Oct 26-30th: Benefits, Costume Balls, and River Parties!!

Howdy, all you Big Bus Lovin' Daddios.  

We had a really great week this week and are getting ready to get on the road to head to GA, so I'll have to try and be fairly brief.

First of all, upcoming shows this weekend:

UPCOMING SHOWS
11.03.11 - Buffalo's Cafe (Statesboro, GA)
11.04.11 - Old Crow Grill and Tavern (Sandy Springs, GA)
11.05.11 - The Emerald Lounge (Asheville, NC)

Wednesday, October 26
Boone, NC
Benefit for my friend Billy Constable

This was a really beautiful night for everyone.   Billy was a teacher to so many of us in Boone, and so many people jumped at the chance to get together to raise money for his brain surgery.  At one point I looked around the room and realized that almost everyone I've played music with for the last 10+ years was here.   Boss Hawg, BDL, and now Breakin' Jimmy's Martin.   We all had great sets and raised almost $3000.  Billy's surgery was a success and he's on the road to a full recovery.

 

Ms. Kim France singing her heart out.  

Thursday, October 27th
Columbia, SC

Every now and then in this industry, things get screwed up pretty bad, and this was one of those nights.  We pulled into Columbia and realized that there was a "mixup."   We made the best out of it and played for some very committed fans in the parking lot before heading back to NC.  One couple had driven from Augusta GA to see us that night!

A Perfect Parking Lot Pickin' Party!!

Friday, October 28th
Charlotte, NC

We love playing here at the Double Door Inn.  This place has some major history behind it and you can just feel it when you walk inside.    Here's a video that a friend shot and edited with his iPhone!  Impressive. 

Saturday, October 29th
Raleigh, NC

The Costume Ball at the Lincoln Theater was quite an experience.   We got to hang with our good buddies The Big Something, and Casey, on sax, sat in with us for our version of Big Country.  We've been wanting to do that for a while and finally were able to.  You can listen here: BDL Lincoln Theater Costume Ball

BDL in costumes!

 For more pictures you can visit this photo album by our hardworking photographer Jenny Viars. 


Sunday, October 30th
Richmond, VA

We finished off the very long weekend with the couple that bought the first private party package on our Kickstarter Campaign.  We played right beside the beautiful James River.  We want to thank Mike and Renee Covington for helping us with Kickstarter and for having a kickass party on the river.   It was a little chilly but we all had a great time!

Mike and Renee Covington

Our stage right beside the James River.  

SPREAD THE LOVE
We would LOVE for you to help us out with the street team activities. If you'd like to help promote an upcoming show, email streetteam@ufomusic.net and we will set you up with everything you need. We've got great e-flyers, widgets, and other tools you can use to help promote online, so if you've got Internet access, you can help! If you want to hang up posters, hand out flyers, and talk to real people, feel free to print up the digital posters. And of course, we'd also love your help over at the merch booth! Check out the list of places we could use help spreading the love.

11.03.11 - Buffalo's Cafe (Statesboro, GA)
11.04.11 - Old Crow Grill and Tavern (Sandy Springs, GA)
11.05.11 - The Emerald Lounge (Asheville, NC)
11.10.11 - High Rock Outfitters (Lexington, NC)
11.11.11 - Murphy's Saloon (Boone, NC)
11.12.11 - Casbah (Durham, NC)
11.17.11 - Local 506 (Chapel Hill, NC)
11.18.11 - The Fat Frogg Bar & Grill (Elon, NC)
11.19.11 - Clementine Cafe (Harrisonburg, VA)
11.23.11 - The Camel (Richmond, VA)
11.25.11 - Silver Dollar Music Park (Glad Valley, NC)
11.26.11 - Outer Banks Brewing Station (Kill Devil Hills, NC)
11.27.11 - Goombay's Grill & Raw Bar (Kill Devil Hills, NC)

