Jeni Hankins & Billy Kemp: News

Jeni can't think of a better birthday present than having a whole bunch of people come out for Jeni & Billy at PSALM, The Philadelphia Society for Art, Literature, and Music. Saturday, May 30th @ 8 pm.

The PSALM Salon is reminiscent of the old-world salons of Europe, where the cultural cognoscenti would gather to experience and discuss the works of the leading artists of the day. In that spirit, the evening will begin with a guest appearance by mountain-top removal activist Larry Gibson. There is also a stunning gallery exhibit of Coal Country by photographer Mark Schmerling.

The PSALM Salon is Philadelphia's premiere small space for serious listening. It boasts an audiophile quality sound system in an acoustically pristine space, allowing guests to experience performances with ultimate clarity in a stately old Overbrook Farms mansion. It is a space for performers to connect with guests one on one.

Bless our lucky stars! We can hardly contain our excitement! Bill Frisell is one of our favorite music makers, so this makes our debut at the Ram's Head all the more sweet.

It's a weeknight, Tuesday, May 19 @ 8 pm, but we promise you won't regret staying up with us.

We are proud to announce that Jeni & Billy have signed with Real People's Music. We visited with agent, Josh Dunson, in Oak Park, just outside of Chicago earlier this week to seal the deal over some authentic Greek food at The Parthenon.

We are particularly honored to be in the company of 2008 Grammy nominee Peggy Seeger, and songwriter-activist Si Kahn. Real People's Music has been helping artists share their music for 35 years and we are certainly happy to be part of their roster!

Jewell Ridge Coal, is steeped in the traditions of the mines and the families whose lives depended on them. The production is simple and uncluttered; the lead instrument is clearly the voice of Jeni, for whom these songs are like members of the family.
- Wayne Winkler, Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine

I found Jeni & Billy's second album Jewell Ridge Coal to be like Billy Elliot meets the Mamas and the Papas meets Dolly Parton. A little bit bluegrass, a little bit folk, and all original, the music feels simultaneously familiar and completely new. Their combination creates this powerful and unique flavor, and they sound so natural together, it feels calming and clear. Its as if you were there sitting on a back porch in old-timey South and they were right there with you and just stumbled upon some instruments.
- Nicole Levitz, Feminist Review

Hi all,

Just a quick note to let you know that this Friday we'll be performing live on the air as part of the WFHB Community Radio's "Radio Variety Extravaganza -- An Evening with Border Radio." This event will raise funds for this wonderfully diverse Bloomington, Indiana, station.

If you are outside of Bloomington, which many of you are, you can stream it live on the web from www.wfhb.org!

We'll be playing several tunes from Jewell Ridge Coal, songs from our upcoming record & a couple of songs especially worked up for the show.

Here are the details from the WFHB website:

On Friday, March 27th from 8 to 10 pm Bloomington's historic Buskirk-Chumley Theater will become a time portal to another age; the age of "Border Radio" when high power stations on the Mexican border could be heard over large areas of the U.S. from the 1940's to the '70's.

The show will also be broadcast live on WHFB, at 91.3 and 98.1 FM in Bloomington, at 106.3 for Ellettsville, at 100.7 for Brown County and online at wfhb.org as well as on CATS television.

We hope you'll join us!

Happy Spring to all!

Love & Happiness,

Jeni & Billy

www.jeniandbilly.com http://www.myspace.com/jenihankinsbillykemp http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jeni-Billy/19363808924 http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh67921948649022534 http://www.sonicbids.com/jeniandbilly http://www.twitter.com/jeniandbilly http://blip.fm/jeniandbilly

We have just confirmed that we will be playing the Beverley Folk Festival in Yorkshire, England this coming June! http://www.beverleyfestival.com/
Time to try out our wings!

Thanks to all of the prayers and positive energy that folks have sent our way!

Jeni & Billy

Well, January snuck by us and we are just coming to our first newsletter of the year!

