VIDEO: Pennywhistling in the Outback
Mister Hart duets on double-pennywhistle, culls pears, and sticks a bass
In due course, we will be getting to highly edited video and audacious audio (recorded by Bob Webb, Master Recording Engineer of Oregonia). For the moment, as we get this site rolling, we are going to be dipping in and out of older cell-phone videos I have shot through the years at Bill’s various cribs in the Appalachian outback. Below, are three different flavors of encounters in as many years. ~ Douglas John Imbrogno
No. 1: ‘Pennywhistling with Albert
BILL PLAYS A MEAN PENNYWHISTLE. He also plays two mean pennywhistles at the same time. One day in May 2018, he dueted (or is it a ‘tri-ette’ if three instruments are involved?), along with visiting musician, Albert Frank Perrone.
No. 2: ‘Pear Harvest’
ONE DAY IN OCTOBER 2019, Bill took me for a ride on his workhorse Gator utility vehicle. Before we even got off the property, Bill stilled the engine beside a copse of pear trees. It was time for a bountiful pear harvest, stick-knocking them off the branches in the way olives were harvested from olive trees in Old Italy. (Or so I have read, being the offspring of many Old World, olive-loving Old Italians.) Bill sent me packing from my visit that day with way more Appalachian pear tree pears than a suburban lad could rightly consume. But if you listen closely and take notes, you can hear his recipe for baked pears and ice cream. Which, I am happy to note, he has served this pal more than once on past visits to Hartlandia.
No. 3: Stealing from the Best
SOME OF BILL’S INSTRUMENTS look as if they arrived here on a spaceship from another solar system. The stick bass seen in this video, shot in August 2019, has a more terrestrial origin. Its shape was inspired by the “Bird in Space” sculpture motif, a preoccupation of Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, a pioneer of modernism in art and one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th century. The shape was his effort to distill the heart of a bird’s wing into sculptural form. Might, then, Bill’s stripped-down instrument be christened a ‘Bass in Space’?
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