moment is fleeting – how long will it be before Berlin’s housing market becomes gentrified and beyond the reach of low-income artists? Do we have five years? Ten? Once a city’s rent climbs past a certain point, the creative arts scene invariably changes; artists become less experimental and collaborative and more competitive, accepting the types of commissions and bookings (and day jobs) that pay the bills. The low-rent factor that helps permit Philadelphia’s music scene to be more community-oriented is one of the reasons I prefer it to New York’s.

But this acknowledgment that Berlin’s creative heyday is probably not indefinite lends its own sense of urgency and earnestness. Doro, and I, and the other artists I’ve met so far agree: it’s exciting to be here, now, at this age, in this moment.

Before we get into all of my adventures in France, however, I’d like to post the Top Ten list I’ve put together for the XPN 885 Desert Island Songs countdown. You can vote for your own top ten list on the XPN website until September 11th and then tune in from September 29th – October 9th to hear the station listeners’ top 885 songs, in sequence, without commercials.

I know that the numbered ordering actually does matter for these things, but I can’t say that you should put much weight on my order.

Gillian’s Top Ten Desert Island Songs

1. Urge for Going – Joni Mitchell
My father used to sing this song to me as a lullaby, which probably contributed to my initial assumption as a child that Joni Mitchell was a man. The record was set straight a few years later when I wandered up into the attic and found my parents’ Court and Spark vinyl – a pretty earth-shaking discovery that firmly solidified my love affair with songwriting. Joni is hands-down the single most important artist in my collection and it takes some concentrated restraint not to fill this entire list with songs like Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire, Court and Spark, Cactus Tree, Trouble Child, People’s Parties, Blue, and A Case of You.

2. The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us! – Sufjan Stevens
I was really torn between this song and John Wayne Gacy, Jr. – which I also consider a sort of tour de force of songwriting – but ultimately sided with the one that doesn’t involve serial killers.

3. Everything is Free – Gillian Welch
I’ve been listening to this song a lot recently; it hangs around. “I could get a straight job / I’ve done it before / never minded working hard / it’s who I’m working for / everything is free now / that’s what they say / everything I ever done / gotta give it away / someone hit the big score / but I figured it out / and I’m gonna do it anyway / even if it doesn’t pay”

4. What a Little Moonlight Can Do – Billie Holiday
Ah, Billie… When I was younger Jazz seemed something akin to wine, in the sense that I was absolutely sure it was this fantastic thing that was probably going to take a little time to understand and appreciate. I kept listening and grew into Jazz about the same time I started actually liking the vintages my uncle pulled up from the cellar at Christmas. Billie Holiday was one of the first artists who really opened up the genre for me. Nobody does deep-set grief like Billie, but her rendition of this happier song always makes me dance, and there had to be at least one song on my desert island good for dancing.

5. Meadowlake Street – Ryan Adams
My friend Stu gave me Gold sometime last winter and I quickly ran to the record store to pick up Cold Roses and Heartbreaker. I’m in love with many of his songs, but this verse is the cincher for me: “I feel like a dream that’s not worth having / like a nervous joke, ain’t nobody laughing / like somebody with nothing ‘cause they don’t know what they want / and tiny like the sand in the cracks of the driftwood / washed up on the shore of an ocean of you / boats out on the horizon / made out of the maple tree where we used to lie down on Meadowlake street / counting the stars, you and I.” I mean, really.

6. Première Arabesque – Claude Debussy
There was a time in my life when I thought I was going to go to conservatory and become either an opera singer or an orchestral harpist or both. Things didn’t quite work out that way, but there’s still a corner of my heart that only classical type of music can reach. I haven’t played pedal harp in a long time, but Marcel Grandjany’s arrangement of this piece was my favorite.

7. Shebeg & Shemore – Turlough O’Carolan
Sometimes I feel a bit of a traitor for taking the Celtic harp so far away from our beginnings, but the truth is I really do love Celtic music. Turlough O’Carolan was this incredibly prolific Irish harpist of the 17th Century, who picked up the instrument after being blinded by smallpox at the age of 18. He’s credited with over 300 gorgeous melodies. For years, my dad brought a recorder with him wherever we went, and this melody became the backdrop of many mornings on the rocky Maine coastline and evenings around campfires. I pretty confident I spelled it wrong here.

8. No One’s Crying – Patty Griffin
I love Patty Griffin for many reasons, not the least which is that this song of hers almost single-handedly got me through both my parents’ divorce and my own first major break-up.

9. O Canada Girls – Dar Williams
The ideas and imagery in this song are just so lush and abundant. I especially like the bit about secrets written on hornet-nest paper blowing across the border. Bryn Mawr, you’ll have to forgive me for not putting “As Cool As I Am,” much though I cherish the memories of dancing around the May Hole covered in flower petals and rain. “If I did not dream, who would you be? / and if you did not dream, who would I be?”

10. Take it From Me – The Weepies
Writing happy love songs is absurdly hard, and The Weepies do it absurdly well. This is one of my favorites.

So close to being on this list that they may as well have been: Kathleen Edwards, Damien Rice, James Taylor, Indigo Girls, Handel’s Ombra Mai Fu, Joshua Marcus, Portishead, James Taylor, Fleetwood Mac, Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s.

Pictures and stories and proper updates coming soon!!!