We just finished our first leg of touring for 2009 in Florida. Thanks to all of you who came out to hear our songs and stories! We are already booking dates for late January/early February in Florida next year, so if you happened to catch one of our concerts there and are interested in booking a house concert with us or if you have any suggestions for venues, we would be all ears.

We already have a lot of dates booked for this year, so please check our calendar to see if we are coming to your area. If we aren’t and you wish we were, then please get in touch and we’ll see what we can do.

We are planning to head out West next spring at the end of April, so we are really interested in hearing from folks on the West Coast about ideas. Thanks to those of you who have already written!

Some really special dates on the horizon:

March: Opening for Claire Lynch at Eddie’s Attic in Atlanta, GA, on March 8!
Bloomington, Indiana -- three shows, including a benefit for WFHB Community Radio.

May: Kirksville, Missouri -- two shows, including a performance at the Kirksville Arts Association to celebrate the Smithsonian exhibit New Harmonies. Philadelphia, PA, concert at PSALM on Jeni’s Birthday!

June: Seedtime on the Cumberland in Whitesburg, Kentucky!

July: A return to the Columbia Lakefront Festival in Columbia, Maryland.

August: The Rooster’s Wife Concert Series in Aberdeen, NC and Music on the Square in Jonesborough, TN.

September: Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion, Bristol, TN/VA and a performance for the Citizens for the Arts in Jeni’s hometown of Richlands, VA.

We are adding new dates all of the time, so please check our website.

We are heading to Folk Alliance in Memphis next week and to SXSW in March. We are Standby Showcase artists for both of these conferences, so any prayers and good wishes would be most appreciated.

Lastly, we hope that you will take a moment to visit
http://www.grassrootsleadership.org/index.html and consider joining Si Kahn in Grassroots Leadership’s Campaign to End Immigrant Family Detention and in their mission to challenge the existence of For-Profit Prisons in our country. These folks are doing extraordinary work to defend human rights and promote justice.

This is a time of year when we are especially grateful to be touring around and making music together, so in that spirit, we recommend that you check out these other true love duos:

www.hungrytown.net (Rebecca Hall & Ken Anderson)
www.robinsongs.com (Dana & Susan Robinson)
www.sallyspring.com (Sally Spring & Ted Lyons)

Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you!

Jeni & Billy

By the way! Did you know that you can learn what we’re up to on a whole bunch of sites? They’re all right here:

www.jeniandbilly.com http://www.myspace.com/jenihankinsbillykemp http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jeni-Billy/19363808924 http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh67921948649022534 http://www.sonicbids.com/jeniandbilly http://www.twitter.com/jeniandbilly http://blip.fm/jeniandbilly

We are so happy to announce that we have been chosen as Standby Showcase Artists for SXSW & Folk Alliance! So, if someone gets called to be on Letterman or decides to relax in the Bahamas instead of going to these conferences, we are their replacement! We will be at both conferences regardless, so if you're planning on being there too, be sure to say hello!

Happy New Year All!

We just posted this note on Whole Wheat Radio www.wholewheatradio.org in Talkeetna, Alaska. They have a really great site with streaming audio and a wiki interface where listeners can talk to each other.

This is just to give you an idea of what we've been up to during our touring hiatus!

We (Jeni & Billy) spent most of December & January in a (generous!) friend's cabin in Western NC. Though we initially intended this to be a much needed break from a summer of heavy touring and a fall of industry conferences, we got the wild idea to make another record. We don't like to say it's our second record, probably because of all of the weight that comes with putting out a sophomore effort, so we think of it as 1 1/2. This has allowed us to enjoyed ourselves a lot more we imagine, though we did neglect the whole rest part of the equation. Luckily our touring begins in about a week in Naples, Florida, so we are starting off right!

The new record is a combination of traditional and original songs. We spent a lot of time at fiddler's conventions in 2007 and learned some traditional songs so we could join in the competitions. Then they became part of our set as we set off to promote last year's release "Jewell Ridge Coal." The originals are a collections of songs we've had in our set for a while, but didn't really flow with the Jewell Ridge theme, and one song that we just wrote in the cabin.

