More to come…

…lots more as we cool down for October’s last gasp and look ahead to the eleventh month of this music-filled year.  Got a pair of Dailey & Vincent tix to give away too…read on!

For a freakin’ fine way to mark Pumpkin Day, how about getting dressed up as Junior Samples or Lulu Roman and heading to Shenanigans on MacArthur Avenue Saturday night for a Hee Haw Halloween with the scary-good Brad Spivey & the Honky Tonk Experience.  “Where O where are you tonight?”  Or the Taters stage a Halloween Spooktacular at Ashland Coffee & Tea on the same dang night.  What to do?

On Wednesday, Nov. 3rd, the Savoy Family Band who played our National Folk Festival here back in the early years, returns for a well-played night of Cajun tunes at the Cultural Arts Center at Glen Allen.

Friday night the 5th brings autoharpist/raconteur Bryan Bowers back to the east coast to play AC&T after a couple of JAMinc-arranged school performances at the Sabot Stony Point School and Mary Munford Elementary earlier in the day.  If you’ve missed Bryan at In Your Ear or Cross Roads Coffee House, don’t let that happen again…he’s a consummate entertainer.

Also beginning Friday, VCU’s guitar man John Patykula has cooked up Flamenco Festival II: Miguelito and Friends featuring the artistry of Michael “Miguelito” Perez to lead a celebration of the genre’s vibrant music and dance.  Check the Singleton Center’s website for all the specifics.

Yet another option might be the Scotland’s answer to the Chieftains, the Battlefield Band, playing their rich mix of Celtic tunes at the Williamsburg Regional Library on Friday night.

Saturday the 6th could be a great night to head out 64 West to Staunton and the beautiful Mockingbird Roots Music Hall for a special CD release show by the Honey Dewdrops and their special guests Robin & Linda Williams and valley luthiers Jeff Huss and Mark Dalton.  The Dewdrops, of course, are Scottsville's Laura Wortman and Kagey Parrish (with Richmond’s own Barry Lawson on bass and mandolin) whose growing fanbase has been eagerly awaiting their second CD These Old Roots.  I would so be there if it weren’t for having a long-ago purchased pair of tickets for the Hot Rize reunion show at the Birchmere the same night.  And rumor has it that Red Knuckles & The Trailblazers are on the bus too.  If any tickets are left you can find them here.  Yet another reason why I’m trying to figure how to split-screen my life.

 

So now for the freebies…Jamie Dailey and Darrin Vincent along with their hotter-than-hot band are headed our way on Wednesday, November 10th to play the Camp Concert Hall in U of R’s elegant Modlin Center.  Uptown bluegrass at its finest and a chance to hear some of the perfectly done Statler Brothers tunes from their hit Cracker Barrel tribute CD.  Buy tickets here or win them by being the fifth one to email me at mail@timtimberlake.com with the name of the guy in the middle in the above photo.

And the hits just keep on comin’.  On Thursday, the 11th you have another tough choice:  Canada’s velvet-voiced tunesmith Jesse Winchester returns to Ashland Coffee & Tea.  Now a Virginian, Jesse has only improved with age, both in interpreting his insightfully romantic lyrics and in engaging the audience with his winking wit.  So there’s that.  And there’s a chance to support a great cause and enjoy some brew, barbecue and world-class bluegrass as the Seldom Scene plays Windsor Farms…no kidding.  The Scene’s back for the Children Incorporated benefit at the Tuckahoe Women’s Club on Dover Road.  $50 all-inclusive tickets available here.

One more for now…our next JAMinc/In Your Ear studio concert is set for Friday, November 12 with versatile and gifted fingerstyle guitarist Duck Baker.  Duck grew up right here in River City and he’s taken his unique approach to the six-string around the world.  Don’t miss this chance to witness his warm and personal homecoming performance with the delish pre-show pot luck buffet.  Reservations going fast on our new JAMinc website.

Just got my hands on JAMinc board member and resident rock star Robbin Thompson’s new Live at The National CD and having been there for the actual concert early this year, I’m pleased to report that it faithfully captures the 30-year reunion of these well-seasoned veterans.  Velpo Robertson, Eric Heiberg, Rico Antonelli and Audie Stanley provide a solid foundation both instrumentally and vocally for Robbin’s throaty roar.  The intro to the final track “Bright Eyes” is gorgeous.  The DVD with lots of extras is just out too and they boys had so much fun, they’re planning another celebratory show at the National in early 2011.  If you missed the first, don’t miss the second.

