Welcome to my site. It's here to promote the projects I'm currently working on as well as document the ones I've worked on in the past. It's a chronicle of my explorations in calling square dances, teaching fiddle, performing music, building instruments, organizing communities, studying nature,  and being a wandering hobo.

It's part resume and part history project.

I hope you like it.  Let me know.  michael (dot) ismerio (at) gmail (dot) com

Upcoming Events in 2012

Wed.  Feb. 1st - Melody of Bowing workshop, Oakland, CA

Thurs. Feb. 2nd - Square dance calling workshop, 2545 Hillegass Ave, Berkeley, CA

Fri. Feb. 3rd - Calling dances at The First Friday North Oakland Square Dance.at the fabulous (and intimate) Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 8-10pm,6501 Telegraph Ave (off of Alcatraz),Oakland, CA 

Sat. Feb. 11th - Basics of Bowing workshop, Tucson, AZ

Sun. Feb. 12th - Square dance calling workshop, Tucson, AZ

Sun. Feb. 12th - Square Dance, Tucson, AZ

Fri. Feb, 17th - Concert (with Brain Bagdonas) El Cosmico, Marfa, TX

Sat. Feb. 18th - Concert (with Brian Bagdonas) Starlight Theater, Terlingua, TX

Sat. Feb. 25th - Square Dance Calling workshop, Austin, TX

Sat. Feb. 25th - Square Dance, Carpenters Hall, 400 Josephine st, Austin, TX

Sun. Feb. 26th - Fiddle workshops, Austin, TX

Sat. March 17th - Square Dance, Whitesburg, KY

Fri. March 23rd - Square Dance, Berea, KY

Fri-Sun May 4-6th  I'll be teaching square dance calling at Dare To Be Square in Riner, VA

Sun - Sun July 1-8th Fiddle Tutor at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, Port Townsend, WA

Thurs. August 2nd, Calling dances, Appalachian String Band Festival, Clifftop, WV

Fri. & Sat. Sept. 7th and 8th, Calling dances, Rockbridge Festival,  Buena Vista, VA

What's New in 2012?

January 2012- Get In The Square Dance Van

After nearly 8 years of bumming rides off of others I have finally rejoined the world of car ownership by purchasing a low mileage '85 Toyota van.  I'm very much in honeymoon stage with my van right now but I'm going to put it to the test by driving nearly 4,000 miles on a winter square dance tour from Portland, OR to Asheville, NC through the southwest and Texas. I'll be leaving Portland on Jan. 24th.  Let me know if you are on my route.

January 2012- Appalachian Sound Archives Fellowship

Amazing! I just found out that my proposal to Berea College's Appalachian Sound Archives Fellowship was accepted.  I will be spending the month of March deep in the archives in Berea, Kentucky researching traditional Appalachian square dance callers and east Kentucky dance communities as well as trying to document some current Kentucky callers.  My research there will eventually lead to a square dance callers resource page that will soon materialize here on my website.

November 2011- Shoemaking: The Sequel

Fall on the west coast. It may not be as spectacular as the east but it sure is pleasant and mild. I made it back to Portland to study shoe making again and finished my third pair of shoes. Once more I studied with Jason Hovatter at Laughing Crowe Leatherworks. And once more I'm delighted with the results. I've found the whole shoe making process to be incredibly empowering. So much so that I'm now in the process of getting set up so that soon I will begin teaching others to make their own shoes.

July 2011- Beijing Nights - Old Time Hits China

In May I was invited to China for two weeks to call square dances for Americans living in Beijing.  A generous businessman named Mark Atkeson had square danced at his wedding 20 years ago and decided to spread the joy to his friends in Beijing.  He teamed me up with a top notch crew of American musicians living and working in Beijing.  Matt Forney, the banjo player, was my host and teacher.  A journalist in Beijing for the last 20 years, Forney was able to answer my innumerable questions about China with incredibly detailed responses as well as insights into their cultural context. 

Fiddler Amy Gardner, guitarist Kirk Kenney, and bassist Jackson Garland rounded out the team and together we performed 2 two hour concerts and got people moving at two square dances, one of which was in a former Daoist temple.  Any night that we weren't performing we would meet up at a bar and play music until the wee hours only to repeat it the next evening. It has been years since I had been part of a band and it felt amazing. By the end of my stay we were an impressively tight band.  For two weeks they lead me by the hand through Beijing showing me around, educating me, making me laugh, ordering for me, and translating everything with incredible enthusiasm.  Many thanks to my crew in China.