Today is our last day of work at the cabin. Tomorrow we put the cabin back in order and on Wednesday we head home to Nashville for three brief days to do laundry and pick up our live sound equipment. Then our touring begins. We are really looking forward to this year on the road and hoping that it might bring us to the home of Whole Wheat Radio in Talkeetna. If you're curious about us, please look us up on www.jeniandbilly.com and drop us a note.

Peace, love, and happiness in the new year,

Jeni & Billy

Hey all!

We are super excited to be opening for Claire Lynch at the McGlohon Theater in Charlotte, NC, on Dec. 30. The show starts at 7:30 and there are still some tickets left!

Wahhooo! What a great Christmas present!

For more details on the show please see our tour page.

Happy Holidays to all!

Jeni & Billy

We are so glad to report that we will be joining the festivities and celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Apppalshop at Seedtime on the Cumberland in Whitesburg, KY. The festival runs from June 10-13 and we will be performing on Friday, June 12, and Saturday, June 13.
http://www.appalshop.org/seedtime/
Appalshop is a very special organization that has supported traditional music and encouraged social activism over the last four decades! We encourage you to learn more about the good they do at www.appalshop.org

Jeni & Billy are now posting on Twitter!

You can follow us at www.twitter.com/jeniandbilly
If you haven't heard of Twitter think of it as a little bulletin board where people post the things they've been doing or something they saw, heard, or ate. It's a little like Facebook paired down to it's basic essence.

Anyhow, if you're curious to know what we're up to on a more day to day basis, then Twitter us!

We are excited to report that Jewell Ridge Coal held it's #5 position on the Folk DJ Chart for the month of November. www.folkradio.org
Thanks to all of you who called in to your local folk radio station to request our music. "Chicken Ridge" climbed from #18 in October to #7 in November! And we moved from #9 as artists to #8!!!

Thanks also to Kari Estrin, our radio promoter, who has supported our record so enthusiastically during these last two months! www.kariestrin.com

We are very excited to announce that we will be performing at the Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion in Bristol, TN/VA. This is one of our favorite festivals to visit, so imagine our happiness to be among the performers! The festival organizers do a really fine job of turning the downtown into a traditional music lover's paradise. If you haven't been to Bristol yet, this is your year! Come on out and see us! http://www.bristolrhythm.com/

You know that old adage about getting coal in your stocking? Well,
how about coal mining songs instead?

Jewell Ridge Coal is available for sale at
www.cdbaby.com/cd/jenibilly and we hope you'll consider sharing our
music with friends and family for the Holidays.

Quite some time has passed since our last newsletter. Billy & I have
been traveling all over the country playing concerts and attending
music industry conferences. Our favorite trip took us out west to the
FAR-West Folk Alliance in Phoenix, AZ. Neither of us had seen Grand
Canyon. We were so wowed by the experience, we are already planning a
return trip next spring. Our tour also brought us to Las Cruces, NM,
on the Day of the Dead (Nov. 1). We walked around the old town of
Mesilla looking at the shrines made by families celebrating the lives
of their loved ones who had passed on.

We are outside of Boston right now. We'll be playing a house concert
in Boston on November 23 at the home of Judy & Doug Hall. If you are
in the area, there are still some seats left. For more details please
see our website: http://www.jeniandbilly.com/calendar.html
With all of our time on the road, we've had an opportunity to listen
to a lot of music and there are a few commercial releases that we are
really keen on and we hope you'll give these records a listen:

Randy Newman, Harps & Angels
She & Him
Steve Earle, Washington Square

For those of you up in the DC/Baltimore area looking for a great
show, we heartily suggest you go see The Grandsons. These fellas have
a really superb selection of songs and they present them in a style
totally unique. Alan holds a trumpet on his arm while playing the
guitar. Moe's eyebrows move up and down with the musical moment.
Chris moves in with the saxophone while Matt provides just the right
amount of rhythm. www.thegrandsons.com
This past Monday we made a cameo appearance at a NYC benefit for Dos
Pueblos. John McCutcheon (www.folkmusic.com/homepage) who graciously
invited us was the featured artist. Dos Pueblos is an amazing
organization providing Nicaraguans in the city of Tipitapa with
practical training and tools to initiate and sustain change for the
better in their community. You can find out more about their work at
www.tipitapa.org.

