Almost Struck by Lightning!

Three members of Red River Breeze (Stephanie Taylor on hammered dulcimer, Byron Dumas on fiddle, and David Magers on guitar) played for the Homeplace at Land Between the Lakes on July 4th. We were a small group - it is a busy weekend and most of the group had other family things to do... but we were having a great time of it as a trio... until the sky got really dark and ominous. Folks in the audience were taking flash photos, and I remember one particulary bright flash which I assumed was from a camera... however... several seconds later Mother Nature drowned us out with a tremendous clap of thunder. It definitely scared me (you can hear me scream!) and the music... stopped.... The guys seemed to be fairly unfazed and used the opportunity to show their "funny" side. The video of this event was amazingly taken by my daughter and band web master (Tiffany Allemand) who wanted to get a video for the web site. I don't think this is exactly what she was hoping for! But, I'm truly grateful she did not end up with a video of us actually getting hit by lightning...and that goes for her and the grandbabies as well as the rest of the audience...!

The remainder of our set was played on the porch of the Homeplace dog-trot house in the midst of a terrific deluge raging outside. It was close, hot, crowded, but allowed us to be able to share the music much more personally with the folks who stuck it out and listened to the rest of our set!

First Blog for Red River Breeze

Hi! This is Stephanie - the "leader" of the group called Red River Breeze based in Clarksville, TN. We are a Celtic/ Old-Time/ Renaissance String Band (mostly) that plays traditional music on a variety of instruments including hammered dulcimer, penny whistle, recorders, fiddle, mandolin, guitar and string bass. You can see more about the band and hear snippets of tunes off of our (so far) one and only CD, "Friday Night Favorites," at our website: http://www.redriverbreeze.com/.

My hope with this blog is to share the happenings and stories of the band as we play at our standing Friday night gig at The Looking Glass in Clarksville, TN as well as the other interesting and fun places we are asked to play at throughout the year in the area around Clarksville, TN as well as up into Kentucky. Other events - such as trying to produce our next CD - will be chronicled as well. In this way, I hope we can keep our fans and followers up-to-date on what we are doing and the great stories we acquire in the process. I think that the next post will be the story of the "lightning strike"... Stay tuned!