I have posted a photo and text show of my China trip here.

May 2011 - I'm in China!  Calling square dances.  More stories soon.

March 2011 - The Ancient Art of Shoe Making

The latest endeavor in my quest for handmade everything has led me down the path of shoe making.  In January 2010 I met Jason Hovatter who teaches shoe making and leather working out of his home workshop in Portland, Oregon.  This winter I made it back to take one of his classes and make my own shoes. There is nothing like having a pair of shoes made to fit your own feet.  I fell in love with the process and ended up making two pairs of 10th century Scandinavian turn-shoes.   Check out the photo show I just posted of the whole process.  I hope to get set up soon with a little shoe making workshop of my own. 

Check out Jason's classes in Portland and go make some shoes of your own.

Feb. 2011 - Let's Go Bloomington - Square Dance at the Bishop Bar

Let's Go Bloomington, a local cable access arts & entertainment show, aired this story about our monthly square dance featuring Brad Leftwich & the Hogwire String Band

Feb. 2011 - The Porch Swing - Real Stories By Real People

Bloomington is lucky enough to have an incredible community radio station, WFHB, that is chock full of great shows including a top notch Old Time Music show called Train 45.  A group called the Bloomington Story Tellers Project recently started a weekly show called the Porch Swing that features local people telling true, unscripted stories on the radio.  This past Sunday they aired a story I told them about being robbed on the beach while naked by three young boys on horseback during my first ever trip to Mexico.  It's episode 17 if you go looking for it.

Feb. 2011 - Musical Fluency - Excuse me, Do you speak fiddle?

Music is a language.  Old Time fiddle music is a dialect of that language.  When I think about it that way it changes the way I view Old Time music and the way that I teach it.  I recently teamed up with my friend Willem Larsen to redesign my Old Time Bowing workshop based on the realizations that he has made teaching spoken language.  Willem is part of a really exciting project called Where Are Your Keys? who's goal is to help establish thriving  language communities with efficient learning and teaching techniques.  The project was originally designed to help revive endangered indigenous languages but has grown in scope and is now being applied in broader communities.  One thing they have figured out is that learning is faster when it is fun and done in groups, essentially learning should be a game.  My workshop has always been a version of follow-the-leader but with Willem's help we have figured out what helps people learn and what gets in their way and adjusted accordingly.  Willem posted this video on his website of our results based on the workshop I did recently in Portland, OR.  The workshop was really fun to teach and the response was incredibly positive.

One change I made is that I have posted Mp3's of the tunes and the bowing rhythms that I teach in the bowing workshop on the Living History page of my website so instead of taking up valuable workshop time recording tunes you can now download them or listen to them before you even show up.

Jan. 2011 - Square dancing on the little screen

These days calling square dances is one of the main things that keeps me busy and moving around the country but I realized that I didn't have any good visuals for someone interested in square dancing but unsure of what a modern traditional square dance might look like.  Well, Doug Plummer, a fabulous Seattle videographer was kind enough to put together this short video of me calling a dance at the Portland Old Time Music Gathering back in 2009.   Check out my Square Dance Caller page for more info

Michael Ismerio, caller from Doug Plummer on Vimeo.

Jan. 2011 - Hearth Music Listening Lounge

After many years as the music director for the Seattle Folk Life Festival, my good friend, and fabulous human being, Devon Leger has gone solo and created his own music and arts promotion agency called Hearth Music. Along with an incredibly flattering bio of me Devon has created a space for my music in his "listening lounge" where I get to rub virtual elbows with the likes of Caleb Klauder, Black Bird Raum, The Haints, The Water Tower Bucket Boys, Pokey LaFarge, Squirrel Butter, Famille Leger and a bunch more of the finest roots musicians in the North West. Take a peak at it. You just might stumble upon your new favorite band.

Dec. 2010- The world gets smaller

I've just moved into my smallest living space yet.  It's interior dimensions are 7.5 by 7.5 feet for a spacious 56 square feet of personal space.  I built a loft that folds up  to give me more daytime workspace and installed an indoor propane heater to enable me to stay cozy despite the 3 degrees that it dropped to last night.  I've begun surrounding my shack with bird feeders so that I can claim ornithological studies as I lay on my loft and stare out the window.  With the loft folded up I could probably host a four person jam session but will have to stop short of a square dance.

