MiG jet in the town square
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10/7/26
How the Patuxent Partners Came to Play in a Pub in Bulgaria
Sometimes in the dog-eat-dog world of trying to book decent paying shows at venues that treat musicians like actual human beings, fortune shines through the clouds, brightening dark days.
My longtime banjo pickin’ friend, John Brunschwyler, who vacationed every year in Ireland, discovered a bluegrass festival in Athy, County Kildare. When John got back to the states, he let his homies know how much fun he’d had, encouraging us to cross the pond and check it out. That I did, along with my stepson, champion fiddler Nate Leath, the following summer. We met John at the Athy festival, and it was everything he said it would be, and more. Several good bands from all over Europe performed, and dozens of talented, friendly bluegrass musicians were there to jam. After a night of parking lot pickin’, Tony O’Brien, the festival organizer, asked us to do a few songs on stage the following day. His son, Clem, one of the top Irish bluegrass musicians, joined us on guitar. That little impromptu show and the friendships we forged while in Ireland led to bookings at the Athy festival several times over the next decade.
By our third time in Ireland in 2007, the tour had grown to nine shows across the country. The traveling version of the Patuxent Partners included three regulars, Bryan Deere, John Brunschwyler, and me, and two special guests, Partick McAvinue and Cody Brown. I wanted the band to be in top form, so we needed to rehearse.
You’ll likely think me a little scatterbrained, but before I continue the narrative about how we got to Bulgaria, I want to mention another serendipitous moment that gave rise to a fantastic overseas gig. Bryan Deere and I were at our campsite at the famous Galax fiddlers’ convention singing some lonesome Buzz Busby songs. (Are there any other kind?) A teenager playing a left-handed mandolin and his bass playing brother came into our campsite and told us their favourite musician was Buzz Busby. They were the Dear brothers, from Australia. After a few hours of singing Buzz, Red Allen, and Earl Taylor songs with us, they told us that their parents were among the organizers of the Harrietville bluegrass festival. I allowed as how Bryan and I were in a band that did a lot of hardcore lonesome material, and after some back and forth talk and international negotiations, we were invited to play in Australia! I may tell you more about that trip at a later date, but I reckon you’re itching to find out about Bulgaria, or maybe curious, at least.
Where was I? Oh yeah, we needed to rehearse for the tour in Ireland. It seemed that everyone in the band wanted to go to Ireland, but nobody wanted to spend the week prior to the trip rehearsing. I was reminded of the Ralph Stanley song, “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, but Nobody Wants to Die.” Shucks! I didn’t want a rag-tag group that sounded like a jam session, so I came up with what I thought was a brilliant plan to force the band to rehearse for a week. I was going to book airline tickets that would land us in Ireland a week before the tour started. All of a sudden, everyone was on board. They weren’t too busy after all. Only, when I found out how much it would cost to book lodging and feed everyone for an extra week in Ireland, my heart sank. There was no way it would work.
I called a travel agent and asked them to find the cheapest place in Europe to spend a week in a house large enough for a six-piece band and a couple of team members. It turned out to be Bulgaria. I was able to rent a six-bedroom ski chalet for five hundred euros for the week, because it was July and there were no ski slopes open.
We arrived in София, България (Sofia Bulgaria) and rented two small cars, as a van was unaffordable. Our chalet was in Raduil village, about thirty miles east of the airport. When we got to Raduil, which still sported a Soviet MiG jet on a pedestal in the town square, we asked for directions to our house. A man told us to drive down a certain street until we saw an old woman sitting on a bench, then turn right. Trying to speak Bulgarian, I asked, “What if she’s not there?” The old man said, “Баба винаги е тук (The old woman is always there)” She was there every time.
In Bulgaria, the head gestures for yes and no are opposite form ours. Nodding the head up and down means “no,” and shaking it back and forth means “yes.” That caused Bryan and I to buy a molded piece of cheese in the market when the clerk rang up the one we didn’t want. But where it really caused trouble was when the young men in our entourage asked the Bulgarian girls if they wanted to dance and mistook their nos for yeses. Their boyfriends wanted to fight, but Bryan was able to defuse it somehow. That all happened late at night while I was sound asleep, thank goodness. The next day, a member or our team accidentally got into a road race while driving one of the rental cars and scared the band members riding with him half to death. I missed that too, as I was driving the other car.
Okay – the pub. We were rehearsing in our digs, when a loud knock on the door brought the music to a halt. The man at the door pointed down the block to the street corner, then gestured for us to follow him, then pointed at our instruments. What the heck? Why not? We picked up our axes and followed. It turned out that the fellow was the owner of the corner pub. He had heard our music and wanted us to play. We enjoyed free food and beer, and our boys danced with their girls, who were finally willing after hearing us play. Isn’t music wonderful? After our set, they played Bulgarian music on their sound system. It was all in complex time signatures, 7/8, 9/8, 11/8 and some that I couldn’t figure out.
As we left Bulgaria after all that fun, it was hard to believe that our Irish tour was just about to begin. Sometimes life deals you a winning hand.
Tom Mindte
October 2026
MiG jet in the town square
Bryan Deere
Brian Vollmer, Patrick McAvinue, Cody Brown, Jordan Tice, John Escobar
Patrick McAvinue & me