Big Fun and wild weather in AR,OK,KS

Thanks to all of you who came out to our gigs from Fayetteville to El Dorado (which they pronounce el-door-AY-dough!).
We very much enjoyed playing for you and you seemed to be having nearly as much fun as we did.
Fayetteville and Mike Shirkey - always a treat and we discovered a new breakfast place - Ahhh,YES.
Karen Petitt and friends welcomed us back to OKC, OK and as we drove out,, the cloud shadows out-pacing us on the freeway should have alerted us that the weather was getting ... er, ... playful.
We loved Lawrence, KS - very cool town, lots to see and do and our good friend Jim Baggett of Mass Street Music dragged out a bunch of guitar treasures for our drooling pleasure. Bob McWilliams bent over backwards to make our stay a great one - which it was.

We would have loved Manhattan, KS more ... had it stopped SNOWING. The drive from there back to Wichita was far too exciting for a napless day with an evening gig ... whoa, Nellie. The Manhattan Arts Center was a great sounding room full of nice follks (including our pals Barb & Ken Wells) and El Dorado's Iron Horse is just plain cool.

Flying home we saw snow for three states going west - goodbye winter!
... and back to the beach.

ON THE ROAD Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas

Here we come - Please tell your friends - Winfielders especially welcome!
Mar 21
Good Folk -Fayetteville AR - www.goodfolk.org
Mike Shirkey
229 N. Block St.
Fayetteville, AR (USA) 72701
Phone: 479 521-1812
Mar 22
The Blue Door - Oklahoma City, OK -www.bluedoorokc.com
2805 N Mckinley Ave
Oklahoma City, OK 73106
(405) 524-0738
Mar 25
Unity Church - Lawrence, KS - http://www.westsidefolk.org
785-841-1447
900 Madeline
Lawrence, Kansas 66049
Mar 27
Mahattan Arts Center - Manhattan, KS -
Birdhouse Marley's Ghost
Friday, March 27, 2009 at 8:00 PM
MAC Grosh Performance Hall
1520 Poyntz Ave
Manhattan, KS 66502
Phone: (785) 537-4420
http://manhattanarts.tix.com/Event.asp?Event=171523
Mar 28
Iron Horse Concert Hall - El Dorado KS -
http://shorock.com/ironhorse/location.html
315 South Main
El Dorado, Kansas

MIXING!

So - We finished recording and Cowboy et.al. are mixing the record!
Whooppeee!
Pics etc. soon

Back To The Studio!

We are headed back to the studio with Cowboy Jack Clement Feb 10th to finish up our ninth Marley's Ghost CD. It is fun working with Jack and Brooksy Watson (Luke stayed behind to do something amazing) and we are as eager to see the finished project as you are!
I can't wait

Sage Arts engineer wizard Matt Gephart has recorded us in Nashville with these guys and also back in Arlington WA and will accompany us as our house engineer (score!) when we play three Washington state gigs Feb 20 (Green Frog Acoustic Tavern - Bellingham, WA), Feb 21 (Byrnes Performing Arts Center - Arlington, WA) and Feb 22 (Walla Walla Symphony Cordiner Hall - Symphony Adventure Series- Walla Walla, WA)- Stay Tuned.

Good lord! 2009!

Wow.
We have a new president, home prices might be sinking back to reality, financial markets are getting the respect they have earned ... but music is still fun to listen to and play, singing is still free.

All of Marley's Ghost wishes you a Happy New Year and our fond hopes it be a great one.
There is always opportunity in times like these - May you discover them!

We are finishing up our new record with Cowboy Jack Clement - We mix in February for an April release. There is some good stuff on the record - a few tunes we have been performing that you asked we record, some that Jack brought to us, some we wrote ourownselves. I'm liking the rough mixes I have heard and I think you are going to like the record.

whew.
I just got back from Winter NAMM 2009. I've been working for my friend Rick Shubb there for several years slinging capos and doing Shake & Howdy.
I always see friends there I haven't run into much of the year -this time Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter came by to visit.



