Thursday, October 23, 2008

Shows and Workshops this weekend in Louisville, Chicago and Evansville.

Friday, Oct. 24 - 9pm
Jenicca's
Café and Wine Bar
636 E. Market Street
Louisville, KY 40202
502-457-1487
myspace. com/jeniccas

Saturday, Oct 25 - 9pm
Uncommon Ground
3800 N. Clark St,.
Chicago, Il
773-929-3680
www. uncommonground. com

Sunday, Oct 26 - 4pm
Dulcimer Workshop: If you like one tune, you'll like 'em both.
Camp Reveal
Evansville, IN.

England was an amazing, amazing time. The shows all went really well, and the badn i was touring—the Matt O'Ree Band— were a great bunch of guys, as well as being really excellent musicians (sadly, there are few bands who are both) If you like Blue-Rock a la the Allman Brothers, I strongly urge you to check them out. http://mattoree.com/ It looks like we'll be going back over to England again real soon. I'll keep you posted.

I'll also put up a longer blog post with pics and stuff from the trip real soon. I just need to find some long boring conference to sit through, hey!...

This week in Louisville is the annual meeting of the American Folklore Society, it's the must-see event for those who share my "side job" as Folklorist. Since most of my professors and classmates will be there asking "so what have you done with your degree?" I decided to show 'em, and booked myself into a jenicca's, A hip little wine bar in downtown Louisville. I like Louisville, even started to write a song about it, 'cause i just hate that "8 more miles to Louisville" song. It's been too long since I've been there, it'll be good to be back.

It's also been way too long since I've been at the awesome Uncommon Ground coffee shop in Chicago, 2218 days to be exact. I know this because the Uncommon Ground web site maintains a page where they list how longs it's been since you've played there. They also stream their shows on their web page, so even if you're not in the Chicago area, you can still listen online. I play at 9pm (central time)

Finally, I'll be back at Camp Reveal in Evansville giving a dulcimer workshop and a mini-concert at 4pm that Sunday. The workshop will is called "if you like one song, you'll like 'em both." The title is a joke about old-time music, but the workshop will dwell on how to find similar musical phrases in different tunes, we'll learn three tunes over the course of the hour and a half workshop. The workshop is $20.

There you go, since success in this business depends on keeping the overhead low, I'm hoping to avoid booking into a hotel in Chicago, so if any of you would like to put up a slightly disheveled folksinger for a night, drop me an email at butch@butchross.com (don't reply to this address, it just goes into a spam-filter neverland).

c-ya out there.

-Br

Friday, Oct. 24 - 9pm
Jenicca's
Café and Wine Bar
636 E. Market Street
Louisville, KY 40202
502-457-1487
myspace. com/jeniccas

Saturday, Oct 25 - 9pm
Uncommon Ground
3800 N. Clark St,.
Chicago, Il
773-929-3680
www. uncommonground. com

Sunday, Oct 26 - 4pm
Dulcimer Workshop: If you like one tune, you'll like 'em both.
Camp Reveal
Evansville, IN.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Back in the U.S.S.A

I spent a most luxurious day doing absolutely nothing. Shaking off the soreness of the tour. I think it's pretentious to talk about being tired or beat up for doing what you love for ten days in another country, but i am--as they say--positively knackered.

Save the hour and a half I waited for my bags, the Atlanta airport was surprisingly fast and efficient. And the shuttle driver stopped at a Burger King/truck stop on the ride up to Chatt', allowing me to stumble half-awake and road weary through the aisles looking for salt and vinegar chips one last time.

The tour was fabulous. The Matt O'Ree Band is a fantastically talented blues band who are also really great guys, a lot of fun to be around. I made five good friends on this tour. Saw some of the most remote yet cool parts of the UK and had a number of life changing experiences.

I had hoped to keep a running blog of it all, but internet access was actually devilishly hard to obtain. I've journaled the whole thing, took a ton of pictures and will post highlights here soon. I just wanted to drop a quick note to say thanks to all that came out to the shows, bought CDs and otherwise made my this trip less of a financial bath than it could've been.

SPeaking of financial baths, I'm fairly grateful for the lack of access to the outside world as it's seemed to have gone to hell well I'm gone. I can't leave you people alone for a minute!

-Br