Happy New Year! I'm writing this on 01/02/2010 the most palindromic day of the year! And right after a New Year's Eve Blue Moon! I'm thinking this year could be something special. Now that the holidays are over, Xmas trees are in the recycling, and your credit cards are cooling down, here's a Best Of list from last year and some tips on upcoming events you may enjoy with some added linky goodness. Some of the best things I did in 2009 in no particular order...

1) New disc with Laura Love: "The Sweeter the Juice." This is something we cooked up after doing a bunch of duo gigs and band gigs as Harper's Ferry and developing a repertoire of tunes drawn from the traditional gospel/blues/spiritual songbook with a few originals mixed in. You can get the disc at CD Baby or right here at the OJ Music Store, and you can see us playing some of the tunes on YouTube. An extra cool thing for me about this disc was that I was able to record a lot of it at my house! This is the first CD I've done using my ProTools rig and doing a lot of the engineering myself, and I think it turned out pretty darn good. We did the mixing at Garey Shelton's fine studio.

2) My now annual gig with Wayne Henderson in February. It's been great fun playing with Wayne the last 3 years on the Sunday nite of Wintergrass weekend at Isadora's in Snoqualmie WA. A big thanks to Tom Sulock for setting up these shows and dang if we ain't gonna do it again this year! The date wil be 2/28. Here's a tune on YouTube from last year's pickin' party: take it away, fellers...

3) New disc just released in December "MandoMorphosis". This is an interesting bi-coastal collaboration of seven mandolinists exploring the boundaries of acoustic music from classical pieces to free-form improv with stops at bluegrass, klezmer, swing along the way. Pretty cool. I play some dobro and guitar as well as mando and the whole thing was the brainchild of Scott Schaffer. The CD is available at the OJ Music Store, or you can go to CD Baby to hear some samples and purchase. We'll be having a CD release party this month on 1/16 at Empty Sea Studio in Phinney Ridge. There are only 45 seats so you might want to make a reservation soon.

4) Taught at several music camps this past year as usual but especially enjoyed my first time at ResoSummit in Nashville, the premier dobro workshop on planet Earth. Excellent students, a beautiful setting, outstanding group of instructors, and massive dobro geeking 24/7 for a few days, which you don't get very often! Plus, I stayed over for Monday night at the Station Inn to hear the Time Jumpers play. WoW! The best steel player in the world, Paul Franklin, and a host of Nashville royalty playing Western Swing the way it's supposed to be played (and got to visit with John & Becky Knowles x0x0x). If you want to attend next year, go to the website and sign up for the waiting list cuz they've already sold out but people always drop out along the way so you'll have a chance at getting in. If you dig the dobro, it doesn't get any better than this.

5) Producing a new disc for Grant Dermody. Grant is a fine harmonica player and singer/songwriter and we have a great new disc set to come out in February. Lots of hot playing, guest appearances by John Cephas, Louisiana Red, Del Rey, Rich DelGrosso, and many more. It sounds awesome and we'll be having a CD release sponsored by the Seattle Folklore Society on 2/20.

6) Playing with my pal and fellow King of MongrelFolk^TM, Mark Graham, and working on a new disc. Doing a lot of recording at my home studio for this one and we hope to get it out later this year. It'll feature tunes like Bitter Truth, I Ain't Got What It Takes to be a Metronome, several smokin' instrumentals, and Mark's first recording of his classic Zen Gospel Singing. I'll let you know when its done but, meanwhile, we'll be playing on Bainbridge Island on 2/5. Come out if you can.

7) Many fine gigs with musical friends Keith Lowe, Mia Vermillion, Barton Carrol, Scott Law, Forrest Gibson, John Miller, Grant Dermody, File Gumbo, Guitar Outlaws, Garey Shelton, David Lange, Laura Love, Dan Tyack, Wayne Horvitz, Mollie & Rich O'Brien, Dan & Trevor Wheetman, and Paul Elliott. Live music is the best! Get out and hear some!

8) Filming online guitar lessons for jamplay.com. I filmed a whole bunch of lessons for them and so far 5 have been edited and posted with many more to come over the next few months. They have a really good set-up and system and work hard to keep rolling out new content while maintaining a huge archive of lessons in many styles. It was a pleasure working with Jeff Booth and I look forward to doing more work with Jamplay in the future.

9) Raising a pot of money for the White Center food bank over the holidays at the Chicken Friday benefit organized by my friend Irish McKinney. Helping other people whenever possible puts a deposit in your own karma bank. You'll be glad you did.

10) In my last letter I alluded to a secret project I was working on while in Nashville in November. Now it can be told! I was asked by Jerry Douglas (a name familiar to all dobro players as the Earth's Number One dobro picker) to participate in a CD project to honor the musical contributions of Tut Taylor, a seminal figure in the dobro pantheon and writer of many excellent tunes for us dobro pickers to play. A total of 14 players got to choose their favorite Tut song and cut it with a cast of A-list Nashville studio stars.The sessions were pretty much a 3 day dobro party, as all the pickers that were available to hang out for the whole session did so, and some suitably fantastic versions of Tut's songs were created, all under the watchful eye of producer JerryD. If you're not familiar with Tut's music you can check out his website here. The disc will be out in early spring on Koch Records and I'll give you an update when its available. I am honored to be included and hopeful that this tribute to Tut and his music will bring more attention to his contributions to our world of dobro and expand the influence of the mysterious Dobrolic Plectral Society to world dominating proportions.

Whoa, I guess that turned out to be a Top Ten list. So farewell 2009, you were fine, and hello 2010, how about some peace on Earth and a little bit of goodwill to men (and women)? That's what I'm hoping for and my best wishes to you for a happy, prosperous, and love-filled year. Hope to see you at a gig soon. Thanks as always to cyberlord Bruce Blood for holding my bits together as they blast thru the Intertubes.

See you all soon...oj