Rehearsal

The negotiations got a bit ugly, the higher-ups within the GCAO feeling left out of the fun (and money), but we smooth things out with a donation to a children's emergency scholarship fund. Huge thanks to all the folks in Bozeman who came out to the Filling Station last month. You saved us and sent some kids to school this year!

I spend the morning with Ganesh and Manoj, buying notebooks, pencils, fountain pens, ink, erasers, sharpeners, and most boringly important, a book of blank receipts in Nepali and English script, so the IRS doesn't put me away when I get back home.

Nice to know we're helping some poor folks out, but I'm counting the days until we can get out of Kathmandu. We still have another day before Praveen the cinematographer arrives from New Dehli, so with the school supplies purchased, the van squared away, and the bureaucrats satisfied, it's time to get back to the music. In addition to helping out the kids and documenting the old folks, we're also gonna try to record an album mixing Nepali and Appalachian folk songs. This takes more work than you'd think and so the rehearsals have started. Here's Tara, Danny, Buddhiman and Manoj as they test the waters on this Old-Time Himalayan Bluegrass thing...

(my apologies for the low-rez footage-this was shot on a point-and-shoot digital camera). The real filming/recording begins in two days. We've got two months with these guys, as well as the old-timers playing the real backwoods Himalayan music. We're just getting started.