Cordwood Masonry Acoustics

As I wrote last time, I'm excited (me, Mr. Mellow, excited, yup!) about the final appearance of some of my recorded music. Actually, 'excited' doesn't cover it; I'm having a hard time thinking about anything else, except for that new song I'm working on, which may be even better. The physical CDs just arrived, sounding great, and the cover art (photo by my Honey) came out perfectly. Since I can't think about anything else right now, I'm going to elaborate on this recording project.

Music from a cordwood masonry mead-hall!

I've been writing music for a long time, and in the last couple of years, after falling in love with my Honey, that creative impulse has just skyrocketed. Finding that my heart is where it belongs, finally, has been amazingly good for my writing and composing.

 Months ago I asked my friend James Lindenschmidt of Crafted Recordings, who has all kinds of recording expertise, for pointers about getting some recording done. To my delight, he offered to help out, volunteering his considerable skills, at least in part because he had been wanting to try some recording in our house. The mead-hall, our central room with twelve-foot-plus ceilings, cordwood walls, and an adjoining space with gracefully curved walls, has great acoustic qualities. 

His version of this may be different, but here's why I think the space is so good for music. Cordwood masonry is not flat. It has a combination of very hard and somewhat hard surfaces, curves, and little angled segments all over it. So while it bounces sound nicely (compared to a curtained room, for example), it doesn't sound at all like a tiled space or a stairwell, with that complicated echo on top of everything. Not only that, but it is a magical space, made by hand with love, using natural local materials, and it is the perfect place for me to record my music. After all, it's where I write most of it, and it's where my Honey and I first met. Unless somebody tells me otherwise, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this is the first professional music recording in a cordwood masonry space!

James and I have much in common, including acoustic music, a similarly spiritual way of living in the world and a long-standing love of mead and mead-brewing. My first experience with his recording expertise was when he interviewed me years ago for his excellent blog, Bardic Brews. Back then, he made me feel very much at ease in front of a microphone, and this time was no different, except that it involved more microphones! Then he put in many hours fine-tuning everything for me. The end result is a very good presentation of my and my songwriting at its current best, and I can't say enough about how sweetly he worked with the very raw material. Please check out the music, which is downloadable from most mainstream venues, as Harper Meader's EP, "Honey."

Coming up, I'll talk in detail about some of the songs in particular, and also about why I like Bandcamp. Stay tuned...

Long Time Coming

Check out my (at last!) recording at bandcamp.com

I guess you may have noticed, if you are a regular reader of mine, that I have been absent for way too long. Sorry about that! Here's what's going on...

A long-time friend of mine, James Lindenschmidt of Bardic Brews and Crafted Recordings, offered to help me with some recording. I have been a musician for my whole adult life, playing folk harp, fingerstyle guitar, hammered dulcimer, and an assortment of other instruments, but in the recent past my songwriting went into overdrive, fed by the life changes that came with falling deeply in love. Happily, my musicianship has kept pace with my heart and my writing aspirations, and I have a steadily-growing collection of really good songs to show for it! 

I went into overdrive, consulting with my Honey about which were the best songs to break out with, practicing like mad, making sure I had the words just the way they should be...and new songs kept intruding! But eventually, just a couple of weeks ago, Jim came to Ironwood Hollow, toting all sorts of esoteric equipment, and Honey left us to our own devices. He told me that he has always wanted to try recording in our home, with its very unique acoustics that come from the cordwood masonry, the high ceilings, and the curved walls. 

Long story as short as possible, we had about three hours of good recording time all to ourselves, and in that time we recorded six of my songs. For each of them, I played my solo arrangement and sang at the same time, then went back and recorded a harmony track and a second guitar track in some cases. The one that sticks in my mind the most is when I said, "Jim, let me just hear the tune, and I'll play through the lead guitar, and see if I remember how it goes..." When I was finished, he just said, "Oh yeah, I was recording; that's great. What's next?" 

Six songs of spiritual love recorded in a cordwood masonry meadhall!

It was that kind of session. Jim's knowledge of recording and innate calm made it a pure pleasure. Followed by many hours of his skilled time mixing and mastering, one of the finest gifts I've ever received, this session has turned into an EP of a small sampling of my recent music. (An EP is an extended play, several songs, but not long enough to be called a CD). I have been working my way through the process of making the songs available, now that Jim has declared the tracks finished. Actual CDs are in process, and I'll post details about that when it's all set up. In the meantime, harpermeader.bandcamp.com is where to go to hear them. I hope you will purchase all or some of them for download! Bandcamp offers music affordably, with the option of paying anywhere from a minimum up to what you feel the music is worth. They will appear in the other usual venues shortly (itunes, amazon, etc), as that process does its thing. 

