We are sometimes asked why for some engagements we call ourselves "Sheefra," and for others we're "Jennings & Ponder." We've wondered about it ourselves-- it's a marketing nightmare, especially since most people call us "Tim and Leanne."

It's so people know what they're getting when they see us advertised.

As "Sheefra" we play instrumental music, hardly talk at all, and are completely happy playing in a corner with nobody exactly listening to us, making a nice bubble of ambiance to help people feel better. Our music is good enough to repay close listening, but we like best for it to sneak up on folks who have no expectations. That's how Sheefra got its start, taking the edge off Burlington's Church Street, a little, for random bums and lawyers.

As Jennings and Ponder, we tell stories, and we must have you listen! All the time! To everything! Like magic, storytelling is about compelling and directing attention. Like comedy, it's almost painful when we don't "have the room."

(Both of these modes are in stark contrast to what people mostly get from contemporary close-up live entertainment. A band at a bar is in the business of getting 40% - 60% of the attention of 80% of the room. When the band feels ignored, they turn up the volume, people adjust by screaming their conversations. Lots of folks seem ok with this, but it drives us nuts, no matter which side of the microphone we're on.)

New "Eerie" Live CD in the Works

We plan to record "The Vampire Princess and other eerie folk tales" this winter, probably late January at a sweet little theater in the Long Trail School, in Dorset, Vt. The time and date are not yet set-- both recording sessions may be during school hours, or we may do one in the evening. Anybody think they can come? Let us know if you're interested, we've got some seats reserved already. The audiences will be larger than those we've recorded with before, our usual mix of ages but (we hope) more loaded up with what librarians call "young adults."

The title story takes almost 30 minutes, about half the program's running time. Additional contents will likely include the Dia de los Muertos themed "Water of Life," the Vermont deer-camp comic shocker "Johnny Got My Liver," the Russian cautionary tale "Greedy Priest," and an old summer-camp singalong from our youth, "The National Embalming School."

We're in the last stages of writing a Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant application to help us fund the project. It's due in about a week. We won't know if we get it until November. We hope we do -- the work scene is looking kinda dismal for this fall & it would help us if we got some of our time on this thing paid for. Based on number of applicants vs projects granted, our odds are 10-1 against, but it's a good project, the grant-writing is going well, and we like to think it's more like 50-50. Win or lose, we're moving ahead regardless.

Once we get the CD in our hands, probably mid-February, we'll start booking "eerie" shows for the following fall, from Friday the 13th of September to Friday the 13th of December-- that is, the Foliage, Halloween, and early Christmas seasons. We'd love to come to a school, college, community hall, library, bonfire, or living room near you!

Notes from A Grant Proposal

This newsletter needs to go out now, so some of you can maybe plan to come to see us next weekend at the New World Festival. But we've been very busy with the grant, and don't really have a lot of newsletter material ready to go. There'll be another one coming out in late September, I'm pretty sure, but in the meantime, maybe you'd like to see what we've got in mind for the next year, even if it is in dry grant-speak? If not, never mind the rest. But here are some of the grant questions, with our responses. We invite you to skim through and see if any of it interests you.

Briefly describe any planned public presentations

• We have arranged for 9 free early preview performances to further develop material in response to audience interaction, with 5 & 6 grade students in East Montpelier classrooms and middle school children at the Vermont International Festival in Williston. More are possible.

• 2 live-audience recording performances in the auditorium of the Long Trail School.

• The CD itself is a performance; we'll market it to our local audience by press release, direct mail and email, selling it in stores, online, and through newsletters. We'll solicit library sales. We'll submit it for reviews, awards, and national catalogs, and to radio stations.

• 6 presentations around the state to support the CD's release.

• We project a Fall 2013 performance tour of middle schools, youth groups, foliage and Halloween events, on into the Christmas season.

• The program will be added to our advertised repertoire, available for as long as we continue to be active.

How will the public interact with you or the work either during the creation or at the time of presentation?

• Previews include Q&A.

• Our audiences join in, sing, howl, make sound effects, etc.

• Our audience plays a vital role when we record. It draws out our best work, and a reviewer has noted its "palpable involvement" (laughs, gasps, etc) as part of our CDs' appeal.

• We learn from our listeners. Even after years of performance new ideas emerge, performances tighten up or get loose as needed, in response to audience attention & reaction. Our preview audiences will help us as we make our final selection, sharpen and develop the tales, and weave them together into a program greater than the sum of its parts.

• Most importantly, our stories can't exist without listeners. Storytelling is like stand-up comedy or playing catch, you can't really do it without somebody on the other end. Good music can be played alone, and lines delivered well, but storytelling only becomes real when we can feel our words going directly into others' minds as we speak. Audience, story, and tellers become one.

 

 

If you tolerate milkweed long enough, not only do you get sweet perfume in July, monarch butterflies may surround your catnip, mint, and echinacia flowers in late August.

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