Oct 13th-Oct 16th: Beach Farming, Love Songs, and House Parties

Howdy Friends and Neighbors,

Welcome to another edition of Thrown Under the Love Bus, where even if you're under the bus at least you're smothered in heavy dose of Love.   If you enjoy this please re-post so we can get the word out!
UPCOMING SHOWS
10.20.11 - The Blind Tiger (Greensboro, NC)
10.21.11 - The Bathtub Gin (Mooresville, NC)
10.22.11 - The Whiskey (Wilmington, NC)
SPREAD THE LOVE
We would LOVE for you to help us out with the street team activities. Fun stuff like inviting your friends and spreading e-flyers around... even helping at the merch table. If this is your idea of a good time, please email streetteam@ufomusic.net and we'll hook you up! We also have some great tools you can use to spread the word online! Click here to check them out.


Thursday, October 13th

We headed up to a place called Doc Taylor's in Virginia Beach.  This is a funny little place, since it is only open on Thursday nights!  But it works out great because all the locals know that they will have quality music and come out no matter who is playing.   The show was good, and since this is the Richmond/Va Beach area, you know that we'll be hooking up with our good friends Jackass Flats.  Cory Potrafka came and played some harp with us.  Always a treat!

After the show a guy comes up and starts chatting with us and then asks if we have anywhere to stay yet.   His name is Trevor DeGroat and he offers some space in his house that is just one block from the ocean, so we excitedly accept.  I knew something was very familiar about this guy, and as soon as I took this picture when we stopped to get pizza after the show it hit me.  He's practically a spitting image of my best friend JonJon Davis from Boone NC, who I've played with in Boss Hawg (click to hear us) for over a decade.   And anyone who knows Jon Jon will see it right away in this picture, and not only that, they act alike too, jumping around and saying funny things.  It's amazing!

Friday, October 14th

The next morning I got up early (big surprise there) and walked down the beach to find some coffee and discovered that the town of Va Beach - which, like everyone else, is broke - has decided that they are going to capitalize on the most famous television show ever, Baywatch, and raise and export mini Pamela Andersons and David Hasselhoffs!   I think this is a fantastic idea and I hope that it works well for them.  I could also foresee a fancy flip-flop and fan farm that would be financially feasible for the future farmers.  



Mid-day we headed to Richmond for our next gig and stopped by Travis Reinhart's house for a little downtime.   And this is where the magic happened.  Thank goodness I was able to catch it on my camera!  I don't think I've ever seen Dan and Joey happier than right here singing their favorite songs in the whole entire world.

Whew!  That was a doozy huh?!

Friday night we played the Cary Street Cafe, which holds a special place for both The Wookie and me (one of the few things we agree on!) as it is based around the music of the Grateful Dead.

Saturday Oct 15th

We headed back to Virginia Beach to play a wedding for two special people.  You know a wedding is going to be fun when the couple's first dance song is a Bob Marley tune!  Let me introduce you to this week's BDL Fans of the Week, the newly-married Brad and Becca Ellis.

Sunday Oct 16th

BDL video fund-raiser party.

This was a really great party put together by our very own Tori Steinberg, Jenny Viars, and Claudia Kelly, so we can shoot a real-deal music video! The amount of work they put into this party is just amazing and we can't thank them enough.   Jenny has a few photo albums that you can view here.
BDL and our side-project Breakin' Jimmy's Martin played some fun acoustic sets throughout the day.
 

Dan and Joey at the party photo booth.  

Ashley and I in a rare moment of agreement, maybe we both hit the right chord at the same time. 

And the music never stops....

Brian and BDL
Lonesome Banjo Chronicles



UPCOMING SHOWS
10.20.11 - The Blind Tiger (Greensboro, NC)
10.21.11 - The Bathtub Gin (Mooresville, NC)
10.22.11 - The Whiskey (Wilmington, NC)
SPREAD THE LOVE
We would LOVE for you to help us out with the street team activities. Fun stuff like inviting your friends and spreading e-flyers around... even helping at the merch table. If this is your idea of a good time, please email streetteam@ufomusic.net and we'll hook you up! We also have some great tools you can use to spread the word online! Click here to check them out.