We are now working on our tour schedule for next year and would like
to make a general offer to try and work house concerts into our tour.
If you have any inclination to have us play a concert in your home,
please be in touch. This is a beautiful way for us to share our music
with you, your friends and your community. If you want to learn more
about giving a house concert, please visit
http://jrp-graphics.com/houseconcerts/ourfaq.html. Russ & Julie are
veteran house concert people and you can learn a lot from reading
their FAQ page.

Lastly, we wanted to let you all know some good news about Jewell
Ridge Coal. Last month JRC and our song "Tazewell Beauty Queen" were
both #5 on the Folk DJ list. This is an airplay chart for folk
stations around the world, but mostly for places like Bloomington,
Indiana, and Nevada City, CA. So, if you happen to listen to
community and public radio stations like WAMU or WGBH and you'd like
to hear our record, we encourage you to give them a call or send an
e-mail. But please only contact stations that you actually listen
to.

After our house concert in Boston, we are going to take a much needed
break from touring and hunker down in a cabin for some writing and
recording. We are looking forward to visiting with our families for
the holidays and we wish you all a beautiful holiday season.

Jeni & Billy

www.jeniandbilly.com http://www.sonicbids.com/jeniandbilly http://www.myspace.com/jenihankinsbillykemp http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jeni-Billy/19363808924

Good News!

Jewell Ridge Coal charted at #5 on the folk DJ list for October 2008! "Tazewell Beauty Queen" is also #5 with "Chicken Ridge" and "Miner's Reward" on down the chart. Jeni & Billy charted #9 as artists. The Folk-DJ list is compiled from around 150 reporting DJs each month. If you would like to find a station or a folk show in your area, there are several resources: http://www.allthingsacoustic.org/tifrl/, http://www.publicradiofan.com/cgibin/progsearch.pl?type=folk+music&when=listall, and http://www.radiofolk.org/.

We hope that you will support your local folk/bluegrass/community radio station and that you'll consider requesting one of our songs from Jewell Ridge Coal. This helps us in many ways. The folk DJs are a well respected group among promoters, artists, agents, and labels. If they play our record it's a sign to others in the industry that we might be worth a listen. Also, as more people across the country discover our record, they begin to ask venues and festivals in their area to bring us to their town or perhaps they even contact us for a house concert. This means so much to us as full time touring musicians.

Thanks to all of the DJs who are playing our record!

Jeni & Billy

Hello wonderful people out there in the world!

We’ve had a beautiful summer of touring up and down the East Coast. From the deluges of Vermont to sweltering East Tennessee we have braved many climates in our tent and still managed to greet nearly every day with a how-de-do and a coal mining song.

We met a number of tremendously nice people on our tour. We want to share a few links with you and encourage you to explore the music of these folks who are doing so much good work in music by taking on the hard subjects with grace:

Hungrytown is Rebecca Hall and Ken Anderson. This husband-wife team tours all over the country in their Blue Meanie campervan delivering deft humor and superbly-crafted songs. www.hungrytown.net
The Bee-Line Ramblers, another fine duo, write and perform earnest songs with a harmonic energy and sincerity that just gets inside your skin. www.thebeelineramblers.com
Si Kahn is a powerful songwriter, performer, teacher, and activist. Billy and I were moved to speak with him at the Champlain Valley Folk Festival in Vermont because of his union songs and his witness through music about the privatization of prisons. www.sikahn.com
Jeni & Billy have some exciting events coming up in the next couple of weeks. This week we are playing two CD release concerts and we look very much forward to seeing all of our friends from these small hamlets:

Thursday, September 11, 7 pm @ Bookshop by the Lakes in Seven Lakes, NC

&

Saturday, September 13, 7 pm @ The Friendly Chapel Church, Smith Ridge, VA

On Monday, September 22, we will be joining Jim Lauderdale and Tim Eriksen in Atlanta to celebrate the release of “Help Me to Sing” a tribute to Sacred Harp Singing. There will be an in-store performance at Criminal Records followed by a concert at The Earl.

We’ll finish up this month of touring in Ohio and Kentucky where we’ll present a new song celebrating our right to read during banned books week. “This World Ain’t My Home” is based on the frequently banned book “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck.

Our website calendar has all of the details. www.jeniandbilly.com
We will be attending a slew of folk conferences this fall and early next year. So, please have a look at our calendar and let us know if you are interested in hosting us for a house concert while we are in your area or if there are any venues in your neck of the woods just perfect for us!

We appreciate your e-mails and letters and look forward to being in touch!

Love and Happiness from

Jeni & Billy

www.jeniandbilly.com http://www.sonicbids.com/jeniandbilly http://www.myspace.com/jenihankinsbillykemp http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jeni-Billy/19363808924

We are pleased to announce our win at the Open Stage Hootenanny at the Champlain Valley Folk Festival. We won with two songs from the new record "Miner's Reward" and "Oxycodone" and our duet arrangement of the traditional song "Pretty Fair Miss."

Also winning were the husband and wife duo Dana & Susan Robinson of Asheville, NC. http://www.robinsongs.com/ They great folks with songs that you'll love, especially the beautiful ballad "Spokane."

We appeared on the main stage with the Robinsons on Sunday and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.

We made our way up to the festival to see our friends Hungrytown perform. www.hungrytown.net This husband and wife duo's songs will be in your head long after you hear them. So, get ready to sing along.

We're three weeks into our five week tour and looking forward to all that's coming ahead.

Thanks to everyone who has come out to our gigs!

Love and rainbows to you,

Jeni & Billy

Hello from Jeni & Billy!

We are proud to announce that we have mastered our new record "Jewell
Ridge Coal" and we are planning to release it in July. We are now
working on shining up our packaging and getting everything just right
so we can bring you something really special this summer. We are very
grateful for all of the help and advice we had during the recording
process from truly great musicians and producers Bil VornDick, Buddy
Miller, Dirk Powell, Gary Paczosa, Jim Reilley and Randy Kohrs. We
hope that you will look them up on their websites and support their
work too!

www.bilvorndick.com www.buddyandjulie.com www.garypaczosa.com www.dirkpowell.com www.jimreilley.com www.randykohrs.com
We were also blessed when recording Jewell Ridge Coal to have visits
from several wonderful artists. Jim Lauderdale and Randy Kohrs both
sing harmony. Shad Cobb of the John Cowan Band plays some great
old-timey and country fiddle. And Kim Peery Sherman (one of the
wonderful proprietresses of Cotten Music here in Nashville) sings
gorgeous alto harmony and plays sweet guitar.

www.jimlauderdale.com www.myspace.com/shadcobb www.cottenmusic.com
We have just returned from the first leg of our summer tour and have
a whole summer of touring planned. We are also working on dates for
the early fall and the winter of 2009. So we hope that you'll check
our calendar and come out and see us. We want to give some advance
notice to all of the folks in the DC/Baltimore area who have been
asking us when we're going to play up there again: We will be playing
at the Columbia Lakefront on Sunday, July 27, from 6:30-8:30.
http://www.lakefrontfestival.com/wordp/?m=20080727&cat=3 We'll be
recording the show live and we'll have the new CD with us, so we hope
to see you there!