The changes in my life and my heart that my Honey has brought to me are only hinted at in these songs, but I am so pleased to be able to share a bit of that joy with you. There will be more, since I've determined to make songwriting a major part of my future. Stay tuned. Among these songs you will find a steamy celebration of midsummer loving (Magic in the Moonlight), a rousing sailing song (Snapping Sails), the perfect tune for when you're storm-stayed with your love (Snowdrift Love), a partial-capoed pattern-picked epic-love-song for the guitarists among us, with a nod to the great love-poet, Rumi, (The Glassblower's Breath), and more.

I hope that you like my work. My hope is that this project will fund the next recording, and that my love of music, words, spirit, life, and my Honey will become something more than a hobby, that it will bring a piece of that joy that is my life into the homes of many.

Okay, a final note...anywhere else you find my songs, they're likely to cost about the same, but at bandcamp, you get the lyrics for free, and you can hear the whole song right there before you decide to part with a dollar or two. Also, just sayin'...as one of my blog-readers, you know where to find me. If you play, and want to know my chords, or get a hint about the picking patterns that I use, you know where to find me. 

Men and Wood

If you have been reading right along, you already know that I have an affinity for wood. Trees are metaphor-rich, and I love metaphors. Some of my best childhood memories are about wood, from watching Dad build first a gunning float, and then a sailing dory, in our suburban basement when I was little, to building my teenage muscle by carrying anything I could of the trees he cut down for firewood, to earning minimum wage splitting enormous elm trunks by hand during one long and memorable summer. The memories are many, and powerful. 

Half your wood, and half your hay...

This winter, having a newly-enlarged family in the house, We've been going through more firewood, and that means cutting more firewood. That work has been lightened by having boys to help, and I am so very conscious that this work is my chance to help them gain similar memories, metaphors, and strengths of their own. Just as I remember my father teaching me how to spot cherry in a woodpile by the orange color of the heartwood as it seasons, how to measure out four feet quickly by waving the chainsaw over the log a certain way, how to bring down a snagged tree safely, I hope they remember decades from now these days of learning some of the same "guy-stuff" knowledge.

Don't get me wrong; I'm all on board with women doing heavy lifting and using power tools. It's just that working with wood is one of those few remaining arenas where men can almost always find common ground and a sense of shared humanity. In the last week three different men have stalled at the store, clearly not wanting to get back to their work or errands, because we got to talking about wood. Just today I spent a full hour talking about thermal mass, drafts, recirculating masonry-stove heat, and the relative merits of pellet stoves, with a man who obviously was thrilled to talk shop with another guy. Last Friday I spent a similar hour with a man who shares an interest in music with me, but who had never stayed so long to talk about guitars even though he is in the store nearly every week.

An ironwood sprig on the woodshed when it was new.

Last summer I spent one day with friends helping them cut and carry cedar logs for their planned cordwood masonry building project. It was gasping, back-wrenching, sweat-soaking work, and I felt like a dishrag afterward. But those few hours of grinning at each other through the flying wood-chips and mixed-gas smoke, joking while carrying logs too big to be exactly good for our backs, conferring about which way to drop a particularly tricky tree, all brought Ben and me much closer than we had been before. I eagerly await a next time, even as hard a day as that was. 

I wonder if there's something to the idea of a wood-centered workshop for men and boys, where those who know, share what they know, and those who are new to tools, trees, even to varieties of wood, can learn, and build their connection to nature and to their own manliness, which is really just one of the kinds of humanity if you think about it. Cut down a few trees, learn what it is to carry a tree-length log through the woods, get the smell of bar-and-chain oil in your hair, split a bit of firewood by hand, learn to identify the most common trees in your area, and then bask in the afterglow of all that work, leaning on the result of your work, still talking wood, trees, and stoves with the guys.

The Season of Thankfulness

Welcome to Ironwood Hollow

We all have family stories that warm our hearts, that remind us of the very best part of our heritage. Here's one of mine. It's short, but I still can't tell it without choking up. My grandfather Arnold died suddenly of a heart attack when I was a young boy. He was a formal, intimidating man to us kids, and unfortunately we never got to know him better than that. Shortly after retiring, he and my Grammy Carrie had almost all of the family, kids, cousins, etc., to their beautiful cottage on the coast of Maine, and that's when he went. It was sudden, and the family has never gotten together again as completely as we did for his funeral that weekend. Her name was the last word he spoke.