So far Indiana is giving me the sunny snowy weather I was hoping for.  People warned me of gray weather akin to the northwest but so far so good.  We got about 5 inches of snow the day I took this picture and it's been sunny ever since.  Hopefully it will stick around.

Sept. 2010 - Lotus

A big reason for my moving to Bloomington, Indiana is the impressive amount of musicians and the incredible support for music that exists here.  One of the main manifestations of that support is the Lotus World Music and Arts Festival.  For four days downtown Bloomington is taken over by music and musicians from all over the world. Twenty five artists performed on eight stages within a few blocks of each other right downtown.  Thousands of wrist-banded people traveled from stage to stage  listening to which ever band caught their ear.  The festival is all volunteer-run with 400 volunteers taking part this year; including me.  It was my first year and I was really impressed with both the incredible organization of the festival as well as the high quality of the music.  I'm a sucker for world music so I was in heaven for days.  Some of my favorites included:  Cimarron- a Joropo band from Columbia whose music is closely related to Son Jarocho from Mexico.  Vishten- playing traditional music from the Prince Edward Islands, Canada,  Barbara Fortuna - a stunning acappella quartet from Corsica,  and Genticorum- a fiddle driven trio from Quebec. 

July 2010 - Back up and Push

I  just returned from the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, Washington where my friends Jason and Pharis Romero (banjo and guitar) released their brand new CD "Back Up And Push"  Jason and Pharis traveled the west coast backing up and recording one tune each with some of their favorite fiddlers spanning from San Francisco to Vancouver, British Columbia.  It is a fabulous CD and I was fortunate enough to be included in the project. 

Here is my recording of "Shipping Port" from the CD.

March 2010- Spring in Indiana

Spring hit today, March 16, in Bloomington, Indiana, my new home of eight days. The Red Maples were the first to blossom; little red nubs of color amidst the gray tree line. The Robins and Cardinals have been singing for days. It reached sixty degrees today and everyone was outside. Bloomington is a small town and you see everyone you know out on the streets; a trait that lured me here. I just spent twenty five months on the road, traveling all over the US, three months in South America, and a little bit in Canada. I'm exhausted and ready to settle down. I'm ready to have a home, a room, a kitchen, a community... People ask why Bloomington? The short answer is that I like the people. People are friendly here, real friendly. That makes it easier to be the new kid in town. And the music! There seems to be way more musicians here than most towns this size.   I'm calling my first public square dance here this Friday with the hopes of making it a monthly dance. So far the odds seem good.

January 2010 - A Week In The Village.

I spent this past week in Portland participating in a five day skill share organized by TrackersNW called the Nature of the Village, The week was loosely structured but jam packed. It was organized using a model called Open Space that uses few rules but requires the participants to take ownership and responsibility for what they want to learn and what they want to share with others. Each day was decided and organized by those who were there to learn and share. It worked amazingly well and I saw energy, knowledge and creativity bursting out of people as the week progressed. In five days I learned about knot tying, knife sharpening, bird language, bow making, wilderness survival kits, making red cedar tincture, awareness games, bow-drill making, and coyote skinning, And that was just the workshops that I attended. I missed out on many more. I also shared with people my knowledge of making tin can wood/gas stoves and singing in three part harmony; both of which were well received and appreciated.  The constant throughout the week was the building of a 25 foot Umiak, a traditional skin-on-frame whaling boat, that utilized energy from the entire group over the course of the week. By Friday the wooden frame was complete and ready for the skin. Friday night capped off the village week with a wild and local foods potluck, a talent show, and me leading folks through some square dances.

I have a few days to rest before the next jam packed social event, The Portland Old Time Music Gathering which, starts this week. It will be crazy, fun, and socially overwhelming as usual. And, of course, chock full of amazing music.

Next stop Louisiana. See you there?

December 2009

I tend to be a seasonal wanderer who easily falls into routines.  I'm upholding my late fall routine with another visit to British Columbia and my dear friends Jason and Pharis Romero on Vancouver Island.  They were keeping busy building Jason's 200th banjo.  I was helping out around the shop by day and playing music by night.  Jason and Pharis are two of my very favorite musicians and I look forward to this time of year with them. 