BDL and the Carnival of Follies

Howdy Love Bussers!

I hope everyone is having a beautiful day.  It looks like we will be posting our travel blog every two weeks, and the last two weekends are the perfect example why.  Sometimes we just have short trips to gigs, and there just isn't much to report, and then we have weekends like our Bristol>Boone>OBX, where touring basically turns into a Chevy Chase National Lampoons movie.  Every calamity that can happen does happen.  More on that later.

September 29-October 2


Thursday:   Hickory, NC was great as always.  This is one of our longest-standing gigs and we are able to see some of our very first fans here at the Taproom, as well as our great friend Janell Henry, who designed our album cover for Let It Grow.

Anna Swenk

Friday:  Hillsborough, NC turned out to be a really great gig!  We had no idea what to expect, and between this little town rocking out and our great friends from Raleigh/Durham that made the trip, we had a great time.  The highlight of the show was the Spirit>Easy Goin'>Hokey Pokey>Easy Goin': the kids really rocked out some Hokey Pokey dancin'!    And we were blessed with the presence of one of our very first "super-fans,"  and my cuz, Anna Swenk!

Hardcore BDL Fans!

Saturday: High Point, NC.   We really like this venue a lot and the crowd was probably double from our first time. 

BDL at Blue Bourbon Jack's in High Point, NC

Sunday: Justin Mychal's Cancer Benefit.   This is easily one of the best things we do all year.   Justin picks a family that has a child struggling with cancer and all the money that is raised helps the family, and he raises A LOT of money.   Trust me, you will not attend this thing and maintain dry eyes.  It's a very beautiful and very emotional day, and every single person leaves realizing how lucky we all have it,  because these families go through hell that few of us know.  

Chasper giving a drum lesson to a new friend backstage

October 6-8

Thursday:  The weekend started off on a slightly ominous note as Dan misjudged the leaving time and had to meet us in Boone instead of Winston.  No big deal really, as things like that happen from time to time and we can easily adjust.   The Bristol show was a really good show for a Thursday night.  Sometimes it takes a night to get back into the swing of things, but this one felt really relaxed and comfortable and had some great jams.   Joey was stoked about a vintage Fender Stratocaster that he just had bought, and this was the first show with it.   I also discovered that Cass can sleep for 3 hours while his phone alarm blasts in his face, but if you put on one Nickelback song he wakes right up!  (Great info to have!)  We left Bristol thinking everything was ok...

Friday:   The first thing we had to do was get new tires for the van, since we were about down to the wires on one of them.   Luckily we have a fan in Boone that works for a tire place!  He helped us some, but $600 later (ouch!) we were rolling on new tires.   Ashley wanted to get some "spinner wheels" while we were at it, but we told him he had to wait until next year.

BDL fan Thomas Hand of Boone, NC!!

Then we pulled up to our first gig of the day in Boone, the High Country MusicFest, and started unloading the trailer; which is when we discovered that there was NO STRATOCASTER!  It was left in Bristol.   We've been through this before as someone (who will remain nameless) left a banjo in Atlanta.  I swear it wasn't my fault, though, but that's another story.   We quickly found out that it was still safe at Machiavelli's, so we started working on getting it back.   Meanwhile, we saw one of Joey's old blues friends play some of the best guitar we've seen in a while: Rusty Barkley with the Part Time Blues Band. Joey says that outside of fellow Spartan Dennis Shaw, Rusty has taught him more than anyone else.  Keep your eye out for these guys, they will blow you away.    Enjoy!

We were able to play the fest with our friend Shawn Roberts, who plays the percussion tracks on our new album.  It really takes the Mid-Summers Dream>Dream Walker to a whole new level.   Chasper really loves playing with Shawn, as they have some great drum solo sections together.  Here is the full photo album from our official photographer, Jenny Viars.  