 

I’ll leave you with the just-announced lineup for MerleFest 2011, one of the nation’s biggest and best roots music extravaganzas, this time with Doc Watson and all the usual suspects and Lyle Lovett, Tim O’Brien, the Wailin’ Jennys and the Doobie Brothers (with John Cowan?).  Also Cadillac Sky with their new front man Levi Lowrey.  (Where Bryan Simpson’s going is another story.)  It’s always the last weekend in April...make your plans accordingly.  TT

(Photo credits:  Honky Tonk Experience by Si Cottrell, Seldom Scene and Duck Baker from their websites.)

InLightened

This would end up as the People’s Choice winner at last night’s InLight Richmond Shockoe Slip street party, another score for the tireless imagineers of Venture Richmond who still had one more in their pocket after the triumphs of the 2nd Street Festival and the Richmond Folk Festival, all in the past month!  So exciting to see downtown alive with such inspired activity, and on a perfect October night under a brilliant full moon.  This work was called Analog Audience, conceived and built by the Wave Coalition comprised of five talented VCU students.  The interactive sculpture is controlled by a photosensitive lightboard (above) activated by the laying on of hands.  And this one called Estrella Intersects the Plane, literally a living painting made of 40 motorized arms each holding two color-changing LEDs. And they were just two of 35 other luminous expressions that added that many more reasons to be proud of our city and what we’ve become.  I know this is a music blog and there was the chorus of remnant purple martins gathered in the trees…there were also BJ Kocen and Brad Tucker holding forth in the Urban Farmhouse at 13th & Cary.  But we’ve come such a long way in making downtown a great place to spend quality time…just had to drift a little off topic.  Thanks for indulging me.

********************************************

Tomorrow, Sunday the 24th brings a chance to witness our town’s top-tier jazz players pay tribute to the late Charles Mingus, a 1979 victim of ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease.  VCU Jazz program founder Doug Richards will lead the large band comprised of Bryan Hooten, Reggie Chapman, Stefan Demetriadis, Pete Anderson (trombones); John D’earth, Marcus Tenney, Scott Frock, Michael Davison (trumpets); John Lilley, J.C. Kuhl, John Whitman, Jonathan Gibson, Kevin Simpson, John Winn (reeds); Adam Larrabee (guitar); Brian Jones (drums); Bob Hallahan (piano); Randall Pharr (bass).  It’s a fundraiser for an ALS research foundation…according to Doug Richards, [Mingus was] “one of the three or four truly significant composers in jazz history. His various groups that he led, from the mid 50s through his death, were some of the most outstanding ensembles in jazz history, and the recordings that they made are some of the most significant recordings made. As a bassist, he is, in my opinion, one of the four or five greatest jazz bassists. There aren’t too many individuals that one can make all of those accolades about.”  The concert will go down at CentreStage on East Grace in the Rhythm Hall.  Get tickets here.

And we have a few seats left for our next JAMinc/In Your Ear studio concert series featuring Sam Bush Band guitarist/vocalist Stephen Mougin and banjo great/SiriusXM deejay Ned Luberecki this coming Tuesday.  Check ‘em out playing on Nashville’s WSM’s Music City Roots concert series from the Loveless Barn. This would be a great night for folks who’ve never caught one of our intimate shows with a delectable pre-show pot luck buffet…bring your own favorite beverage and enjoy two top-notch musicians doing their thing.  Reservations here on our newly designed JAMinc website.  Many thanks to Phil Hunnicutt for all the work in getting us to a new and much needed better place on the Web.

Jimmy Dean is being posthumously inducted in the Country Music Hall of Fame this weekend.  It’s hard to fathom why it took this long but at least he knew of his long-overdue election before he died last spring.  Here he is at his TV best with now fellow Hall of Famer Buck Owens from The Jimmy Dean Show, 1966.  Justice is done. Happy trails Donna…

TT

RFF III…the Impossible Dream

Our Richmond Folk Festival programming chair Jim Wark asked if I’d caught Dr. Harold Lilly’s set where he took a searing run on “The Impossible Dream” on his Hammond B3. It was fitting that Richmond’s own organ master would unwittingly play what Jim and I agreed should be the theme of this third edition of our city’s sprawling celebration of world music and culture.  On paper, it was impossible, but thanks to visionary direction from Venture Richmond and the NCTA and brilliant execution of myriad tasks by an army of dedicated volunteers, close to 200,000 souls witnessed an unparalleled weekend of inspired performances, insightful demonstrations and international edibles.  Three days of perfect weather…a remarkable cross-section of Richmond’s people all enjoying the experience and each other.  There’s really never been anything like it on this scale.  An impossible triumph by most any measure.  We were treated to a virtuoso performance by Indian tabla superstar Zakir Hussain (right) and Peter Rowan guesting with Los Texmaniacs on his “Free Mexican Air Force.”

