Greetings All, It’s my favorite time of year, when the heat of summer is nothing more than a vague memory and you can feel winter just around the corner, you hold your friends and family close and prepare to huddle in for the dark times (or the Daylight Savings Times as they case may be). I’ve been working every day to put together a tour for the Corn Potato String Band next summer in Europe, the UK and Ireland. Progress is slow and it’s easy to get frustrated. We don’t have a pro website or any high-quality videos or photos or recordings yet. These can be pretty expensive, but it may be that kind of risk-taking that is necessary in order to get somewhere. The goal is to get some good gigs and play for people who want to have a good time with us, and make enough at it that we can cover the expenses of airfare, van rental, hotels, etc. and make a reasonable living on top of that (e.g. pay rent back home). So it’s not clear exactly how we’re going…

Namaste Yall, I am back from India, cooling my heels in beautifully autumnal Minneapolis, so thankful for some cool air! I’m staying in Minneapolis and taking it easy (i.e. no gigs on the horizon) to work up some new material and begin a new musical project. Not much to say about the new project yet, except that it includes myself, Lindsay McCaw, and Ben Belcher and we are taking the name from our India band, The Corn Potatos. We are the eyes and ears of America. The so-far-pretty-empty FB page is here We are playing the best songs from the old times of string band hoedowns, ballads, rags, blues and swing. Expect some rare old novelty songs as well. Aaand I just got us our first gig in Minneapolis! It will be Sunday, October 13 at the Icehousefor their brunch, 11am-2pm. No cover, great food and drinks, and our first gig as the Corn Potato Trio! I won’t bore you in this email with all the details of my India trip. Instead, I have posted a lightly edited version of our tour journal…

[Note: This was mostly written by Lindsay with some additions by Aaron.] Day 1, Aug 20: Today was the official official first day of our not so long- but much-awaited trip to India as the Corn Potato String Band. Aaron and Lindsay woke up at the henhouse (in Keezletown, VA) with just enough time to give Bill a sweaty hug and make some decaf, the new drink (for avoiding jet lag). Roy got a new fiddle case at 8:45am thanks to Bruce and Ann, the official patrons of the Corn Potatos. It came from the neighbor guy and Ann was sent out to retrieve it just in time. Our cab driver in DC (taking us from Aaron’s aunt and uncle’s house in Takoma Park where we are leaving the van while we’re gone) was a political exile from Iran who told us about spending 300 days in solitary confinement there because he was working for human rights. He said, “I don’t like normal people… Go to work nine to five, not me!” The he went on about the superiority of…

Howdy Friends, It’s great to be back in the USA, after an incredible two weeks in Finland with my beloved Froggy Mountain Boys. Our tour was an unqualified success in every possible way. So much good luck, which I believe was a product of lots of positive energy plus the incredible kindness and generosity of the people we met in Finland. You know who are! We love you and can’t wait to come back again some day. And… I started writing that about a month ago. Since then I went and played at Grey Fox for the first time and saw so many great bands and caught up with lots of great friends, did some more touring with Nora Jane Struthers & The Party Line, went to Clifftop for the first time in a few years and had a tune-filled great time and then went to Galax directly afterwards, which is always the highlight of my year. I tied for 11th place this year in the competition but I got to toss the mandolin during the Mandolin Toss for the…

Summer has arrived and I have partaken of some outdoor enjoyment, as I hope you have as well. I spent a day canoeing on the French Broad River in Asheville and about a week later had my first real swim of the season at Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia. I also had my first attempt at water skiing, which was not a huge success but was still a lot of fun and left my arms so sore I could hardly lift my fiddle case for a few days. I just got back to Nashville where I will spend the next couple days until I go out on the road again with Nora Jane Struthers & The Party Line. (Tour dates below…) And very soon I will be on my way to Finland for my much-anticipated reunion tour with the Froggy Mountain Boys! I spent the last week or so in Brooklyn, playing with my friends The Brain Cloud, Hilary Hawke, and Sam Guthridge of Chester River Runoff, also of Square Peg Rounders. (By the way, we’ve only sold about ten…