I was able to catch Shawn playing drums with his African Drumming Group on King St. in Boone, NC between our gigs.   This is why Boone is so special.  You never know what you'll find downtown.

Mid-way through our Murphy's set that night Joey got his guitar delivered by Jamie Morrell who was  very quickly made "Fan of the Week" on our Facebook page!

We decided that we should drive through the night to get to the OBX after our Boone gig and around 5:45am both Chasper and I jump up awake from a noise that doesn't sound right.   We had a flat tire on our new trailer, and it was leaving an impressive trail of sparks!   We decided to name the trailer "Sparky," by the way.   So as the sun was coming up we were out changing a tire.   Four brand new tires on the van and we blow a trailer tire!

We finally make it to the beautiful NC Outer Banks and to the Nags Head Fishing Pier that always gives us a house right on the water in return for acoustic sets at the restaurant.  It's a great deal and we definitely come out for the better in it.   We also decided to buy new trailer tires, so 6 new tires in a span of 20 hours.   Maybe we should ask for tire donations next year?

Nags Head Fishing Pier and a single set of footprints in the sand.  I guess I was being carried....

  After 3 acoustic sets at the pier through the day we played Goombay's that night for a really fantastic crowd.  (8 sets of music and 400 miles in a span of 30 hours! wow)   OBX loves some BDL, and we have John Mebane and Robert and Cindy Via to thank for that, as they are also "super-fans" and make sure that the crowd is really strong.    And to cap the weekend follies off, as we were setting up Dan realized that he left his guitar back at the house!   All we could do is shake our heads and laugh.  What a weekend.

See you on the road!  We might need a place to crash so be on the lookout! :)

Brian and BDL
www.lonesomebanjochronicles.com

Sept 22-24th 2011 Trumpets, Trailers, and Tacos

Howdy Everyone,

Well today is the "official release" of our new album and we are also rolling out our new website.  The site was built for us by one of my best friends from Sparta NC, Joel Farmer.   We played sax together in the Alleghany High School Marching band. 

We had a good solid weekend that started with a trip up to Harrisonburg VA to play at one of our favorite places, Clementine Cafe.  This place has it all, great food AND great music.   In fact an old friend of mine from Boone NC, Jonathan Scales was playing there the following weekend.   Jon plays the pan drums, and is quite amazing.  Check out this great video of him

Clementine Cafe has a really beautiful stage.

On the way up Joey tried to learn a few notes on the trumpet from Cass (who is a great trumpet player btw!)

The next morning we had to take over the motel lobby to sign 100 CD's for our kickstarter pledges.   Just part of being on the road.

 

On the way back we stopped in Roanoke to buy a trailer that we found on craigslist.   The guy took $100 off the price for us right away, just standard procedure for car salesmen, and said he couldn't go any lower.   We agreed and started filling out the paper work.   After talking to him for a while and explaining what we did he grabbed $50 out of his pocket, handed it to us, and said, "Here you go guys, follow your dreams!"     It's really amazing when things like that happen to us, and we really appreciate it.   Here's a picture with him.   Danny Carter of Roanoke Truck Sales.  

 

Afterwords we kept our band celebration tradition alive by going to Taco Bell.   You can see the immense joy on Wookie's face,  and yes, we all sit at separate tables when we eat.    In fact if you ever see 5 or 6 guys walk in together and all sit at separate tables, then they are probably a band.   

Friday was our first time at Fat Frogg at Elon and we were impressed.   We'll be back there soon.   Here's a link to the show.  Recorded by Travis Viars.    Pic by Jenny Viars. 

And our 3rd (or 4th, or 5th, I'm not sure) time at the great Evening Muse in Charlotte NC.    One of the best live music venues in that city.   We'll be back there soon too.

Well that's another edition of being Thrown Under the Love Bus.   Thanks for your support!