A few years ago my mother told me that Grammy Carrie, who outlived him by many years, kept his bedroom slippers under the bed until her own passing. She never loved another. That kind of devotion makes my heart swell with hope for humankind. I just can't think of another way to say it. 

Grammie's memory lives, and not just in the Fiestaware!

One of the ways Grammie Carrie lives on in our family is in our dishware, as odd as that sounds; I remember sitting at her old kitchen table when I visited them as a boy, having breakfast cereal in an original green fiesta bowl. She loved her collection of fiestaware. To this day I can't hold a green piece of fiesta without thinking of her, and a varied assortment of fiesta is what we use for everyday dishware, as well as for special occasions. That table, where Grampy used to keep his feet under the support bar so as to catch any of us kids, or our parents when they were little, who might used it as a footrest (against the rules), was laden with a feast on fiestaware for this Thanksgiving. This year our newly grown family sat around that same table, held hands, said grace, and carried the memory of my Grampy and Grammy forward into a heartwarming, wonderful, new time of our lives.

The connection that struck me in that moment is that I finally understand the devotion that she had for him. Meeting my Honey's eyes at the far end of this table, with our newly blended family connecting us along the length of the big room,  I realized that although times change, love is powerful and enduring. May we all find that one perfect other, the one whose slippers could never be taken out from under the bed. May our children and grandchildren learn from us that such a thing is possible.

Winter in a Cordwood Masonry House

Winter is even more magical from inside cordwood masonry!

The debate about the R-value of cordwood masonry has gone on for some time, and as far as I know has not been settled yet. R-value is the rate at which heat travels through the walls, and different building materials have different R-values. That's the reason for part of the question; cordwood masonry has three different materials in a standard wall. First there is the mortar, which isn't usually plain mortar. We include sawdust, which is not used in mortar for any other purposes that I know of. Then there is the insulation layer between the outer and inner layers of mortar. Often that is a mix of sawdust and anydrous lime. Finally there is the cedar (or other softwood), which is laid up with the grain running through the wall, not parallel to the wall, the way it would be if we used boards or logs. I recently learned that the R-value calculated for wood is usually figured on the assumption that heat passes through the grain, not along the grain. This means that calculating the insulating qualities of cordwood masonry is even more of a mystery than previously thought.
I have been in my house for over ten years now, and would add yet another factor. As the walls age, and the wood seasons, you get little cracks in the wood, called checking. Also, the wood often shrinks a bit, which is most noticeable with the larger pieces. The resulting gaps have an effect on air flow. To be honest, they allow the free flow of air through the building, because there is no good way to fill in all of those tiny spaces, inside and out. In the summer, we appreciate the effect, and say the house "breathes well." In the winter, especially on cold, windy days, we run the wood-stove extra hot!
Still, I wouldn't have it any other way, and you only need to spend an evening watching the snow fall through the castle-like deep window, framed by native cedar, with the fire crackling, to learn to appreciate the coziness of life in a cordwood masonry house. Blankets, sweaters, good socks, and lots of snuggling are the magic formula for making it all good.
Back to the R-value, my contribution to the debate is that whatever the R-value is, you need to also consider actual air-flow as the building ages. I don't bring it up to be discouraging, though; that flow-through is refreshing and healthy, the opposite of modern houses that are so tight you need to pump in fresh air sometimes.

Keeping It True

In cordwood masonry building, one of the challenges is keeping your wall vertical. The load-bearing potential of the structure is dependent upon the wall being aligned as truly up-and-down as possible. A bit of variation won't be a disaster, but letting your wall wander too much will make for weak support. It could eventually buckle, or crack your windows by shifting over a leaning support system.

The metaphor is important to me. If you have a solid foundation, and build carefully and consciously upon it, then the strength that foundation will be present throughout your structure, providing safety, security, and even beauty because you have respected its gift of strength. Don't assume anything, but rather check as you go along that you and your foundation are in sync, that you're working together. Don't stray from it; honor it, and you can trust it with your home, your shelter, your life.

The most important tool for keeping your walls true in cordwood masonry is a plumb-bob, a pendulum-like brass tool on a long string, used for millennia to line up vertical work over its center of gravity. Mine is somewhat crusted with mortar, and its string is faded by time and weather, but it holds a strong magic, in my mind at least. Except for the first row or three of cordwood pieces, it was used on every single log in my cordwood masonry walls. When I look up at my highest walls, over eighteen feet from the foundation, I remember using it, over and over and over again.

