Tim and Leanne's Newsletter &
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(Tim here) Hey folks, happy summer! Sorry about that half-year hiatus, I’ll try to do better in the future. This summer we’ve already done a few Basin Harbors, a fair number of library and community shows, and the Old Songs Festival. We shoulda told you about them before. Dang. (Bad artists! Bad!) Here’s our (extremely) upcoming schedule, as we know it. TOMORROW DAY AFTER TOMORROW Tuesday July 19 • 8:30-10:00pm Wednesday July 20 • 6:30 Tuesday July 26 • 8:30-10pm Thursday July 29 • 11 AM Thursday July 29 • 3 PM Tuesday Aug 2 • 3 PM Tuesday Aug 2 • 6:30 PM Thursday Aug 4 • 10:30 AM Tuesday Aug 9,
• 8:30-10:00pm Saturday September 17 (time uncertain, but noon or before) We also have some private functions-- weddings, camps, family reunions, etc. They're fun for us and they certainly help pay the bills, but there's no point in listing them here. Contact us if you're interested in setting up one for yourself. ====================================== We ended up not going to Oregon at the end of June. Portland didn’t come through, and the remaining gigs were enough to cover our plane fares, and that’s all. Had we gone, we would have had to work very hard to lose money, in exchange for wider exposure --sometimes that seems attractive, but any kind of losing money is a bad bet right now. And as it turned out, Leanne had a throat-and-bronchial problem during that time, it would have been kind of a nightmare. So it all worked out for the best. ====================================== Leanne did the figures a couple of days ago. So far we’re doing better this year than we did the year before, and that was better than the year before that. We were doing quite well before the economy turned sour-- I sometimes blame myself for bringing on that catastrophe; I should never have said, "this is too much work."The future of course remains cloudy, for us as for everybody else. Well, in the short run anyway; long term it’s crystal clear, for us as for everyone else. Meantime, we're feeling good. ======================================== We’ve crossed a major threshold in building The Gypsy and the Vampire into a solid performance. Now, when we finish a live telling we feel excited and energized, more than"whew, got through it." This is a big deal, it means we know it well enough to be playful and work with nuance; we want to tell it again and again instead of needing to rest up, and we can practice without fatigue. We do it every week at Basin Harbor, along with Weatherbeard and something comic. It’ll be one of our standbys, we’ll tour with it this fall (assuming the work comes in) for foliage and halloween. People used to ask me, “do you ever tell Weatherbeard anymore?” Mostly I didn’t, but since the CD came out, I’ve taken the story out again. What makes a complex folk telling work is the way the energy flows, within the tale and back and forth between the teller and the audience. I found myself telling from time to time in the last ten or so years, and it was ok, but not so great as I thought I remembered— I guess there was a clog or two gumming up the works. But the tellings at Basin Harbor really work. I use it to cover the time when people are still coming in-- it draws them in, grabs them and keeps them all in the old familiar way. Great to have it up and running again. ============================ We're still glowing from having won a second “Notable Children’s Recording.” The national library committees that listen to these things don’t care how high a profile you have, how many copies you move, or how much money you make. It’s all in how it hits their ear, and they’re experts, they listen to a lot. So, it’s a great honor to get one, and even cooler that we got two— it wasn’t a fluke, they think we're doing standout work, by some absolute standard. ================================ The next one of these things will come out next month; it’ll be nicer-looing, have some nice color pictures and a story, at least. In the meantime, the news is all good, the pets are well, we are well, life feels good for us and we hope it does for you too. Love from us both, Tim & Leanne 802 223 9103 • PO Box 522 Montpelier VT 05601 |
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