Lastly, we are happy to announce our collaboration with Jim
Lauderdale on a track for an upcoming tribute album of Sacred Harp
music. The two CD set is a companion to a fine documentary film
called "Awake, My Soul." You can learn more about the film at
www.awakemysoul.com The CD is slated for release in the fall/early
winter and will also include performances by the Carolina Chocolate
Drops, John Paul Jones & Rayna Gellert (of Uncle Earl), Tim Erickson,
the Innocence Mission, and many others.

We are truly looking forward to sharing our music with you out on the
road and on "Jewell Ridge Coal" and we hope to hear from you soon!

Our best to all of you,

Jeni & Billy

www.jeniandbilly.com

We hope everyone’s new year is off to a great start and that you all found true love for Valentine’s day!

We have a lot of exciting news for this year. We are working again on our record. As you may remember, last February we recorded some tracks with Bil VornDick at Oceanway here in Nashville. Some of those tracks will be on our upcoming record, “Jewell Ridge Coal,” while others are in the works. If you’ve been following our news, you know that we went on a big summer tour of fiddler’s conventions last year. Well, when we got home, we were full of ideas for songs for the record and we wrote several new ones. So, we’re looking forward to sharing those with you all!

We’ll be heading to a few fiddler’s conventions this summer as well as playing a concert at UNC-Asheville for the Bread Loaf School of English on July 1. We hope to see all of our Asheville friends there. We’re also playing our first Nashville concert at Norm’s River Road House on April 8. We are very excited because the venue is cozy and the sound is great. We’ll be adding dates as time goes on, so please check the website for all of the details and please come out!

We’ve also been working with composer Stuart Saunders Smith on two New Music pieces which he wrote especially for us. These pieces are an attempt to bring Appalachian and New Music together and we are enjoying our work on them tremendously. There are plans in the works for us to perform them and our material too at the University of Maryland Baltimore County in the fall or spring, so we’ll be looking forward to seeing our Baltimore community then.

We’ve just had a visit from some really special folks, Rebecca Hall and Ken Anderson, the talented husband and wife duo Hungrytown. They have a new album out called Hungrytown and it’s full of great songwriting and musicianship. Their guests include The Virginia Ramblers and Michael Merenda and Ruth Ungar of the Mammals. So please check them out at www.hungrytown.net and read more about them on our links page.

Also our good friend Jim Lauderdale just won a Grammy for his “Bluegrass Diaries” CD and is releasing a country CD this week called “Honey Songs.” His band is none other than The Dream Players, some of whom were Elvis band members, and there are guest vocals from the likes of Emmylou Harris and Patty Loveless. www.jimlauderdale.com
Finally, we are really glad to offer you a listen to some early mixes of the tracks for our upcoming CD. If you listen to “Sweetness Keen as Pain” you’ll hear Jim Lauderdale on harmony vocals.

We look forward to seeing you out and about this year and we appreciate all of the encouragement that everyone has sent our way regarding the record. As always your suggestions on venues are welcome and we would be pleased to do a house concert if anyone has some ideas.

Our best to you,

Jeni & Billy

Hello from Jeni & Billy!

Well, we’re finally home in Nashville and staying put for a while after an eight week tour of fiddler’s conventions and festivals. Our journey began on the 30th of June as we left for Jewell Ridge to play at the Jewell Ridge 4th of July Festival and ended this past weekend as we did some song catching and banjo trading with banjoist and ballad singer George Gibson (www.banjohistory.com) at the Kentucky Folklife Festival. You’ll find links to the fiddler’s conventions in the tour section of our website under “past dates.” We were proud to bring home three ribbons from the Johnson County Tennessee Old-time Music Festival in Guitar, Folk Song, and Duet Singing! (http://www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-10/10-10/laurel-bloomery.html)