Hello and Happy Springtime! Since my last newsletter I completed my longest tour to date, a full eight weeks with Nora Jane Struthers & The Party Line! Now I am relaxing in lovely Minneapolis, where spring has fully sprung. Our last show was at the Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival, which was full of great bands and filled us all with excitement for the beginning of festival season. After we played there we had to rush off and drive through the night to get to Nashville in time for our friends’ wedding, which was a beautiful event and completely worth the effort. Monday night I sat in at the Turf Club with an excellent local country band called the Cactus Blossoms, which features brothers Page Burkum and Jack Torrey on vocals, plus masterful steel, accordion/washboard and bass players. Check out their music! And on Thursday I’m playing at Black Forest in Minneapolis with a new side project called Livshitsky The Magnificient. (We haven’t recorded anything yet and we have no web presence other than some website which labels us “The People’s Revolutioanary Jug Band” so you’ll just…

My Dear Friends, Fans, Family, Acquaintances, Come-All-Ye-Faithful, Catch-As-Catch-Can, Past, Present and Future, May I begin with a poem? I wrote this one a while ago. It’s called Bidding The Lettuce Adieu and it’s the only poem I’ve ever written that I can remember by heart. It goes like this: Bidding The Lettuce Adieu (by Aaron Jonah Lewis) My dear little green friends, You were naught but a vehicle for the dressing, You were naught but a vehicle for the dressing. OK! Thanks, just had to get that out there. I’m in Boston right now, still on tour, all is well, played a great show last night at Club Passim and saw lots of great friends there. Seeing my old friends and meeting new ones on the road is definitely the best part about all of this crazy touring life. Playing a lot of music is great, too, but I’ve learned that you don’t have to spend all your time traveling around in order to play lots of music… But to visit with your friends, yes, you must!

I now have two tours behind me with this new band, Nora Jane Struthers And The Party Line, and I’m going places I’ve never been and meeting lots of new people, and I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you are still with me, my old friends. You knew me when! And some of you are new to me and I’m new to you, and I hope that you will stay with me as well. It’s going to be an interesting ride, this life of mine. Like my friend Lonesome Liz is always telling me, I should write a book. Instead I’m writing monthly-ish newsletters with stories about my life, what I’ve been doing, what I have coming up, what I care about, etc. So before I get into this month’s edition I just want to say THANK YOU for joining me. Where this funny path will lead, no one knows. In this month’s newsletter I might say some things about the tour I just finished in Texas, something about my upcoming tour (which I’m already on now), some new releases, a…

And let me not fail to mention my NEWEST RELEASE!! Howdy Friends, old and new, I started telling people that if they sign up on my list I will send them a FREE DOWNLOAD of one of my songs, so to be fair I’m sharing this with all of you. This could end up meaning a new free download every time I send an email out, or not. Who knows? But I hope you like it. I decided to share with you the Red Apple Rag (follow the link to download), which is a cut from my NEWEST RELEASE, a record I’ve been talking about for a while and is now finally available for digital download all over the internet. It’s called ‘Galax, NYC’ and I recorded it with Sam Guthridge on banjo and Erica Weiss on guitar. (I played the fiddle.) And beautiful artwork fromDoug Chayka. Follow the next link to get the whole story on it… I recommend downloading it from CDBaby or from my website because the big guys like iTunes take a big percentage from little guys like me, and CDBaby gives a bigger cut to the artist than any other…

All Righty Right! I’ve been settling in here in Nashville and getting ready for my first tour with Nora Jane Struthers & The Party Line. We’ve been rehearsing and preparing and as our first tour date draws closer (this Thursday! In Lexington, KY!) we are all getting more and more excited. We had our first two shows in Nashville over the past two weeks and they both went really well. I especially enjoyed playing for the square dance at Fontanel Mansion, with calling by Te Claw and special guest fiddlers Chance McCoy and Kevin Martin. So far have there have been no changes to the tour schedule with the exception of one new show in Detroit on Feb. 18 at PJ’s Lager House. I played there last summer with Sabra Guzmanand had such a great time. Plus, this time around we will have at least one great local opener,Shine On Kentucky Moon. Last time I played PJ’s local singer-songwriter Alison Lewis joined us and I hope she can join us again.