On Tuesday, Bob Brundage (caller for over 60 years), Lynda Haack (dancer and incoming president of the New Mexico Central District Square and Round Dance Association), Bill Litchman (president of the Lloyd Shaw Foundation and Director of the Lloyd Shaw Archives) and I met with a freelance journalist assigned to write an article on square dancing in Albuquerque for the weekly entertainment section of one of our local papers. It was a good interview, covered a lot of ground, and made the reporter want to take up square dancing <g>. She got to hear about both MWSD and traditional squares (Bob has called in both venues, Bill was trained in the Lloyd Shaw tradition in Colorado, I like contra and traditional, even though I only call MWSD). It’ll be interesting to see how the article falls out.

While I was at the Lloyd Shaw Archives (where the interview took place), Bill Litchman showed me (and I immediately purchased) a couple of CDs done for the Archives.

One is a two-CD set of hoedown music from the old Sets in Order records, originally released in the 1950’s. The records, owned by the archives, were digitally processed to remove surface noise and scratches and extended to about 9 minutes apiece to acommodate patter calling. These are all traditional tunes, with traditional instrumentation (except for Chicken Plucker and Guitar Fancy, which have some electric guitar and drums).

The other is Allemande Left! An evening of Western Traditional Square Dancing, which features Bill Litchman calling traditional squares to the music of the Sandia Hots. This is great for listening to a traditional caller both teach and call material that would be excellent for a dance party.

The CDs were produced by and to benefit the Lloyd Shaw Archives and are being sold for $15/per CD ($30 for the hoedowns, $15 for Allemande Left) plus $3 S&H. If you’re interested (and I hope you are), contact Bill.

The Hoedown CD set was also coordinated by Margot Gunzenhauser, a traditional square and contra dance caller from Denmark. Bill Litchman went to Denmark recently to do a callers school for traditional western square dancer callers; there were 50 people taking the school. That’s an amazing number for any caller school, let alone one for traditional squares in a small country like Denmark.