News
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…
Read MoreMy 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!
Read MoreI 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…
Read MoreAnd 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…
Read MoreAll 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.
Read MoreAs I sit in the living room of my new home in East Nashville and write to you I am listening to the newly mastered and as-yet-unreleased debut record from my new band, Nora Jane Struthers And The Party Line, and I’m thinking about how in just a few short weeks we will be on the road. I haven’t played many shows since my last newsletter but a lot has happened. For one thing I moved in to my new place! I even bought a new bed (not used) for the first time in my life. How grown-up of me. Well, it’s great to sleep on it and I’ve been told it’s important to have a nice bed so I can look forward to coming home when I’m on the road. In no particular order I’ll share some of the highlights from my past month as well as some news of upcoming events, including my first big tour with the Party Line! I may save that for last so I can give you our big list of gigs. One of the…
Read MoreMy Dear Fellow Cocoons, I’ve been having a fairly creative and productive time here in western Mass despite there being relatively little going on. This pupating thing is working out pretty well. I even had a psychic tell me that I’m at the beginning of a serious creative period right now. Who would have guessed? I’ve never had a psychic reading before but I did enjoy it and might just do it again. In this post I will share SOME of what I’ve been up to here, and I’ll list my upcoming gigs. There aren’t many of them but they will be fun. And I mean the kind of fun that comes from not knowing exactly who you’re going to play with or what you’re going to play, but knowing that they are great people and you will make great music. I really love that. I’m finally getting some of that cold weather I would have had months ago had I stayed in Berlin. Love that frost! Last weekend Ben Belcher came out and joined Matt, Kip and me for some shows and a…
Read MoreWell Friends, Now I’ve done it. I’ve picked up and moved back to the USA. It’s a pretty big change from living in Berlin and not at all an easy thing to do but I’m glad I took this chance and I look forward to what the future here has to offer. I’m also harboring some not-so-secret hopes to return to Europe for some visiting and performing as soon as possible… In this post I have a precious few gig announcements. Mostly I’m going to share my impressions of Nashville so far and tell you what I’ve been up to since I got back to the US. So, Nashville…! Without going into too much detail I’ll say that Nashville is very different from Berlin, especially in terms of variety in food, music, arts in general, and types of people you’ll meet. Also public transportation, that’s a big one. But the most important things are well covered and those are nice people and great music. Everyone I’ve met in Nashville so far has been super nice, and not in a fake way,…
Read MoreI wish I had a needle and thread Fine as I could sew I’d stitch that pretty girl to my side And down the road I’d go This is the song lyric that comes to mind as I prepare for the next big step in my life. My big news is that I’m leaving Berlin and I’m moving to Nashville in order to play full time with Nora Jane Struthers and her band. I just want to take all my friends and loved ones with me. As much as I’ve loved the experience of playing in dozens of bands at a time over the past ten years or so, I’ve always wanted to go all the way with one band. Now I have the chance to pursue that dream and I’m gonna go for it. Nora Jane is an old friend who I first met at Galaxabout ten years ago and she’s always wanted me to join her band but I’ve always been busy or overseas. I just played a couple of shows with the band and the songs are great, the group…
Read MoreI’ve reentered the world of computers and cell phones after spending a week at the Old Fiddlers Convention in Galax. It was an eventful one this year, what with the 389 mandolins breaking the world record for largest mandolin ensemble and all. (Click the link for a sample of what it was like!) I also managed to sneak into the top ten again this year with eighth place in Bluegrass Fiddle. I got some pickin in with all kinds of great folks and now I’m thinking about something I heard a few years ago, to paraphrase, “Galax is real life. The other 51 weeks of the year are just waiting for the next Galax to come around.” As I’ve said in previous emails I’m not too terribly busy with work this summer although I do have a few gigs coming up in DC, Detroit, Minneapolis, WV, and NYC which I’ll tell you about in a minute here. But first I want to give some thanks to the farmers. On my visits to friends in the past month I stayed on a few farms and if there’s…
Read More