Friends, I am in New Orleans for more than a night or two for the first time in my life. To say there is a lot of good music (and food) here would be a gross understatement but let it suffice to say that Les Bon Temps are rollin! What am I doing here, you may be wondering? Well, I have my work cut out for me for the next couple months until I leave the country: I’m preparing a big UK/Ireland/EU tour for the Corn Potato String Band and I’m getting our new record ready to be released! That’s a lot of work, and I could do it anywhere, so why not in this amazing city that is also slightly warmer than most. Interestingly enough, I don’t have any gigs lined up this month at all although I’m sure I will play a lot at parties, impromptu sessions and other people’s gigs that I get invited to at the last minute, e.g. Matt Bell and Joy Patterson‘s (of Roochie Toochie & The Ragtime Shepherd Kings) Western Swing band I sat in with two nights ago, Western Sweethearts. Really. Great. Music.

I am very pleased to report that our square dance tour with T-Claw was an immense and delightful success! I don’t know when we will do such a tour again but we are all looking forward to working with T-Claw again. We met so many wonderful folks and had ao many great dances, enjoyed some of the best hospitality in the world, and some of the best smoked kielbasa, too, from Ostrowski’s in Baltimore. We also managed to avoid getting kicked out of a Waffle House in Knoxville by NOT playing music at 4am. Or by stopping when the security guard asked, I should say.

I’ve been doing so much driving lately that I’ve had no time for reading, can you believe it? I think I drove about 3000 miles in less than a month, and now I’m glad to stay in one place for a while. After the square dance tour we went to New York City and spent two days recording. Now the next step of the process is to listen back to everything we recorded and pick out the best little morsels to release into the world. And then we have mixing, mastering, artwork prep and manufacturing to do. Wheee! I love it. We got a lot of really good stuff recorded, but no sneak peeks available just yet. Same goes with the Roochie Toochie wax cylinder recording project, unfortunately. I’m less in control of that project but I will certainly share whatever I can with you as soon as possible.

Here is one video from the square dance tour, from when we played in Louisville. Enjoy! (Fast forward to around 2:50 if you want to skip the instructional part.) Thanks to Jim Bennett in Louisville for making this video and posting it!

Last thing to report this month is next month’s lone gig, in Detroit at PJ’s Lager House, with two great bands, local folk duo Lac LaBelle and local monster jug band Shine On Kentucky Moon. Join us if you’re in the area, it’s PJ’s sixtieth birthday party! Thursday, March 13, 9pm, $5.

I hope you are all staying nice and warm this winter. Remember to play card games and board games with your friends and family! Oh, and if anyone has a New Orleans story for me, please write to me. I will be here for about a month before I head back to Detroit.

Bottoms Up To Better Times

Aaron