We want to say a special thank you to all of the folks who welcomed us so warmly into the fiddler’s convention and festival fold this summer. We met some very fine musicians, some of whom have myspaces and websites and we hope that if you haven’t heard of these artists that you look them up and support their work: Matt Kinman (http://www.myspace.com/mattkinmanthelittlehobo ) is a former original member of the Old Crow Medicine Show. His repertoire consists largely of songs written before the 1930s. Though he is a brilliant old-time instrumentalist, he will part your hair with his otherworldly ballad singing numbers. The Old 78s (http://theold78s.com) were our favorite act at Merlefest and we had the happy chance to spend some time with them at Clifftop. They play classic parlor tunes on banjo -- imagine an Egyptian influenced piano number from the late 1800s adapted for three banjos -- very strange and mesmerizing. The Orpheus Supertones (http://www.mudthumper.com/) were one of our favorite contemporary old-time string bands -- not afraid to throw in a vocal number or swing tune.

Now that we’re back in Nashville, we are getting into the record again, writing some new songs to fill out the album and looking forward to some more recording. We will be working with some special guests over the next few months and we look forward to releasing the record over the winter.

We have a very special concert coming up next summer at the Bread Loaf School of English’s UNC-Ashville campus. We were invited by Professor John Elder (http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/ump/majors/english/hours/elder.htm) of Middlebury College Vermont to add some live music to his course on Ballads. We will also be playing for the whole campus. We really love the idea of bringing old-time music and ballad singing into the classroom and we’d be glad to hear from any of you who might have a need for that.

Finally, we have received several letters over the last year from fans who had hoped that we would be playing at one festival or another only to discover that we were there to enjoy the music or play informally. We wondered if any of you would consider writing a snail mail letter suggesting that the festival organizers book us and speaking briefly about what you like about our music. One of the festivals that we would most like to play is Bristol Rhythm & Roots (http://www.bristolrhythm.com) which takes place in Bristol, TN/VA, during the third weekend of September every year. Now is the time when they begin pre-booking for next year and we would love to have your support! You can send letters to Leah Ross, Festival Director, P.O. Box 1927, Bristol, VA 24203. If you do decide to send in a letter, we would love to know what you said.

We hope that you will go to our website and read more about our experiences this summer as we post them on the journal page or you can read about them on our MySpace blog. If you have MySpace, we’d love to have you as our friend.

Happy Fall!

Jeni & Billy

From everything we’d heard Clifftop is the Old-time experience not to be missed, so we decided to continue our travels by heading to West Virginia to experience the jamming, workshops, and contests. One of our favorite bands, Polecat Creek, won the Neo-Traditional band contest last year, so we thought we would give that a try. Also, the marvelous Lonesome Sisters were awarded the best original song ribbon. We enjoy entering the contests even if total newcomers rarely place, just because the preparation gets us very serious about our songs and we feel more a part of things. We were fortunate to have Matt Kinman join us on fiddle and we played “Land of the Pharaohs,” a song from our upcoming Jewell Ridge Coal CD. But this year’s awards went to big string bands with the top honor going to a group of very talented and politically outspoken youths. Though, we were made very happy by all of the folks who came out to hear us play and by the strangers who came up to us to say how much our song moved them.

We were very happy to meet The Lonsesome Sisters at Clifftop as well as Rayna Gellert from Uncle Earl, all of whom were very down to earth and friendly. They performed together in the Neo-traditional band competition as well. There were a couple of celebrity sightings, with Mike Seeger, Carol Elizabeth Jones, and Tim O’Brien making appearances here and there. We also met banjo expert Bob Carlin, who gave an incredibly funny and informative showcase. We would highly recommend attending any Bob Carlin event, you will not be disappointed. One of the highlights of the festival was meeting Curly Miller and Carol Anne Rose from the Old 78s. We could hear their version of Swamp Cat Rag clear across Hobo holler in our Airstream.

We were also very happy to see some folks who we seemed to have followed to all of the previous fiddlers conventions, Julie Shepherd, dancer and clawhammer banjoist, and her sweetheart, Adrian Powell, fiddler. These people are two very fine musicians and Julie is glad to pass on flatfooting steps. They will both be teaching at Appalshop’s Old-time String Band Day (http://www.appalshop.com).

