Thursday, July 3, 2014

Music News You Can Use - July 2014

Happy July -- I am just back from the Kate Wolf Festival, and just take a look at the KW website to see the line up of music they had this year. Amazing and inspiring, and humbling to see how good the pros really are.

My favorites this year were Tim O'Brien with Darrell Scott, Rodney Crowell, and Jackie Green   Here is a video of three of Rodney's songs -- a master writer with fine delivery.  Here is one of Tim and Darrell, and whew, those boys can pick!! And now for something completely different from Jackie Greene. 

More KW fun: on Saturday morning I heard some folks playing at a camp near me and walked over to see about jamming with them, and it turned out they were playing Midnight On The Water.  That gave me goose bumps (thank you, Kate).  Had fun playing with them on a bunch of songs; learned a new fiddle chop; and to top it all off, I bought a 5 string fiddle just to keep myself thoroughly confused.

The SF Free Folk Festival was also in June, with lots of good music, sing alongs, jams, dances and workshops. My "Sing With Your Fiddle" workshop was well attended.  What a very nice, relaxed, down home festival !! 

Played some nice gigs during June: with Don't Look Back at Cafe Leila in Berkeley, with Born Lucky at the Kensington Market, and the fundraiser for FAR-West at Mighty Fine Guitars in Lafayette was a treat.  That is a wonderful place to hear live music; if you don't know about it, check it out.  Here are a couple of songs I did that evening, here and here.  Videos of the other artists are here.

Coming up in July, in fact this weekend, I am playing kids shows for three days at the SF Zoo with Michael Hanna.  "The Wheels On The Bus" will be going round and round.  

I mentioned this last month, so I know that you already have it on your calendars :-).   On Friday, July 25th, I will be playing with Steve Key (video from our show at Studio55 in San Rafael in April) and Kyle Alden at the Monkey House in Berkeley.   I have raved about Steve before and Kyle is in the same league -- it is going to be a great show !! 

That's my news -- your turn.  How is your summer going so far?



John
Roy Zat
Croizat
Whatever