The Orchid Journal

The above is a close up of my cello, Frederick, that I took two years ago. Over the past alomost fifteen years of playing, I have had various dreams about my cello. One dream I remember that I was trying to play my cello and the strings were all made of different colors of thin ribbons. As you can imagine, this didn't help with the sound. I had that dream during a time when I wasn't playing my cello much and I missed it a lot and felt that I was losing touch with it. Last night, I had a disturbing dream that played upon some recent valid fears. First some background info: On Wednesday, I brought my 150 year old cello to the shop because I have been having problems with the "A" string suddenly lowering so close to the fingerboard that it vibrates against it when I use the bow and makes a horrendous noise. I also suspected the sound post (located inside the cello undernerneath the bridge) had shifted. Lately, I have also noticed more cracks appearing and that th...

This is the name of the group my friend Layne and I have formed just for fun. We came up with the name in a Irish pub one evening from words we saw on signs and bottle labels around the pub. We liked the way it sounded and the imagery it brought to mind. Since our names our often butchered, we thought it would be better to have a "band" name so that when we play at open mic nights or something, we don't have to cringe and roll our eyes when we are announced. After we agreed on the name, we discovered that the name Lemon Abbey is perfect for other reasons: 1. It has a lyrical sound to it 2. "L" and "A" are the first two letters of both of our names 3. the combination of lemon (sunny yellow, fresh, quirky) and abbey (deep, spiritual) kind of fits both of our personalities and matches the music we try to play/sing 4. It sounds folksy which also matched the music we play We've just been having fun making music together for church and open mic nigh...