There were artists we were familiar with but so many more that we weren’t and therein lies the beauty of a gathering like this…where tens of thousands of people have grown to trust this festival to bring in a certain level of quality to ensure that even unknowns can bring emotional epiphanies.  I’ve been pretty neck-deep in working the festival in various capacities over the six years including three as the National, and this year I did a lot less photography than I normally would because of having so many really good shooters out there  including old pal Charlie Reilly.  A sampler of his fine images appears in the column to the right.  Other skilled photogs put up awesome pictures including Skip Rowland (above) whose you can peruse if you’re on Facebook.  And Peter Hedlund posted an intimate look at Virginia Folklorist Jon Lohman’s always-compelling Folklife area, themed “Maritime to Mountain Time.”  (right)  A few movers and shakers without whom the event wouldn’t happen, let alone be this good, include Jack Berry, Lisa Sims and Stephen Lecky with Venture Richmond, Julia Olin and Josh Kohn of the National Council for the Traditional Arts and Jim Bland of Plan 9 who not only handled all performers’ CDs but the terrific Wes Freed-designed posters and shirts this year.  And a big thank you to all involved in our JAMinc school outreach program that took six Festival performing groups (Ensemble Shanbehzadeh, Sibiriskaya Vechora, Otrov, Capoeira Luanda, Boukman Eksperyans, and Andes Manta) to a dozen Richmond public schools.  Our president Wally Thulin shot some video and here’s one from Westover Hills Elementary.  Todd Ranson, Chuck Wrenn, Paul Muller, George Turman, Charlie & Helen Ogden, Marshall Pearsall and Billy Rice did the heavy lifting on this important project.  Sincere thanks. And to all my selfless and intrepid Artist Hosts…it would all be moot without you.  After all is said and  done, this is the Richmond Folk Festival.  It’s our three-year-old now to guide, to nurture and to support.  All of us involved in its direction welcome your general and specific recommendations so it remains our community’s best collective effort.  I hope Mr. Gerloff is proud of us.

********************************************

A couple of upcoming shows to remind you of…tonight at Ashland Coffee & Tea, one of the fastest-rising contemporary bluegrass bands out there, Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen bring top-notch original material, inventive arrangements, strong harmonies and exciting instrumental chops to our favorite local listening room.  The band’s current self-titled CD is leading downloads on the CDbaby bluegrass chart.  The Lincoln Meyers fan club will be out in force. 

On October 26th, our JAMinc/In Your Ear fall series continues with Nedski & Mojo, cute nicknames for serious musicians Ned Luberecki and Stephen Mougin.  Stephen tours as guitarist/vocalist with the Sam Bush Band and Ned is out with Chris Jones & The Night Drivers and deejays for SiriusXM satellite radio.  I got to hear them at IBMA and they will do a great show.  Hurry to make your reservations here.  That’s it for now…I’ll leave you with a fascinating  account from Mandolin Cafe of the headstock faceplate from Bill Monroe’s iconic 1923 Gibson Lloyd Loar mandolin.  You might know that Mr. Monroe took his pocketknife and gouged out the “Gibson” inlay after a bungled repair job back in 1951.  Here’s the rest of the story.  (Thanks to Bart Tuthill for the link)

Thank the Lord for last weekend’s sunshine and today’s glorious rain….TT

I’ve Been Mostly Awake…

That’s the alternative interpretation of the initials I.B.M.A. denoting the International Bluegrass Music Association but also reflecting the reality of what this annual gathering of the industry in Nashville means…long hours, late nights and an overwhelming torrent of musical experiences metaphorically mimicking the real flood that hit Music City last spring.  Recovery is, by most measures, nearly complete…witness the reopening of the heavily-damaged Grand Ole Opry House over the weekend.  With a significant number of the industry’s top working musicians based here and the honky tonks of Broadway, the Ryman Auditorium and the Country Music Museum just down the street, the yearly event has found a proper home.   The mother church of bluegrass, the Station Inn, where we caught the smokin’ Lonesome River Band (below) last Wednesday, is a short cab ride away.  It’s a multi-faceted week with a trade

show (record labels, instrument makers, educators, bands looking for work), a quality awards show and a three day indoor festival featuring the music’s top names and the up-and-comers as well.  Add to that a full schedule of workshops and seminars, late night showcases both planned and spontaneous and a wonderfully organic opportunity for renewing old friendships and cultivating new ones.  It’s a good tired. 

  My first taste of the Cleverlys…you’ll remember yours.