Jeff has great news - his solo CD is almost finished and he intends to take 4-5 months of the year to tour and support it!
If you only know Jeff because of the Doobie Bros. or Steely Dan you might not appreciate that he makes great music on the Dobro, pedal steel and B3 as well as any sort of guitar he has at hand.
One of the most musical cats it is my pleasure to know as well as a superior human being.
I can't wait to hear the CD!
Mike

Gigs, Recording, pics... and beautiful October

I love October - everyplace looks great, Fall is in the air... ahhh.
We have been very busy playing, recording, rehearsing and writing and loving it. Our time at Cowboy Jack's Bunkhouse and Recording Spa in Nashville was productive and a gas. That is one smart, fun, quirky, talented guy... not to mention a legend in the music biz.
I have a bunch of photos to post from the various fun-o-ramas The Fall Strawberry Music Festival, recording in Nashville, Dead On The Creek, and more- Joe Bob sez "check it out"...
P.S. Click on a pic to see a larger version

The Road Beckons

Wow.
We have been out having fun again...The Lincoln Center Theatre in Mt. Vernon WA is a gorgeous venue in a very cool town. We got the royal treatment - like they give everyone (!) - and had a great show and a great time. The band is sounding good and the folks we meet out there keep it fascinating.

Uncle John's "Dead On The Creek" was amazing. Nice folks, beautiful rural location, excellent weather and vibes... Even our friend Peter (pictured at Right) would have been having a fantastic time if he weren't preoccupied with the Viking Invasion ... or Danish Pacification as they called it when they were busily killing my ancestors....

Now it is time for me to go teach at CRMC music camp in Colorado for a week, then we are off to the Strawberry Music Festival near Yosemite, The Palms Playhouse, the Winfield Fest in Kansas - off to record with legend Cowboy Jack Clement in Nashville -- all good stuff. I need to consolidate our photos and post more but man, the time does fly by... I don't want to become a prisoner of the Mac like David here...

This travelling around playing tons of music - I just can't tell you how I look forward to the part when we actually count off the first tune...
all the airport, load-ins, load-outs, strange meals and bad road signage, jammed-up freeways and weird bumpy toll raods fade away and I just can't get enough...
See you out there -

Don't forget to come right up and say " Fellas, Can I buy you lunch?
Do-doot-do-do-do-doot-do-doot-do
Dang me.

Slide & Steel was Cool!

We had soooo much fun in Port Townsend, WA.
Thanks to all my students for their patience and progress. Thanks to Stacy Phillips and Billy Cardine for their generosity in co-teaching with me. Thanks to Peter McCracken for hiring us!
The venue - Fort Worden is an amazingly lovely spot, particularly this time of year.
wow.

I played a bunch with steel guitar legend Bobby Black and he is an amazing player and a very fine person as is fellow steel guitarist Joe Wright. Those guys made me fall in love with clasic country all over again.
Add in Billy Cardine - red-hot Dobroist and dynamic vocalist Mary Lucey (shown above), not to mention fiddler/singer Odessa Jorgensen (shown with Laurie Lewis and Tom Rozum) and fun was on the menu.

Special Thanks to Ghost Jerry Fletcher for teaching Sight Reading for Singers and putting a bunch of us well on the road to better sight reading.

We are off to do more playing - I hope we see you out there!

Back to Work!

So... back to work for the Ghost.
June 24-30 we are Band-in-Residence at The Centrum Slide & Steel Festival combined with Voiceworks at beautiful Fort Worden in Port Townsend WA. We have played the Fiddle Tunes festival there numerous times over the years and have also been involved in other fests and shows there, but this is our first time at this event.
Fort Worden is a glorious venue and Port Townsend spectacularly beautiful.
I will be teaching Dobro, Danny slide, Jon harmony, Eddie steel, Jerry reading music and raising your game.
We are really looking forward to being there and I hope we'll see some of you!

Then it's Lincoln Theatre (Mt. Vernon, WA)
Dead On The Creek (Willits, CA)
Strawberry Fall Festival (Yosemite)
The Palms (Winters, CA)
The Walnut Valley Festival (Winfield, KS)
Bernie's Guitar (Redding, CA)
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass (San Francisco, CA)
... and on and on

Barcelona, Mediterranean, Rome...

Wow.
We fell in love with the great international city of Barcelona. Clean, beautiful, great food, friendly people and the sea... you must go there. If you were on the fence - hop off and go. You'll be glad you did. We took a few days there before embarking on a small (148 passenger) sailing cruise ship the Wind Spirit across the Mediterranean to Menorca, Mallorca, Sardinia, Corsica, Elba and Rome.
Yeah, baby.
Our entertainment duties were fairly light and our enjoyment and appreciation of the boat, crew, islands, sights, sounds and fellowship profound. If you have not been to Europe or it has been a while since you did- I recommend you go.
We had a ball...

It All Seemed So Simple

It did seem simple - get into the studio and start knocking out basic tracks, mine and refine - Shazam!
...another record.

