GumbObama!

According to the Washington Post, Gov. Sarah Palin said this at a fundraiser in Greensboro, NC:

"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation."

I wonder if she'd think this fine video featuring friends Dirk Powell, Christine Balfa and Linzay Young is pro-America? I certainly do!



If you've never been to Louisiana, go now. It's one of the most unique and wonderful cultural experiences you can have in this country. And the food isn't bad either.

Home

Contrary to rumors you may have heard, I did not open my own bar and I do still have a blog.


What's my excuse for such a long absence? Mostly procrastination but also a good deal of general laziness.

For the first time since April, I have a full week at home. That's right, I haven't been at my home for more than four consecutive days since April 28th. I'm now looking at eight days in a row. I'm not sure such a drastic change is healthy so I was thinking I should load my car up with all of my gear and drive around for a few hours and then unload it all just to ease into things a little. A couple of days of that and I'll be ready to jump back into domestic life!

Seriously though, I'm back in Brattleboro after a ten day tour in the south that started with a few Crooked Still gigs and ended with a week of shows with Lissa Schneckenburger and Owen Marshall. It was a great run and we got to visit with lots of old friends.

We concluded the tour with an amazing show at Pete's Candy store, our favorite Brooklyn venue. We played the late set and after the show we all crowded around the TV in the bar to see our friends, Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, Jake Silver and Ruthy Merenda perform with Pete Seeger on Letterman. It was truly amazing. Here it is:



Here are some more videos and photos to get you caught up on some things I've been up to this summer.

On Mountain Stage

The Alberta Street Pub, Portland, OR

On another note, you should all go out and buy Mark Erelli's new CD, Delivered.


I think it is his finest work to date and in the singer songwriter world, he is a beacon of light in a shit storm of mediocrity.

And you also need to hear Charlie Haden's new CD, Rambling Boy.


I've been trying to sound exactly like Charlie Haden ever since I first heard his bass playing with Ornette Coleman. His new project is a country album that features the amazing singing of his three daughters as well as Ricky Skaggs, Bruce Hornsby, Rosanne Cash, Pat Metheny and an unbelievable version of Old Joe Clark sung by Charlie's son in law, Jack Black. You heard me, the star of School of Rock, High Fidelity and founding member of Tenacious D is now singing old-time music with jazz legends. It's a strange strange world.

Helpless Trailer

After an amazing three night traveling triple bill with the Infamous Stringdusters and Chatham County Line, I'm now in Boston for four shows at Club Passim with Crooked Still.

Last night was the first night and it was probably my favorite show with the new lineup to date. Playing at Passim is always special for us and this being the first Boston area show with Brittany and Tristan it was even more memorable.

Check out this clip of Neil Young's "Helpless" from show at the Bowery two nights ago.



The other big news is that Crooked Still now owns a cargo trailer to haul our gear around. I was really excited about this but let me tell you, parking a trailer in New York City is no picnic! The good news is that we now have tons of room in the van for an entourage!

That's all for now. I'm off to buy an iPhone. I might try my hand at some live blogging from the stage. Not sure how the logistics of playing the bass and surfing the web at the same time will work.

Captain, Captain

Check out this performance of Captain, Captain from our recent Nashville show at the Basement!



Thanks to Bill for all of the great video footage of the show. Most of the set is up, so check it out!

Still Crooked World Tour

For those of you wondering what it's like to travel with a double bass, here's a photo taken at the Kirkwall airport in the Orkney Islands.

After an amazing tour in Denmark with Lissa, I met up with Crooked Still for the start of our summer CD release tour. Still Crooked, our third CD and first with new members Brittany Haas and Tristan Clarridge will be officially released on June 24th, but we decided to jump the gun and make it a world tour by spending a month in Europe before heading back home for festival season.

After Denmark the next stop was the Orkney Islands for the amazing Orkney Folk Festival. The lineup at this festival was amazing and we got to collaborate with our friends Kris Drever and Eamonn Coyne as well was Irish music powerhouse Solas and English folk singer Martin Simpson. Martin blew me away with his version of Little Musgrave, a song I perform with Lissa quite often. Here I am sitting in with Kris and Eamonn at one of the concerts.



It was an amazing time and I don't think any member of Crooked Still went to bed before six AM for the entire festival. It never really gets completely dark in Orkney this time of year which I think helps with the party stamina.