I took a ton of pictures and I have so much I’d like to share about the IBMA experience, but time is tight this week with the Richmond Folk Festival nipping at my heels.  So I’m just gonna throw up some random shots with brief captions that I hope at least provide a taste of this self-serving labor of love on behalf of those who make bluegrass music and those who live for it.  A look back at the 20th edition of the IBMA Awards Show held in the Ryman Auditorium…

 

Stuart Duncan, Jon Randall & Dierks Bentley open the Awards Show with “Fiddlin’ Around” from Dierk’s new CD.

                                                                                                                                                                              Old bandmates Cheryl White, Jerry Douglas and Sharon White Skaggs are reunited as hosts for the big show.  Here they wait to lead the pledge of allegiance to Buck.

 

 

        The ageless Buck White accepts.

    Fiddle player of the year Michael Cleveland (right) asks Tom Adams if this is really his eighth one.

                                                                                                                                                       Boxcars leader Adam Steffey shares his 7th win for mandolin player of the year with lady love Tina.

Dailey & Vincent sing “Elizabeth” with the guy who wrote it, Statler Brother, Jimmy Fortune.

Claire Lynch takes female vocalist for the first time since the 1900’s.  Mark Schatz is pleased.

Leigh and Eric Gibson snag Gospel Recorded Performance and Gospel Song of the Year for “Ring The Bell.”

Darrell Scott offers a strong take on his tune “Bleeding For A Little Peace of Mind” with Blue Highway and Richmond’s own Wayne Taylor on bass.

Kristin Scott Benson busts through the “grass ceiling” with a three-peat as Banjo Player of the Year.”

 

Darren Vincent and Jamie Dailey are still on a roll, scoring on five of their ten nominations including the big one, Entertainer of the Year...again.

Alison Krauss & Union Station with Dan, Ron and Barry reunite to mark the 10th anniversary of Oh Brother.

The glamorous and fully engaged Kitsy Kuykendall makes a compelling case for Owensboro and the International Bluegrass Music Museum.

Gary, Earl and Randy Scruggs acknowledge the induction of Earl’s late wife and manager (and their mom) Louise into the IBMA Hall of Fame.

Emerging Artist winner Josh Williams also is crowned Guitar Player of the Year and plays with mentor Tony Rice to boot.  Don’t miss Tony and Peter Rowan at this weekend’s Richmond Folk Festival.

 

 

Tim O’Brien hoists the world’s largest banjo to pay tribute to departed dancing troubadour John Hartford as John takes his place in the Hall of Fame.

Jerry “Flux” Douglas pays homage to his pal Ricky Skaggs’ recent aversion to the barber shop. (Stay tuned)

The dashing Travelin’ McCourys even let Del play that night

 

 

Mild mannered Marshall Wilborn takes Bass Player of the Year after beloved wife Lynn Morris take an IBMA Special Achievement award.

Sam Bush renders Song of the Year nominee “The Ballad of Stringbean and Estelle” he wrote with Guy Clark and Verlon Thompson.  Guitarist Stephen Mougin (coming to town @ In Your Ear Recording with banjo man Ned Luberecki on October 26) looks on.  Make your reservations here.

Darlin’ Family cut-up and IBMA Hall of Famer Rodney Dillard plays harmonica in his mouth with no hands!  Now that’s entertainment.

The Award Show at the Ryman wraps with an all-star tribute to John Hartford as Tim O’Brien leads “Gentle On My Mind.”

For a well-done review of the Award Show, click on this full accounting from the IBMA. Kudos to Cindy Baucom and Trisha Tubbs for a tight, entertaining show and our veteran MerleFest wizards Cliff Miller and Buck Parker of SE Systems for great house sound.  And to Carl Jackson and Mark Newton for recruiting the stellar lineup for FanFest, where all donate their time and talent for benefit of the Bluegrass Trust Fund.  Photos from FanFest along the right column.   And let’s not forget the forgotten in Nashville in the aftermath of the flood…watch Cadillac Sky’s “Hangman” video shot to bring focus on the Tent City on the banks of the Cumberland River where weeks later, 140 homeless souls lost everything they had.  So long Nashville…for another year.

 

If you haven’t heard, Nashville picks up where we and Butte, Montana left off as three-year home to the National Folk Festival in 2011.  Of course we’ve kept the party going here along the James as our third Richmond Folk Festival looms.  It will be free and it will be fabulous.  Ask anyone who’s been to any of the past five cultural explosions…a must if this town’s ever seen one…join us.  Or listen on WCVE Public Radio…better still, come on down.  Friday, Saturday and Sunday. There’s so much more than the ear can hear.  Here are links to background pieces we were part of in RVANews and Richmond.Com. This is us…at our best. 

TT