But then Nick and Van Dyke had this idea - What if we created a story line compelling enough that we could integrate characters, parts for a symphony to play.... dare to dream big!

... wow.

So it looks like the development cycle may take a bit longer and, potentially, be pretty darn interesting.

Stay Tuned!

In other news, we are playing in the San Francisco Bay Area in early April, then off to Spain at the end of April. We begin in Barcelona, then embark on a 7-day cruise across the Mediterranean, arriving in Rome and then we are back home sometime during the second week of May.
Gotta love it.

I hope Spring is treating you all well and that we will see you out there on the road sooner rather than later.
Cheers,
Mike, Ed, Dan, Jon and Jerry.

December thoughts...

As the year sweeps on to its end, I am happy to be alive. The photo is one I shot out my living room window a few minutes ago – clear as a bell and chilly – one of my very favorite kind of days anywhere. Of course, I live in California, where, henceforth, state legislation will be decided by senior power-lifting and square-jaw mugging-for-the-camera competitions (and some people wonder why we elected Arnold gov... sheesh) – but I digress.

This is the time of year when I, and possibly you, contemplate the past year and assess our experience... some friends are no longer with us, lots of laughter, a scar or two – I can recall so many great images from fun times all over the country. I was a student, a teacher, played a lot of music both formally and informally and spent some exceptionally fine time with family and friends...
I hope your year has been as much fun as mine.
If not ... there's always next year!

What's Next?!

Thanksgiving is coming right up so I guess it will be Christmas which will seem like a couple days later - and ta-da ... 2007!

Before I forget – Thanks to all of you who have come out to our shows around the US and in Ireland, who have bought our CDs in stores, from Sage Arts, Amazon.com and on iTunes (search for Marley's Ghost from within the iTunes Store). We very much appreciate your support, as we hope to continue to sing, play and write until we fall over.

...So what IS next?
Well, we are holding meetings in a couple weeks with Producer/Wizard Van Dyke Parks to select material for our 9th CD (!) which we hope to start recording in January.
Moving schedules around is complicated but we will get it done and I, for one, Can't Wait!
When I know a bit more ... or just get chatty(!), I'll post again.

Florida ...

Florida gets a bad rap these days.
That may be because more folks don't know Mitch Lind and his Riverhawk Festival down in Brooksville, FL
What a great bunch of music, wonderful folks and an all-around good time.
The weather was easy and we heard a bunch of very different styles of excellent music as we played through the last couple days of our 2006 touring. One of the highlights for me was Claire Lynch with a killer band.
Hanging with Mitch is a treat I would recommend to everyone, any chance you get. Putting on a fest is pretty demanding and Mitch pulls it off with grace and style. It is good to know there are folks like him out there presenting every kind of music ... just because.
... good reason IMHO.

...whew... October

October is my favorite time of year. The most beautiful month IMHO and the hint of winter makes me glad to be alive - I dunno why ... it just does. We have had a fun run of Summer / Fall touring and it has been a blast out there.
Before we head into the Christmas holiday season we have one more adventure in Florida in a couple weeks at the Riverhawk Festival and that makes me think about Strawberry Music Festival, playing with some great bands in Kentucky, wonderful folks like Mike Shirkey in Arkansas, The Great State of Tennessee, Ben Harper's folks in Claremont, CA, beautiful San Diego and the lollapallooza of acoustic fun in Winfield, Kansas.

This traveling around playing music thing can be loads of fun if you do it right -- and it is good for your chops.
Lucky, that - as we are meeting this week with the Legendary Van Dyke Parks to craft a followup CD to SPOOKED, which, thanks to you, has done very well.
I don't yet know the scope of the project but I do know we are also discussing a PBS documentary as well. It is all in the planning stages and theese babies take a while to birth, but we are involved with fine folks and everyone is pretty excited about the ideas -- now to make schedules...

more later!
Mike

eTown & Boulder CO

Just back from Boulder and a taping in eTown, the town where everything is 'green', the people are friendly and the world tries harder and gets better every day. ETown is presided over by the incomparable Nick Forster, our pal and superb host, spokesperson and amazingly accomplished player of anything with strings.

The guy never ceases to amaze me.

Boulder was 96 degrees -- pretty durned hot for 6,000 ft elevation. We stayed in the very comfortable Boulderado Hotel, honored guests of eTown and glad of it! That is one pretty town and playing the live show taping at the Boulder Theater was a joy as usual.