In an odd stroke of luck, the weather was perfect for the four days we were there and we were able take an epic 12 mile bike ride out to see some incredible standing stones and a 5000 year old village called Scara Brae. This place is older than Stonehenge and the Great Wall of China! Not to mention these things are huge!



After Orkney, we headed back to mainland Scotland for some gigs in Glasgow, Edinburgh and a quick trip down to Newcastle, England. Here's us at BBC Scotland after performing live on a radio show.



Except for our excursion to England, we relied entirely on public transportation for this portion of the trip, which is no small accomplishment with a double bass, cello, 5 people and all of our gear!

Here's slightly dark, but nice sounding clip of us at our Newcastle show.




We're now in Ireland and have had a great week of gigs! We also had a day off where we were able to hike out through a cow pasture to get a view of the Cliffs of Moher from the south, away from all the tourists. Ireland is a pretty stunning place.



We're here for two more nights and then head straight to California for a few shows! Check out the brand spanking new Crooked Still website for details. www.crookedstill.com

Shetland Ponies.... and Fiddlers

There are tumbleweeds blowing across my blog! Sorry for the lack of activity here the past few weeks. I'm back.

I spent the past week playing at the Shetland Folk Festival with Lissa Schneckenburger and now we are starting a week of gigs all around Denmark. Once again, we are joined by Keith Murphy on Guitar and Stefan Amidon on drums.

The Shetland Folk Festival lasts 5 days and is sandwiched between twelve hour long, over night ferry rides from Aberdeen to Shetland and back. All the performers for the festival are on the ferry together, so it's a huge party from the start. Here's a typical daily itinerary at the festival:

3:00 PM - Ride bus with four other bands to a remote village
4:00 PM - Sound check for concert
7:30 PM - Concert
11:30 PM - Ride bus back to Lerwick (the biggest town in Shetland)
12:00 AM - Party at the festival club. Huge sessions, dance parties, late night concerts
4:00 AM - Festival club closes, head to house party. More sessions etc.
7:00 AM - Breakfast
8:00 AM - Head to pub. More sessions and wackiness.

Stumble home sometime between 8:30 AM and noon.

And this goes on for FIVE DAYS STRAIGHT!!!! It's insane.

Even though Americans are not cut of for this level of partying, we put in a solid showing. We really bonded with the great French Canadian band, Le Vent Du Nord, and shared the stage with them a few times. Shetlanders are known for their fiddle playing and partying stamina but the Quebecois boys gave them a run for their money and did us proud. It was a blast.

Here's a couple youtube clips of us at one of the shows:




Shetland is also insanely beautiful in a kind spare and stark way. This is the typical look of the countryside.



Tons of sheep, puffins, seals and of course, Shetland Ponies!


I really love coming to Europe to play, but I have to say the one thing that drives me up the wall is the currency. Don't get me wrong, I love that all of the bills are different colors and that these days as the American dollar continues to tank, it's like getting a pay raise over here, but the amount of change I end up with is staggering. My pockets are always loaded with fistfuls of change! And the coins here are freaking heavy. I guess they don't call them pounds for nothing!

That's all for now!

Not in Kansas...

I just received this email from some friends who are performing in a month long Irish dance show in the mid-west. To protect the innocent, I'm changing the names and details, but you'll get the idea. It sounds amazing and bizarre. Here's the recap I received:

We are part of an Irish dance show that runs for 5 weeks and goes like this:

1) Fire dance + pretty girl dancers skipping around with bright orange scarves
2) Michael-Flatley-Riverdance-knock-off moment with boy dancer
3) Band number: two trad Irish tunes, goes into reggae groove in the middle
4) Mark comes out as emcee in green velvet jacket with gold sparkles
5) More music: Mark & Sharon sing a song, there's harp moment and bouzouki feature
6) Dance challenge! Mark introduces the contestants wrestler-style...
7) Square dance (hearing Mark say "allemande left, and around you go," is priceless)
8) GOSPEL NUMBER! Sharon & Liza, dressed in white bridal-style gowns (I am not kidding...) sing a glory-hallelujah-televangelist song. This is supposed to be a slick "Irish Gospel" number, whatever that means. This is an amazing and FIERCE dodgy moment. It's definitely my favorite part of the the show.
9) Finale, complete with percussive a cappella dance line

Oh, and shows begin at 11am--and the theater is full from the first show. It might seat 2,000? Not sure there... At each show I get one or two religious pamphlets, or Books of John.