October 2009

This is my friend Greg.  He is a gem of an individual.  He lives in Bloomington, Indiana where he recently out did himself as one of the best hosts ever.  I had my own room, he took me swimming in the infamous Bloomington rock quarries (shown below), he sewed up the butt of my pants that were wearing out, and he helped me edit, crop, tweak, and color correct the two newest photo shows that I just posted on the photos page. They are photos of a canoe trip and the human powered carnival; both of which took place in the wilds of Vermont.  Greg is an amazing photographer. see for yourself:  www.gregclarkephotography.com.

After an amazing summer of bicycles, music and eastern woodlands, I myself am back on the west coast.  I'll be here for most of the fall and winter.  I hope to see you while I'm here.

June 2009

I just posted photos of my South America trip on the photographic evidence page of my website.  Now I am spending the summer riding my bicycle around the eastern U.S. visiting friends, watching birds, going to music festivals, and swimming.  Let me know if you are hanging around Indiana at all.

March 2009

I'm currently wrapping up two months in Brazil where I have been traveling and meeting my fathers side of the family including my three half siblings that I have not seen since I was a child. This is a trip I have procrastinated for 18 years for no good reason. Now that I'm here I'm wondering why I didn't contact my family years ago, especially since they live two blocks from the beach in Ipanema, Rio de Janiero.

It's been really amazing to get to know my brother and sisters and learn about my father, a man I barely knew. We've been combing over the scrapbooks and sharing the few stories we know of that elusive man. The biggest surprise to me is finding out that my father in 1958, at the tender age of 22, convinced the Rio de Janiero newspaper he worked for to fund him while he attempted to hitchhike around the world in 800 days. They agreed and he set off heading south through Argentina then up through Chile and the rest of the countries in South America until finally giving up in Panama almost a year after leaving Rio.

I'm going to have to do some library searching to find the dispatches he sent back to be published in the newspaper, but my family has tons of clippings from newspapers around the continent announcing the young explorers arrival in each country. It is pretty funny to read his quotes as unofficial ambassador of Brazil saying such things as "Women in Brazil don't have to work, the men do it all" and "the workers of Brazil are paid enough to meet all their needs". Even in 1958 that was probably a mouth full.   The photo above is my father somewhere in South America.  Cool bike, eh?

March 2009 - Not Your Grandparent´s Square Dance.

A seattle videographer Doug plummer just made this great four minute video about square dancing in Portland featuring interviews with Bill Martin and myself.

Not Your Grandparent's Square Dance from Doug Plummer on Vimeo.

March 2009 - The Swinging Pendulum of Luck (Brazil Notes)

I guess I have to admit that my normally sharpened travel senses were getting a little dulled. Since I arrived in Rio de Janeiro I had been lulled into the ease of depending on my Portuguese – speaking, Brazilian, half brother, Fernando, to do all the talking and logistics for the both of us, allowing me to space out and forget that I too had responsibilities.

After a week in Rio getting acquainted with my paternal family my brother decided to accompany me to the organic cacao farm/ permaculture project in the state of Bahia that I would be working on for the next three weeks. The farm, Fazenda Abracadabra, is an hour walk from the nearest town. On that walk I commented to Fernando about the extra weight of carrying my fiddle strapped to my backpack and how some times I questioned whether it was worth lugging around all the time.

We arrived at the farm in time for lunch, coffee and afternoon socializing.
After several hours it seemed an appropriate time to introduce everyone to my fiddle, except that my fiddle was not strapped to its customary place on my pack. I had left it on the bus along with my journal.

I was bummed but trying to stay calm.

I was trying to figure out what to do while simultaneously realizing that I had paid so little attention that I didn´t even know where the bus was headed.

I still had my ticket with the bus company´s telephone number and my brother had a cell phone so we tried to climb up the nearest hill to see if we could get his phone to work. no luck. We returned to the fazenda then finally walked an hour back into town to try to use the lone pay phone.

On the walk I had to come to terms with the idea that my fiddle was gone forever. And my journal as well. I had heard so many Brazil crime horror stories that I couldn´t imagine that there would be a lost and found somewhere containing my lonely fiddle. It was gone and I would just have to deal with it. I was trying to be as calm as possible and not freak out. Ironically just before boarding that bus I had emailed a friend, whose fiddle I loved, to tell her that her fiddle had inspired me to start searching for a better fiddle of my own. I had no idea how soon that search might begin.

