It's cold and snowy, sure enough, but the light is growing, and we know that even as we reconcile to this brown and white world, and find love in its bleakness, all will turn surely, suddenly green again.

THANKS

We were very glad to see so many folks coming out to see our new show, and we're pleased you signed up for our new email newsletter.

Any time you don’t want to hear from us anymore just click the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of the email. Resubscribe by clicking the button on the front page of our website, folktale.net

 It's an experiment, and a New Years Resolution. We plan to send one of these out roughly once a month-- for awhile at least-- and hope that it will turn out to be reasonably entertaining project for all of us. We're really winging this thing here; is there anything you particularly like to see in a newsletter?

If you have question you'd like to ask, or something to tell us, just hit "reply."

"LAST" CHANCE! "FINAL" SHOW!

January 12, 4:00
THE KING & THE THRUSH

Fellowship Hall, Greensboro VT
Greensboro Wonder and Wisdom
(802) 533-9216 * Free
for Adults and School-aged Children

Wonder and Wisdom is a great local community group that runs programs for school-aged children and senior citizens. We've performed for them before, for after-school program, for the senior trotters, and for mixed groups. We asked if we could invite you to this one, and if you're between six and six hundred years of age they'll be happy for you to come. Time and location are a little out of the way, but we'd really love to see you. (Appearance made possible in part by a Anerican Masterpieces grant from the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.)

The Greensboro show is the last stop in our little local King & the Thrush CD-release tour.

Obviously, we'll keep on doing this show, hopefully far into the future, but this one closes our little local "launch." The show has been around the state and into just-barely-NH and just-barely-NY, lots of shows, many different kinds of audiences and venues--theaters, schools, festivals. libraries, churches-- and things went very well.

Audiences were enthusiastic, there seemed to be (these things are mysterious) a good buzz, we got some nice airplay, sold a bunch of CDs, and got quotable press:

Seven Days review

Times Argus story

Yay! Altogether, a very satisfactory conclusion to the first stage of this project. We're tired but happy.

WHAT'S UP NEXT?

Back To The Grindstone:
Book school shows (whipcrack!) Line up summer work (whipcrack!) Get TK&TT out in the Wide World (whipcrack!) On! On!

New Recording Projects:
We are projecting two new CDs, one of music and one of storytelling. We'll be doing most of the recording work here in our living room-- that's how we made the music tracks on "King and the Thrush," and they were inspiringly enjoyable to record that way. We'll keep you posted on project details and progress in future emails. We don't expect either to be done this year.

New CD release:
 Some this year, Tim’s solo story tape “Weatherbeard” will finally make the leap from cassette to CD.  It was made back when he was a solo teller, and has had some devoted fans over the years, some of whom have been waiting for this for a long time. If you haven't heard it, it's well worth checking out. Sing Out! magazine called it "a rare thing, a tape you cannot, upon any invocation of willpower, resist listening to." People have been telling us for years that it needs to be rescued from Cassetteland, and we agree. Feel free to rip it onto your ipods.

We'll keep you posted on all of these things.

REQUESTS WELCOME

We like requests, and honor them when we can. If you're at one of our shows and ask us to do a story, sometimes we can do it and sometimes we can't. (Maybe it doesn't fit, or maybe it needs a runthrough first.)  But if you drop us a note and ask us ahead of time, we're much more likely to be able to work it up and fit in, and it's our pleasure to do so.

WORD OF MOUTH

Since few contemporary people make a habit of going to see a generic "storyteller," we're very pleased when new folks give us a chance. We had quite a crowd at our CD launch celebration at Montpelier's Woods Gallery last Thanksgiving weekend, and it seemed like most of them hadn't seen us before. We polled them to see what brought them out; we asked who came because of a mailing, or emailing, or the signs we put up, or newspaper publicity— a few, but not many for any of them. Then somebody said “Ask about word-of-mouth.” That turned out to be pretty much It.

So if you like what we do, and you know somebody else who would like us too, do us all a favor by spreading the word.

much love,

Tim and Leanne

Jennings and Ponder • World Tales
Sheefra • Celtic Music
Eastern Coyote Productions