Of all the many splendored merchants at Clifftop our favorite was the guys from Old Groove, a graphic design company, who offered all sorts of wear to suit the old time fan. They are based out of Bel Air, Maryland, and are some of the nicest people you will meet.

Our favorite activity was learning to flatfoot dance. Our teacher was Charlie Burton, a gentleman in his early eighties whose energy put us to shame. We were ready to fall over by the end of the hour workshop everyday and he looked like he was just getting started. But the lessons seem to have stuck to us, though it may be some years before we catch the hang of the Tennessee walking step.

All in all we had a great time and the airstream held up very well in Hobo Holler down in the trees.

We are really grateful to all of the folks who helped us to feel so welcome during our first year.

http://www.myspace.com/moreoldtime
Morehead was the first stop in our non-stop tour of fiddler’s conventions that will keep us on the road in our Airstream for about four weeks. We were told about it by some folks we met at the Tazewell County Fiddler’s Convention, the Clack Mountain String Band (http://www.clackmountain.com). Clack Mountain’s Brett & Jesse had a lot to do with organizing this very young festival.

The music of George Gibson, a Kentucky native in his seventies who sustains the tradition of singing while playing banjo, moved us especially (www.banjohistory.com). George has had a tremendous influence on the playing of Matt Kinman, the little hobo, a former member of the Old Crow Medicine Show and a well loved artist on the fiddler’s convention circuit (www.myspace.com/mattkinmanthelittlehobo).

We also met up with artist John Haywood, his wife Kelly and their daughter (www.haywoodart.com). John’s depicts Appalachian scenes with a realism that will remind you of Thomas Hart Benton, but darkly. He is also one of the finest banjo players we’ve heard on our tour this far.

The festival was very small, less than a hundred people, but that added to its beauty. The rain poured relentlessly on Friday night adding a music of its own and in lieu of stage lights the musicians strung Christmas lights around the inside of the tent. Add the music of Clack Mountain and the magic was complete.

http://www.alleghanyfiddlers.com/
We’ve just returned from the Allegheny Fiddler’s Convention in Sparta, NC, where we competed in the Folk Song and Guitar competitions. Many of these Fiddler’s Conventions include both Bluegrass and Old-time music. To Billy & I, Sparta had more of a Bluegrass leaning, though we heard some great Old-time played by Jim Lloyd of Rural Retreat, VA, and his band which also included one of the best harmonica players anywhere, Eddie Ogle. Both of these fine fellas can be found on recordings by Mountain Fling, John & Kathie Hollandsworth’s Old-time band. (John happens to be the maker of my Autoharp.)

We also exchanged CDs with Elizabeth Laprelle ( http://www.myspace.com/elizabethlaprelle ). Elizabeth is a young ballad singer who has a vast knowledge of the Ballad tradition and can be seen songcatching with her digital recorder at many local fiddler’s conventions. She has a new record out called “Lizard in the Spring.”

This was our first experience with dry camping in our 16 foot Airstream Travel Trailer, Bambi, and it went super smoothly. We had a lot of curiosity over the trailer and gave quite a few tours.

The organizers and festival workers who largely consisted of the local Firefighters were incredibly friendly and helpful. Everyone was so appreciative that we had come all the way from Nashville to compete, but where else could we meet a family from Norway in the competition line and join their old-time band on stage?

On Sunday morning after the festival, Billy and I weren’t quite ready to go and decided to play a few tunes. Some Old-time musicians were taking a break from packing up and throwing a frisbee around. Every time we visited the porta-loo we had heard them playing with a fascinating meditative energy and we’d try to guess the tune. We never knew their names, just their sound. As we played our song “While I Stay at Home and Weep” and moved into the harmony singing of the second chorus they began to move away from their game, their hands slack at their sides. They moved in a little closer as we continued to play and as we finished, we heard their applause -- a sound which lifted us all the way home to Nashville.