Drake OranwoodI’m a month late sharing my top 10 Pennsic moments. My bad. Here they are now:
10. Hearing the Hidden Gold tracks playing at Camelot Treasures and McGuire’s.
9. Being an organizer for the Bardic Collegium and the Exhibition. It was a privilege to help make those things happen.
8. Sharing a stage with Marian of Heatherdale, Efenwealt Wystle, Kiersa Meise, Olivia Baker, Faye de Trees, and Gwendolyn the Graceful all in the same hour. Being lifted by the support of your comrades is indescribable.
Finally opened up a store on Bandcamp to sell the album. I love the way Bandcamp is laid out. Check it out! (Pretty, right?)
It is with great pleasure and pride that I announce that we have just sent our first check, for $800, to The Therapeutic Nursery. This comprises all of our net proceeds, after expenses, for the first two months since the release of Hidden Gold.
I’ve spoken in this space before about the vital importance of early intervention programs for children with special needs, and I want to thank everyone who has contributed to this project through their purchase, as well as everyone whose support made the album possible. I’m forever in your debt, and I hope we’ll have the opportunity to help the Nursery still more over the next couple of years. (Yes, we will continue donating all proceeds from the album sales for the next 22 months.)
If you’re on Spotify, you can find Hidden Gold there. (Of course, if you listen to it there and really enjoy it, I invite you to consider buying a copy, even though you don’t have to. The money goes to a good cause.)
Enjoy!
The other video I want to share from this year’s Pennsic concert is “The Seed”. This is the only video I have performing this piece. Enjoy.
Today I want to share the opening track on Hidden Gold. Though it was included on the latest Knowne World Bardcast, I hadn’t planned to put it in the opening spot–I sometimes think of this as “the little song that could”. I perform it less often than most of my other original pieces, for reasons that have little to do with its merits as a song.
Yesterday, the curator of Tam Lin Balladry, a wonderful website dedicated to tracking all the versions of the ballad (as well as retellings, parodies, and fanfiction) that can be found on the web, asked to include “Tam Lin of the Elves“. I was delighted to be asked, and the page with my retelling is now online here. Given the balladry site was one I scoured when I was researching the song, I feel oddly official now. 🙂
The video from this year’s Pennsic concert had some issues. The camera ran out of storage, so we only recorded a few songs, and the angle doesn’t pick up part of the stage. Nevertheless, I can share some of the experience of getting to perform “Tam Lin of the Elves” with Heather, which was a highlight for me:
Now that Pennsic is over (and it won’t compete with the CD sales) I’ve lowered the price of digital downloads on CD Baby. It’s now $10, comparable to iTunes and other outlets. I realized it doesn’t make sense to price it higher than that, since that just encourages people to go to the other outlets. Buying directly from CD Baby has advantages for me and for listeners. CD Baby takes a much smaller cut than iTunes and other services, and pays out promptly (rather than months after the fact). And some listeners who want better quality will enjoy the option of getting FLAC files instead of MP3s, which they can only get from CD Baby.
It came a bit late (the last day of the war), but Hidden Gold has gotten (dare I say it?) a rave review in the Pennsic Independent from Maestra Sol la Cantor. Check it out!
Drake Oranwood