Aisling video on YouTube

Jeff's graduation earlier this month brought back a lot of memories of our 2003 field season. I was thinking about doing a blog post of all those pics and stories, and I might still do that, but I wanted to try putting together a video with Aisling's "A Walk in the Park" set so I pulled in a very small selection of images to go along with the tunes I composed after that field season. We recorded this set on our recent CD project, "The Pilgrim's Road," which was released in August 2007. The Pilgrim's Road is available from CD Baby.







Here's the information from the YouTube page:

Aisling's first music video, featuring original tunes by Andi Wolfe:

A Walk in the Park
Drakensberg Storm
All Roads Lead to Underberg

These tunes were inspired by a memorable field season in South Africa and Lesotho in 2003. Andi is a botanist who works on parasitic plants in southern Africa. The 2003 field season was for a trip to the Drakensberg mountains and the highlands of Lesotho in search of Hyobanche, a parasitic genus in the broomrape family (Orobanchaceae). Collecting in these areas involves a lot of hiking and climbing in some breath taking scenery. Andi's field assistants included her graduate student, Jeff Morawetz, and two young lads from Cape Town who were the most amazing climbers: Nick and Chris Laidler. Andi isn't a young lass anymore and so it was kind of hard to keep up with these young men in the mountains. Thus, the title of the first tune is "A walk in the park" to commemorate one evening, after a very long hike, when Andi complained to these lads about how they thought these grueling hikes were just a walk in the park.

The second tune is in honor of the amazing thunderstorms that hit the highlands about noon each day. Thunder, lightning, torrential rains, hail stones the size of golf balls - you name it, you got it. Wow! Nature's fury at its best.

The third tune in this set is in honor of the Underberg Hotel, where Andi's team spent way too many nights because they couldn't get into Lesotho via Bushman's Nek. Communication between them and the pony trek guides fell apart and they waited, and waited, and waited some more. Finally, they drove up into Lesotho via Sani Pass. They had a lovely time at the Underberg Hotel, thanks to a pub and a lively bartender named Dean. The images in the video were taken by Andi Wolfe and are from the Drakensberg of South Africa and the highlands of Lesotho.

Aisling is a Celtic Folk band from central Ohio with band members including: Andi Wolfe (hammer dulcimer, fiddle, bodhran, vocals), Craig Caldwell (guitar, bouzouki, mandolin), Mary Bertke (banjo, bouzouki, vocals), Steve Wolfe (flute and tin whistle), and Stuart Brand (fiddle and flute). We play mostly traditional Irish music, but we also play our original tunes and arrange tunes to have a mix of genres ranging from jazz to chamber music.

Check our website at http://www.Aisling.us and our MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/aislingtrad for more information.