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Checking in to see how you all are doing and to let you know what I've been up to lately and some previews of things coming up. On the home front...Haven't replaced our chicken flock since last fall's raccoon incident. Some raccoon woke up a little early one day and noticed lunch walking around the yard and helped himself to two of our poor cluckers. We sent the others to live in the country after that. We'd still like to reconstitute our little brood but I think we need major upgrades to coop security. We tried to track down the murderous raccoon but they're so hard to identify because thay all wear those masks...The guppies are happy and reproducing at furious rates. We have to take a bagful down to the pet store frequently...Realized we don't need a cat because all the cats in the neighborhood live in our backyard and seem to be hypnotized by the bird feeders. Cool gigs lately...I played a fun gig with Laura Love recently in Los Angeles at Royce Hall UCLA. It was a tribute to the legendary folk-blues club the Ash Grove. Tremendous line-up of artists including Arlo Guthrie, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Dave Alvin, Ry Cooder, Mike Seeger, Roland White, John Hammond, Taj Mahal and more. Most fun for me, besides Laura and I having a great set in front of 2000 fired up audience folks, was meeting Ry Cooder, a long time favorite slide player, jamming and hanging out with Ramblin' Jack as the film crews hovered around (somebody's making a film about the Ash Grove), meeting and chatting with Ben Harper, who was a surprise guest on the show, and getting to play a few tunes with Greg Leisz, another favorite slide player, top studio guy in LA and band member of Dave Alvin's crew. Had another rippin' good gig with Wayne Henderson (renowned guitar maker and picker. Read the book about him titled Clapton's Guitar) at the end of February. Wayne plays old-time fiddle tunes and tells a good countrified story. We did this last year about the same time when he came out to attend the Wintergrass festival. Maybe we should make it an annual event! Wntergrass was fun, too, with Laura Love and Harper's Ferry. Had some nice MongrelFolk™ gigs with Mark Graham at Dusty Strings and mystified the Maltby Bluegrass Association with our Mongrel tomfoolery. It ain't bluegrass but it's all right!! Sessions for Casey McGill's Blue4Trio, Microsoft video games for composer Stan LePard, songwriters Mia Vermillion-Harrison, Steve Nebel, Ricardo, and some commercial things. But let's get on to a few things coming up in the near future i'd like you to know about. Mark Graham, Tom Sauber and I are doing a cool thing May 8th for the NW Film Forum and May 4th at the Vashon Theater on Vashon Island. The show is called Roots and Branches: American Music on Screen. The first part of the event we will show rare and interesting film clips from the history of American roots music and give some historical commentary. Second half is a concert! We'll also be doing an hour long interview and music bit on 5/7 at 7PM on KEXP-FM 90.3 and streaming at KEXP.org to promo the show. Listen in and come to the show! Good music, humor, MongrelFolk™, banjos, fiddles, harmonicas, washboards, movies, and...it's... educational !! I'll be in Colorado and California with Laura in May and hope those of you in the area will come out and see us. Details in the calendar. Music camps coming up in June and July, with the Dobro Intensive workshop in Port Townsend July 10-13. That's going to be killer and attendance is limited to 24 students so all you dobro pickers better get signed up! Go here for info...http://centrum.org/slide/ I've been enjoying my Artistic Directorship of the slide workshop. i've been in touch with the great Indian slide guitarist Debashish Battacharya, Cindy Cashdollar, and Darick Campbell, among others, and think we're going to have historically awesome conflagrations of slidey goodness coming up!! Thanks, as always, to cyberguru Bruce Blood for maintaining my little pile of bytes and bits on the web and I hope all things in your future are rosy and the Devil don't remember yer name!
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