I found a quiet spot (that wasn’t my home) to play my fiddle during the pandemic–a room at The Adler House, in Libertyville, Illinois. I usually go to the practice rooms at the music department of the local college, College of Lake County, when I want a real piano to suss out chords. But anyway, this was a step up–a nice big room.

I’m not sure why I wrote this reel in measures of three beats but I’ve always played around with beats to the bar. I particularly like what happens in the third measure of the second part. There’s a little play there, where I think of the first beat being on its own in that measure, and then the two beats after being together. Think: 1-2-3 | 1-2-3 | 1-1-2 | 1-2-3. Kinda fun!

Mirella Murray, the great piano accordion player with Cherish the Ladies, after learning about my and dancer Kieran Jordan’s harrowing walk in Manhattan late at night, thought someone should write a tune and that it should be called, with homage to Joanie Madden’s The Cat’s Meow, The Rat’s Meow. I submitted this one to her and the gang. The first part is, or can be, scary, while the second part’s melody is happy–us arriving at our destination unscathed.