Tim and Leanne's Newsletter-- JULY

Good news-- we've been picked up for the season by the Basin Harbor resort; we're back to performing there every week through the summer. Thanks to everybody who missed us last year (we missed you too) and asked about us.

As with so many performers -- and everybody else-- finding enough work has been a challenge for us; so this has been a huge boost to our morale abd helps remove the wolf to a reasonable distance away from our door. Nothing wrong wiith wolves, of course, we like wolves. Just, not at our door. Anyway, whew!

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It's fertile ol' midJuly. Our snapbeans are coming in, the buttercup squash vines are lollopping through the asparagus and over the fence, the brussells sprout plants are h*u*g*e for this time of year, our wild blackberry bushes are loaded with engorging green berries

-- and, and, AND AND--

We are well into draft #3 of this year's new Halloween story:

"The Vampire Princess"

This is an old Eastern European folk tale, nothing to do with goth/emo highschoolers or purple-prose Victorian Bat-Men. It's blunt, sardonic, and (while not at all cute) rather funny. It was collected in the 1800s from the Rom (aka Gypsies), in what is now the Czech Republic, but which was then a random part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Mind you, our duo treatments often go through ten or twelve drafts; there's plenty of work still to come, and something could always go wrong; sometimes they take years to shake out to our satisfaction; but so far TVP appears to moving along well RAP RAP RAP (knocking wood.)

So: if it does get told this year, and we still like it in January, we'll probably put it out on a new "hair-raisers" album sometime in 2011, along with some of our other October-show material that we haven't released yet.

We don't have an image for the vampire story yet, but there's another image we've been sitting on for awhile that goes with another story that will certainly go on that album.

SNEAK PREVIEW
We love this Ogre Boyfriend picture we got from Bonnie Christensen & hope it's simultaneously strong enough to attract kids, while not being too scary-looking for parents and grandparents.	"Ogre Boyfriend & Vampire Princess" might be a good title for our proposed 2002 Halloween recording. The Ogre Boyfriend is a great African varient of the Bluebeard/Mr. Fox type, from the Agikuyu tribe of Kenya. Funnier and less bloody than its European counterpart, though plenty suspenseful. We'll probably also include our version of the Russian classic "The Greedy Priest," with its great last line: "Some say it was God's punishment on the priest for being so greedy, others say it was all the work of the devil, but nobody knows for sure, because that wicked man had offended them both!" And we'll probably round things off with one of our shortest stories, "The Water of Life"-- which you can already hear online, for free.
NEW REVIEW
The European online magazine FolkWorld calls The King & the Thrush Master storytelling ...unique, very entertaining and engaging... ...spontaneous and innovative... Lovely." Read the full review on our website, along with notices from other magazines and links to the originals.
CHRSITMAS RELEASE
	Tim's old original solo recording "Weatherbeard" is still on track to be out before Christmas, in its historic first CD release. (Jumping over from cassette just in time to participate in the passing of still another medium maybe a little Quixotic some might say, but hey, at least it's digital.) More about this in our next newsletter.

We're not exactly sure why we keep putting out new CDs-- folks say the format is dead, and we know what they mean-- but people keep buying ours & using the heck out of them, about the same as always. I loved my records when I was a kid, loved stuff like Nichols and May, Beyond the Fringe, and the Firesign Theater as I got older. Recordings of Richard Chase and Ray Hicks got me pointed right in storytelling 40 years ago. Audio remains the best record of our work in an ephemeral medium; digital audio seems to be its best shot at moving beyond us and (in short) surviving us.

We're still selling all our CDs-- though we're down to a mere handful of Wolves! and may have to wait awhile before reordering.

We've cut our prices across the board, from $15 to $12. If you stumble across an old price anywhere, please email me and I'll fix it.

We still have a ton of cassettes. Want one, before we get rid of them? It's the only way you'll ever be able to get our music recording Sheefra with Berta Frank on flute and Franklin Heyburn on fiddle, since the masters have mysteriously disappeared. $5, and we'll throw in free shipping.

Here's how to buy our stuff -- or you can just email us. Great presents, great things to have in the car.

Our summer shows have been great fun, love to see you at them.

None of these shows will have any vampires or ogres in them, by the way-- we're saving them for fall.

Mon JULY 21-- Basin Harbor 8:30

Mon JULY 26 -- Basin Harbor 8:30

Tues AUG 3 -- Basin Harbor 8:30

Mon AUG 9 Free Library Dover VT 6:30 (summer reading program)

Tues AUG 10 -- Basin Harbor 8:30

Sun AUG 14 -- Cambridge Arts Festival Jeffersonville VT (Music only) 11-1

Tues AUG 17 -- Basin Harbor 8:30

Sat AUG 21 -- Lyndonville Muncipal Bldg 11-2 (summer reading program)

Tues AUG 24-- Basin Harbor 8:30

that's all for now

love, Tim (& Leanne)