We headed up to winter playground country in Austria and to the club Alte Muhle in Scharnitz, a small ski village high in the Alps. It’s just a few kilometers from Mittenwald,Germany, a major center of violin making from the 1800’s on. No time to wander that way though. Alte Muhle has been run for nine years by Richard, another fan of American roots music.

He was a very friendly guy but seemed a little quiet and self-conscious about his
English. We noticed that with a few people on the trip, and it amazed us that although we were the visitors in their country and spoke almost no German, they were apologizing for not knowing our language better.

The club is in a very old house with frescoed exteriors (in the technique known as lüftlmalerei) that are typical to these small villages in the Alps.

Richard did make us feel at home, fed us good pizza and beer, and left us to set up. It was a comfortable room with good acoustics as you can see from this video from the sound check.

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While we were getting ready to play, we talked about the chances of a friend of ours (Doug from St. Louis, who now lives in Prague) making an appearance.

He had traveled with One Fell Swoop on a couple of European tours and said he’d try to get to a show this time round. We were close to the end of our tour, still we decided he surely wouldn’t make it to this little, remote place. But he shocked us all and made the long trip by train. It was good to see him and talk about previous tours, and hear about life in Prague.

This was definitely part of the “Small but Mighty” arm of the tour, with maybe fifteen people in the room. Richard had said that this might be the case since it was our first time there and it was off season (there is skiing in the winter and various extreme sports in the summer). But the crowd really enjoyed the music. I talked with one couple (mainly the wife, I don’t think the husband spoke much English) during the break, and found that they were regulars at the club and enjoyed hearing American acoustic music when they had the chance.

She wanted to know about the instruments — the electric upright bass, the mandolin, the dobro — and what is this “cheating songs?” A couple of our songs were introduced as cheating songs, and she had no idea what that was, so I explained to her the long, proud tradition of cheating songs in country music. I don’t think I got the idea fully across, though. After I explained, she just gave a serious look and said, “Hmm, cheating songs.” Not one of my better American culture lessons.

The next morning we woke up with marching-band music in the street. A small band in traditional dress played for only a few minutes (it is a small town, after all), passing in front of the church across the street followed by a group of white-robed chiidren making their hlerstkommunion (First Communion).

We got some pictures of them a little later, when they regrouped for the returning 3 block march.

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