This is it, up close. The final steps were finished today, and now I have a fully playable, tunable, juicy, meaty bodhran. It is a happy day indeed. My first green drum — it's a pretty dark green, very classy.
I went to Chief O'Neill's last night to play at the session. Brendan McKinney, the owner of the pub, leads it. I had been told all sorts of things, how intense people are there and how they eat players who don't play well, hang them by their toes over a boiling kettle of Guiness. Fortunately, it wasn't quite like that. They play fast much of the time, and sometimes loud, but all the players there were good, and no one was mean. Having two pipes players of the level of Kieran O'Hare and Brendan McKinney is pretty cool, too. I love the sound of uilleann pipes played well, and they both do.
There was one other bodhran player there, a gentleman from Cincinnati who was very impressed with the drum. He also told me about this competition he's planning on doing. It seems like every notable musician in Chicago has competed and won the All-Ireland at one point or another. Assuming we end up leaving town some time later on, I'm never going to be able to play Irish music anywhere else; the players won't sound any good. (ha ha)
The bodhran sounded great, attracted compliments from a couple people, which was nice. The drum head is goat skin, which is extremely sensitive to heat and humidity. The pub had a fire in the fireplace, which dried everything out, wreaking havoc on the pipes' tuning and the drum skins. I had to keep tuning the drum down to have any control over it. I got home, tuned it way up, and in the morning, the skin had loosened up considerably. It's a very volatile instrument.
The guy who made this drum is Mike Quinlan, and he does nice work. He's been woodworking for quite a number of years by now, but as a bodhran maker, he's relatively new to the game (about four years of experience). He's the only game in town as far as I know, and he's quite good, and super nice. When I was at his house today getting the tuning pegs adjusted, he showed me the concertina he's building. The man is building an accordian! He plays bodhran, and wants to learn concertina, so he's building one. That, to me, is extremely cool.
Babble babble babble. I'm really happy about having a drum that was made for me. For less than two hundred dollars, I might add.