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APRIL
2007
Howdy folks,
A few weeks back I was at the Folk
Alliance in Memphis with Houston Jones, and saw
some great new (to me) acts that are sure to be
coming your way soon. The Wyos, Luminescent
Orchestri, and the Carolina Chocolate Drops to
name a few faves. All great players, all very
young, and all very good looking. The fresh
crowd coming in is a great thing for the
audiences, and the continuous morphing of genres
is having amazing results. Fortunately for the
grizzled veterans, lasik surgery, viagra, botox,
and a quality toupe' helps to keep us in
contention. About the only thing we couldn't
compete with was the nightly 4:30am "Running of
the Accordions". This was pretty much
dominated by the 20-something steroids n' whiskey
crowd, although a few crafty graybeards managed to
finish with only a few cuts and bruises. In
any case, the future of acoustic roots music is in
very capable and talented hands.
Coming up -
I'm doing a run of shows with Billy
Bright, one of my favorite mandolin pickers.
Billy has worked as part of Peter Rowan's Texas
Trio, and the Peter Rowan / Tony Rice Quartet
configurations, and currently plays with the Two
High String Band out of Austin. We met a few
years back, and have since collaborated on some
projects that have been great fun, and incredibly
lucrative. I have managed to purchase two
homes on Maui, a Ferrari, and three biotech
companies as a result ....oh wait, sorry.... that
was somebody else.....we're broke and a lot of
fun... so please do come on out, and support
mandolin music, old folks, and the American way of
life.
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