We arrived in the dirt road town of Agua Fria where we hatched a plan to call Fernando´s mother for telephone calling assistance since we were limited by a crappy pay phone and a dying phone card. The moment she answered the phone I saw a bus rounding the corner into town. I frantically ran into the road flagging down the bus. It was the same bus we been on but this time going the opposite direction. The bus came to a stop and the driver held up my fiddle and journal; six hours after I had left them on the bus. If we had arrived minutes later we would have missed that bus.

Absolutely amazing. I guess my fiddle wants me. and my journal too.

But the pendulum did not stop swinging there. Only a week later, due to one misstep, I fell into the river with my brand new mp3 player in my pocket. I tried to shake out as much water as I could but the thing seemed toast. Two days later I tried to play my fiddle but the back started peeling open in the intense heat and humidity of Brazil.

Luckily after two weeks of drying out my mp3 player came back to life. My fiddle on the other hand would sit idle collecting tropical molds for two months while I searched out a luthier to glue it back together. There are not many violin shops in Brazil. Perhaps the weather has something to do with it.

Up next: Argentina and Chile

You can check out the Fazenda Abracadabra at:
http://fazenda.abracadabra.over-blog.com/
Or their photos page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24706599@N08

Fall 2008

Rumours are spreading that I've emigrated to Canada. It's not true, but I'll probably be spending more time there. I spent one month this fall helping out and hanging around the work shop of Romero Banjos on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The shop is the husband and wife team of Jason and Pharis Romero and they graciously took me in and gave me a little trailer to live in while I watched and learned the art of fine instrument building. I followed through the whole banjo building process while they did a limited edition run of banjos.  On the side I managed to finish a banjo of mine that I had started with Jason a year earlier. We spent every day together for an entire month and by the end of it we didn't want to kill each other. That's much harder than building banjos. Check out their website at www.romerobanjos.com

Mexico Tour Update from May 2007

This is an old update but I like it so I figured I'd keep it here.

Hello friends, I just returned from an amazing 7 week tour in Mexico playing electric guitar with my friends the Can Kickers, an old time/punk band from Connecticut

We were on tour with a band from Mexico City called Polka Madre y La Comezon in their white Chevy van they dubbed "Moby Dick". We were at minimum 9 people in the van and peaked out at a cozy 15 people piling in along with all our equipment, a neon "Polka Madre" sign, and boxes of animal-bone stage props.

Through a combination of lot's of phone calls, emails and a willingness to play anywhere Polka Madre managed to set us up an unheard of 27 shows around mexico.

We went from fancy bars to dive bars, to punk shows in squats, a small village festival on the coast of Oaxaca, in a park full of families, in a bookstore, in plazas and streetcorners, in community centers, and on a beach filled with international backpackers and mexican hippies.

We played in Xalapa, Cholula, Oaxaca, Juchitan, Mazunte, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, San Luis Potosi, Morelia, Guadalajara, Acapulco, and about a dozen shows in Mexico City.

Going in to it we had no idea how people in Mexico would react to our music but our shows were really well recieved. And in some cases the energy and dancing were crazier than anything I've seen in the states in years. At a punk show in Mexico City I was lifted above the audience and crowd surfed for the first time ever.

There were, of course, a ton of amazing experiences between all the waiting around for things to happen. We went to the butterfly sanctuary in Michoacan and saw millions of Monarch Butterflies floating around waiting for winter to end so they could head back north. In a squat in San Luis Potosi I taught the incredibly enthusiastic, self-described "Hobbit Punks" how to dance the Virginia Reel. I visited Las Grutas de Tolantongo, which is a hot springs waterfall that shoots out of the mouth of the cave and turns into a river of warm water. And flows down through an amazingly deep canyon. In Oaxaca City we were treated like ambassadors and spent the several days wandering it's streets which were even more beautiful by night. In Juchitan we played a festival of resistance for a 70 family village that was fighting to keep a shimp factory farm from taking over their land.

And on the beach in Mazunte, my favorite beach in the world, I reached heaven while seamlessly spending 5 hours playing fiddle in a beach jam session that started with the Can Kickers playing old time music, than morphed into Polka Madre playing eastern European music and finally into a Son Jarocho (traditional music from Southern Veracruz) jam with a group of random musicians who were drawn our way. The whole while an endless stream of beer and mezcal was presented before us to keep the music going.