We shared the bill with legend Ian Tyson , who has turned his talents to Western music these last few years and it was great to hear him do his thing. His bass player Gordon Maxwell is quite a singer, writer and pianist and very good guy and his guitar player was Gordy Matthews, who amazed me back in the k.d. lang band, particularly on the 'Absolute Torch & Twang' tour - where the band played just plain scary. Gordy said 'Yeah, we rehearsed".
...Canadians, I tell you.

We played songs from SPOOKED for a very appreciative audience (thank you very much Colorado and Jen Lesea!) and came back for a finale - Keep On the Sunny Side - with Ian's trio, as well as Nick & Helen.
Sunny side indeed.
Big fun in Colorado.
The show will air in 4 or 5 weeks - stay tuned.
We are back home for a couple weeks -- whew.
I'm loving my life and doing my laundry.
later, dudes and dudettes...

Cowboy Jack

Before our gig in Nashville the other day our picking pal and former Opry regular Walter Forbes took us over to a nice old neighborhood and into a re-purposed big 'ol house that turned out to be Cowboy Jack Clement's Bunkhouse Resort and Recording Spa. Our Mission? To hang and say howdy to his longtime friend, cohort and sometime business partner, Cowboy Jack Clement. Who the heck is Cowboy Jack?
Check out: http://www.cowboyjackclement.com/
Jack was the first recording engineer at Sun Records (Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, a kid named Presley and many, many more) and is still working at his own justly famous aforementioned studio, cutting sessions with the legends and would-be legends of country music.

A session was in progress upstairs so we wandered on up, said hello all around and took seats, shooting the breeze companionably, waiting for a break in the action. The singer coming through the control room monitors sounded familiar and when one of the players waiting to cut a part said "Charlie's singing really well" - I realized it was Charlie Pride.
Charlie was working an old Hank gospel number called "Thank God" with a rock-solid band and as the groove bore them triumphantly verse to chorus a sudden flood of happiness ran through us right there on the couch.
When music is going well - there is very little better on my earth...

They finished the take and another and the door opened, emitting legends Joe Allen and Kenny Malone. We stuck our heads in the door and there sat our friend 'Hoot' Hester, putting mandolin away and getting his fiddle ready for the track. - "Everybody out!" cried engineer Johnny and we went back into the control room with a grinning Charlie to listen to Hoot fiddle.
"I got off the melody" Charlie said, faintly amazed and began singing what he had wanted to track all along.

We said hello to our friends, traded new contact information, promised to be in touch, laughed at a couple terrible jokes - It was all just folks, except some of the folks filled out their union cards for the session, noting songs and times and hurried off to the Opry, we drove back to our rooms to prepare for our gig.

There are things about this business that I do love...

Big fun in the Southland

"...that you-all and shut-my-mouthland" - according to the immortal Tom Lehrer.
What a gas.
Great to see our pal Ed Snodderly at the Down Home in Johnson City, nestled comfortably in East Tennessee.
Ed's place is the sort of venue we all want in our home town. Great music, great variety, good vibes, nice people, plenty of pickers in the audience and a steady stream of talent.
...not to mention noble beers on tap.
I love that place - can you tell?

Ed is in a play over in Abington TN about the Stanley Brothers. Our flight got in too late to go catch the matinée which was the only real dissapointment of this trip.
Dang it.

Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee

...sounds like a Woody Guthrie song...
But that is where we are headed Thursday, April 20.
We play Oklahoma City on Friday, Austin Texas (Old Settler's Fest) Saturday & Sunday, travel Monday, Knoxville (live on the Blue Plate Special), Nashville (Douglas Corner), and Johnson City, Tennessee (Little Chicago Fest) the next three days and come home the 28th.
I can't wait.
The band is sounding great and we can't wait to take the stage these days – fun to be in a band when that energy is going around.
The Internet tells me it feels like Summer in the South – I guess we'll see.
I hope we see you, too.
... all y'all that is.

The Road

whew.
Fun, though.
The recent Southern California trip...
At McCabe's Van Dyke Parks played accordion with us the first set (then rushed off to finish up a movie score to be turned in early Monday) and Dillon O'Brian played piano in the second set. The joint was packed and I do love playing that room...

This trip came near the end (I hope) of the rainiest season California has had in many years – which made it the greenest, most visually beautiful California I have ever seen. The place looked like Ireland. The desert is all purples and yellows, the usually golden hills are every shade of green, every puny little waterfall and dry creekbed thinks it belongs in Yosemite and are they ever booming.
Come have a look.
Just to be on the safe side – Bring rain gear.