The Mississippi Market Co-op in St. Paul is having their annual meeting and a grand opening for their new store Saturday afternoon, October 17. My band, Temporary Stringband, was scheduled to play for part of it. Unfortunately, our fiddler had an accident 2 weeks ago while cutting open some boxes and lacerated her right forearm. She won't be holding a bow for at least a couple of months, so we are on temporary hiatus. The organizers of the event thought that an open jam would be a nice substitute. We will be playing from 2:00 until 2:45 PM. The new store is located at 1500 West 7th Street, a couple of blocks east from the I-35E interchange. I can't promise anything, but when we played there last year, they fed us very well. Our music is predominantly old-time, but bluegrass would be OK too.
Dotty sent this to my personal mail by I'm quite sure she intended for it to be here. Sounds like you had a challenging situation and they were willing to be flexible. One reason I ask, is that I'm in a sub-group of the Minnesota Mandolin Orchestra that's doing Christmas music. We're considering potential sites for gigs (we're free, priced just right for the recession) and was wondering how things worked at the Mississippi Market and how it was received. There are 6 of us - 3 mandolins, a mandola, a floater between octave and mandolin, and guitar. We would play without amplification. Last year we played the VA hospital, Grace House, a suburban Dunn Brothers, and at an assisted living facility. This year, we've a couple of care facilities in mind, will probably do Dunn Brothers again. I'd like to put is in places where some budding mandolinist might see us and get swept into joining the MMO. Your thoughts and experiences would be appreciated! __________________ Dotty
Sorry about the delayed response -- I've been pretty busy at work and haven't been on here much lately. Because of the short notice, the Mississippi Market jam consisted of me, a fiddler, and a banjo player who works there and managed to slip away from his job for a few tunes. Still, everybody seemed to enjoy it. We played in the lunchroom area at the front of the store, just past the registers, and the sound seemed to project pretty well from there. Mike, the banjo player, said that the management really liked having us there, and seemed open to the idea of a regular jam (maybe once or twice a month), but nothing has happened with that yet. I don't know if they would be interested in a holiday show by the MMO, but if you send me a PM, I can get in touch with them through Mike.
