Tiny Circus Blues

This tiny project included my first published performance of the blues: 25 seconds of improv humming for an animated cartoon called The History of Blue (from 1:15 to 1:40 in the video below).



My son Shane helped with animating and sound effects, notably the wolf whistle.   We're in this photo watching as the video is shot frame by frame.

Creating video stills with Tiny Circus, July 3, 2010, at ICON in Fairfield.
Shane Welty is in foreground under a camouflage cap, operating editing software.
I'm standing at the back wall with long hair over right shoulder.
Torrey Witherspoon is seated in front of me.

The art gallery ICON hosted Tiny Circus and Fairfield participants in their activity room (pictured above).  After the topic "The History of Blue" was chosen, we needed a story line.   We tossed around lots of ideas and considered every notion of "blue" ~ the sky, pigments and paints, fabric dyes, the water cycle, the rainbow, cold weather, and others.   My mind gravitated to love and heartbreak since that's what I write about in my songs, so I suggested that as a storyline and they ran with it.

We made sound effects in ICON's basement.  Torrey Witherspoon played mandolin for the happy-dancing first part of the video and voiced the sighing transition.   I don't remember the name of the young man who strummed chords on Torrey's mandolin for the end where I hummed.   He said he had just begun learning blues and knew one chord progression.   Well, that's all we needed.

Tiny Circus wrote about the day on their blog.   If you know other details about this day (like the strummer's name), please tell me and I'll add to the story.