Shows in ohio, new music to download, help me get to the UK, and a TON of News.

Here’s what’s up:

1. Central Ohio Folk Festival this Weekend
2. Help me get to the UK by buying new music.
3. Check out the new website
4. “Shady Grove” book available online.
5. Chattanooga Ballet dance to Butch Ross

I know I’ve said this to you before that when you don’t hear from me, it’s because I’m super stupid busy. Well April and May have been no exception to that rule. But I have LOADS of wonderful things to tell you, so kick back, get a cup of coffee and accept my apologies for how long this email is going to be.

CENTRAL OHIO FOLK FESTIVAL
Friday May 7, 2010 - Sunday May 9, 2010
Battelle-Darby Creek Metro Park Indian Ridge Area
Tickets $10 to $30 depending.

This weekend is the Central Ohio Folk Festival and it’ll be good to be back. This year’s headliners are the Yellow Room Gang (featuring Mustard’s Retreat) and the amazing James Keelaghan. In addition to myself teaching Bill Schilling, Linda Sigismondi, Joni Sines
Steven K. Smith, Steve Stapleton, Shelly Stevens and the amazing Doug Berch will all be instructors. There are some other cool things planned as well, here’s how it breaks down by day.

Friday
There will be a special potluck/jam session at McKinley Field Park, starting sometime after 5pm. basically this is an easy jam session led by me. We’ll be playing stuff I’ve taught at various festivals as well as tunes from Andy Beyer’s beginner’s packet. I wont be teaching per se, but will be there to call out chords lead jams, make sure that everyone is there to have a good time. If you came to my “Jam session survival skills” workshop in March, this’ll be a good time to put that to practice.

Tunes include: Boil Them Cabbage Down/Aunt Rhody/Shortnin' Bread/On Top of Old Smokey/Freres Jacques/Cripple Creek/Old Joe Clark/Deep Blue Sea/June Apple/Oh Susanna/Skip to My Lou/Going to Boston/Buffalo Gals/Liza Jane/Loch Lomond plus some tunes that I’ve taught at OVG and other regional festivals, old chestnuts, and your suggestions.

This is NOT the official Friday meet, greet and jam that the CMFS does at Battelle-Darby Park but a private affair contact Dough Snapp via email to dmsnapp@wowway.com or phone at 313-6424 if you’d like to attend.

Saturday
Loads of workshops from not just me but Doug Berch, Andy Beyer, Gary Sager and loads of others (I forgot how may instructors there are at this thing) Plus the Saturday night concert is going to rock!

Sunday
I’m playing in the big tent from 11 to noon. Since I played just about everything I could think of in March at the COFF auction, I thought I’d make this set a little more interactive, so if you got a request, call it out, and I’ll do my best to make it happen.

HELP ME GET TO THE UK.
My UK tour is just under two weeks away and I STILL haven’t bought tickets. Plus when I get there, there will be the cost of car rental, work visas (£300). I was hoping that all this turmoil in the EU with Greece will push the Pound down against the dollar and deflate some overhead on this trip but this has not been the case (stupid resilient British economy). So I’m asking you to help me get there and back by offering

NEW MUSIC AVAILABLE EXCLUSIVELY ON MY WEB SITE.
“This Year in Review” isn’t actually a year in review. Instead it is a collection of live tunes, rarely performed songs and some of my best in-between song bits. Recorded over the last few years at KMW, Dulci-more, Fort New Salem, the Leo Coffeehouse, House Concerts, UK pub shows and more, it features a slew of songs that I’ve rarely performed in public. Including some that have only been played live once.

There’s no physical CD (tho’ I will make you one if you ask nicely and gimme $5) instead it’s a pay-what-you-want download from my website. Over an hour of words and music spread over 24 tracks. You can hear the whole thing, for free, at my website www.butchross.com Then, if you want you can make a donation in any amount, and you will be taken to a page explaining how you can download just the songs you want or get the whole CD including artwork as a single .zip file. And you can find all this at my…

REVAMPED WEB SITE.
There’s one simple reason I did this—beside the fact that it’s well overdue—which I’ll get to in a minute. But I’ve redesigned and relaunched my web site. There are still a couple of pages I need to add yet (video, tab and workshop pages) and probably a bug to two to work out. In addition to showcasing photos from Gail Lindsay and Karl Schmidt, the music player has the “A Long Way From Shady Grove” and “The Moonshiner’s Atlas” up there in its entirety. Kinda like having yr own personal Butch Ross radio station. But the reason for the redesign is that I finally made the…

“A LONG WAY FROM SHADY GROVE” BOOK AVAILABLE ONLINE
I’ve been selling this thing at shows for a couple of months, But haven’t made it available online before now. For those of you who don’t know “Shady Grove” is an 87-page book of transcriptions of every song on my latest CD. Including transcriptions of the contributions Gary Gallier, Stephen Seifert, Steve Brehm and Quintin Stephens made to the CD. Everything from Steve Brehm’s brooding guitar intro on “Goodbye Liza Jane/No Direction Home” to Quintin’s rockin’ “Dulcicaster” solo on “Pole Position” to the Hungarian Citera I play on “Shady Grove” (transcribed for mountain dulcimer of course) is written out in tablature and notation with chords and commentary. It’s all in the hear/buy section of the new web site.

And finally…

THE CHATTANOOGA BALLET DANCES TO BUTCH ROSS
A few months ago Courtney Mild of the Chattanooga Ballet asked me if she could use my version of Eleanor Rigby for a dance piece she was choreographing. Although I couldn’t for the life of me see how that was going to work, I enthusiastically gave her my blessing. Last Friday "Viso Gero" made its world premiere at the Chattanooga Ballet. Using both “Eleanor Rigby” and “Firenze” from the “Shady Grove” CD, A troupe of nine dancers performed a combination of ballet and European folk dance moves to tell a love story in 7 minutes with dance.

I honestly had no idea what to expect, nor could I even fathom how one would take my version of Eleanor Rigby (which I think is even darker and more esoteric than the original) and put movement to it. But there it was in all its glory, right between Pas De Quarte and the Dream of Don Quixote, and the results were stunning. Let me give a big public THANK YOU to Courtney Mild, the Chattanooga Ballet and all the dancers. The whole show was filmed and I am working on getting the video of that soon. I’ll post it on my site just as soon as I can.

Okay that’s a TON of stuff to tell you, so I’ll not say any more. Sorry this is so long. See you this weekend, or in the UK and GO GET THAT ALBUM!

Those shows again
Friday
Central Ohio Folk Festival Kickoff Party.
McKinley Field Park,
1661 Goodale Blvd.
Columbus, OH 43212
614-313-6424

Sat-Sun
Central Ohio Folk Festival @ Battelle-Darby Creek Metro Park
1775 Darby Creek Drive, Columbus, OH 43119

C-ya out there.