First you mix up some mortar, using sand, cement mix, lime, water, and wet sawdust, along with plenty of back and arm strength with a masonry hoe. Then you carry a bucket of that and some cedar pieces up your ladder, lay a double-bead of mortar with rubber-gloved hands, and squish a piece of cedar roughly into place. Below you is a chalk-line two inches out from the base of the wall. You pull your trusty plumb-bob from your nail apron, along with a two-inch nail for a spacer, and swing it down from the head of the nail. The point of the nail is held steady against the wood, and when you have tapped the wood back and forth into the right position, the point of the bob is true above the chalk-line, making the log true at the top of the wall. Ancient science, the tradition of countless generations of carpenters and masons working through your hands, the magic of a fine metaphor, if you will pay attention to it. 

What's the most important tool for keeping your life true? Opinions may vary, but I believe that tending to your primary relationships above all else is crucial. Always checking that you are treating your loved ones as they deserve, with honesty, care, and consideration, that communication is true, you will know of potential trouble in time to correct it. You will build on that respect for your foundation.

I'm going to loan my plumb-bob, for the duration of their home-building, to Ben and Kissy of Dragonfly Acres, who have already begun harvesting cedar, and milling hemlock, for their own cordwood masonry home not far from ours. The thought of having that ancient and solid tool carry such a metaphor to another home built by people who bring thoughtfulness, love, and care to their endeavors pleases me greatly.

Cordwood Masonry

Having built my own cordwood masonry house and lived in it for over ten years so far, I have quite a bit of expertise, experience, knowledge, dare I say wisdom, about the topic. Some of it comes from quickly having learned how to do it well, and some of it is from having learned over time what I wish I had done differently. Put more simply, some of it I got right, and some of it I learned from by getting it wrong.  Finally, I have a chance to share that experience; my long-time friends Ben and Kissy over in Appleton have decided to build their own very ambitious cordwood masonry house!

The home at Ironwood Hollow

Cordwood masonry is a little-known alternative building method in which you lay up short pieces of cordwood (16-inch long cedar in my case), with a specially-designed mortar. the ends of each piece show on both sides of a wall, so the effect is something like a stone and mortar wall, both inside and out. It has a number of advantages, which I'll go into in more detail later, but the two primary ones are that it is very affordable if you have the right wood available to you, and it is environmentally very sound. Using wood from my property that I harvested myself, and mortar, sand, and sawdust produced very nearby, the impact on the environment was very little. Oh, okay, a third advantage is that it is so beautiful. Most of the house goes up without nails, spikes, screws, foam, plastic, tarpaper, siding, and so on. The walls are beautiful, and last better, if you don't treat them with anything, inside or out, and don't cover them. This means, at least for the perimeter of the house, no drywall, no paint, no shingles, no siding, no foam or fiberglass insulation.

Adding details is just so much fun!

It also allows you to express yourself in your building, to include elements for style, sentiment, or utility, from stone and brick and broken pottery to drawers, reclaimed parts from other buildings, shelves, bottles, really there is no limit. The walls can be straight or curved (from side to side, not top to bottom), and can include some variety of wood types. Something that will show over time as we get into some projects inside is that my own style is quite guy-like. Light on color, heavy on things matching and being well lined-up. I am hopeful that my Honey will bring her touch to the place, and bring some by-God color to the predominantly grey and brown space. If so, soon the improvements and changes to the house will reflect her sense of style and beauty too.

My house is unusual, even for a cordwood masonry house, since I built on a hillside, on a block foundation instead of a slab, without a framework of timber, and have some sections of cordwood as tall as eighteen feet. The floor-plan is three-sided, with two long curved walls and one straight one, and three corners. From above, it looks a bit like an ark that grounded itself into Mellow Hill, and there are four different floor levels.

An oil lamp casts a cozy light on the cordwood.

I'll be coming back to cordwood masonry as a topic from time to time, as I annoy Ben and Kissy with my experience and advice, as I enjoy watching a new project of this scope take shape, as new puzzles remind me of old solutions, any time I think I have a useful bit of advice to send out into the world of cordwood masonry building. For now, I'll just say that I love my house as though it is an extension of myself, and wish for Ben and Kissy that they may find the same satisfaction as their dream home takes shape literally in their hands.