Episode 22 - Nils Fredland

Contra Pulse

The intro and interstitial tracks from today's episode are all by Elixir - Divine Reel/Langstaff Library, Lulu's Back in Town, and Ringstead from the album Anybody's Guess, and I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter and Bransle/Tom Kruskal's from the album Rampant.

See the Contra Pulse website for transcripts and more.

And the Country Dance and Song Society for information about Contra and English country dance across the continent.

See and hear Nils Fredland in action:

• Calling “The Auctioneer” singing square with Nor’easter at Ashokan Northern Week in 2014
• Crowd surfing at Contrastock 2011 at the Spanish Ballroom in Glen Echo, MD
• Here’s Nils calling for the DC Square Dance Collective, with the Horseflies playing
• Here’s a video that shows the huge number of dancers
• This video shows what Nils described about having no stage.
• Here’s Nils calling with DJ Improper at the Wednesday night Amherst, MA dance in 2012
• Elixir‘s website
• Nils and Elixir at ContraShock 2018
• Nils and Elixir at Glen Echo, MD in 2012
• Playing with Johnny Socko, the ska band
• Listen to Monkey Puzzle, Nils’s a capella group from Bloomington, on Spotify
• On the Beat with Ralph Sweetis available for purchase in the CDSS web store
• Here’s Ralph calling “The Auctioneer” with Elixir and other musicians playing at the book launch dance in 2010
• Nils is currently the Artistic Director for Revels North

Some dances and events mentioned in this interview:

• DC’s 10-hour event called Contrastock is still happening during non-COVID times
• TheDC Square Dance Collective is alive and well during non-COVID times, too
• Spark in the Dark is a series of techno contra events that BIDA has hosted
• More techno contra videos:
• Buddy System at LEAF in 2015
• Buddy System at LEAF in 2016
• We’re still looking for a video of the PJ song and of a techno square. Let us know if you have these!

Some musical groups mentioned in this interview:

• Here’s a video of Mock Turtle Soup from 2011
• Here’s a video of Popcorn Behavior from 1996, around the time Nils first contra danced to them

Some odds and ends mentioned in this interview:

• As Nils mentioned, Ralph’s family’s barn, the Powder Mill Barn in Enfield, CT, is still around and available for a wide variety of events
• The Ralph Sweet’s All-Stars recording Nils mentioned is called Shindig in the Barn
• Here’s a video of Lisa Greenleaf calling the 16-person dance Nils mentioned—Rod’s Quad #2