Brian and BDL
LonesomeBanjoChronicles 

Sept 15-18 2011 Raleigh and Bristol Rhythm and Roots Festival

Howdy Everyone!
We had a great weekend at two of our favorite places in the southeast, Raleigh and Bristol!

        We kicked off the weekend with our our great friends from Richmond VA, Jackass Flats, at the Pourhouse in Raleigh.  We can't even begin to say how much we love these guys. 
        A highlight of the show for both us and the fans was playing "Mid-Summer's Dream" into "Dreamwalker" like we did on the album.   We first attempted it at our Ziggy's show with the great fiddle player Merle Johnson and the amazing percussionist Shawn Roberts.   But this time we were doing it with just us, and we had no idea what to expect.   It went fantastic, and Joey was on fire during the middle of it.  We are looking forward to incorporating this into our show more often.

We have started a tradition of jamming acoustic bluegrass in the alley after the show and Jackass Flats wasn't about to miss out on that fun.   Here's a clip from our friend Jenny Oram!

       On Friday we made it to Bristol TN/VA for the fantastic Bristol Rhythm and Roots Festival.   This is one of the best festivals of the year and is located in downtown Bristol on State Street.   This street is the state line between VA and TN, and I've noticed that on the fall equinox the sun sets directly down the middle of the street for a beautiful view.   So I assume the state line was actually drawn  by the sunset on the equinox.  This is just a hunch and if anyone knows for sure I would love to hear!

There are over 200 sets of music through the weekend at this festival, and one of the highlights that we caught were The Infamous Stringdusters.  (you can stream their music here) Here's a quick video of them playing the Old and In the Way tune "Midnight Moonlight."  This song comes from the iconic 1975 album "Old and In the Way" that featured Jerry Garcia, Peter Rowan, David Grisman and Vassar Clements.   I believe this album opened more people up to bluegrass music than any other album released, and it's amazing to hear how many people start their stories with, "Well, it all started when I got the album "Old and In the Way!"

And we also caught our friend Jim Lauderdale playing with his honky-tonk country band.

Here are our new friends William Walter and Co playing on the Borderline Stage right before us.  We've gotten to know these guys lately and really like them a lot.  Check them out!

and finally, here's a video of us driving up to WV for the Camp Barefoot Festival a few weeks ago.  It was a beautiful drive and Ashley had a little "issue" on the way up!

Thanks for keeping up with us!   See you soon!
Brian and BDL
Lonesome Banjo Chronicles

BDL Travel Blog -- CD Release weekend!!

Hello Love Bussers!

*update*  sept 24-  We now have the ziggy's show available on archive.org 

Brian here, I'm finally getting around to starting our BDL travel blog, Thrown Under The Love Bus.  (I love that name!)   This will be a place where we can offer stories, pictures, videos, and lessons learned from the road.   And for this maiden voyage I have something very special, a sneak peek at a brand new song that I'm sure will be a highlight of the next album.

I wanted to say something to recognize the 9/11 anniversary but it didn't seem to fit in the travel blog so you can find it at the Lonesome Banjo Chronicles.

This weekend revolved around the release of our new album "Let It Grow."   We worked very hard on this album and are very proud of it.   We just barely got it back in time for our CD release shows.    We actually had the CD release show booked at Ziggy's before we had our studio time booked to record the album...but that's just between us...don't tell anyone!   We are already talking about the next album.  (And we will schedule this one better)

Thursday, Sept 8th:   We left early Thursday morning to play on the great radio station WNCW.  If you've ever lived in Western NC, and love good music, then you know all about this station.   If not, let me give you a sample playlist that you might hear on any given day: Doc Watson, Miles Davis, Acoustic Syndicate, Freddie King, New Mastersounds, Wood Brothers, Jimmy Reed, Possum Jenkins, and they have entire shows dedicated to bluegrass, old-time, Grateful Dead and Frank Zappa.  In a world where typical radio stations only rotate about 25 songs that generally all sound the same, WNCW is a beacon of blazing bluesy bright light for music lovers.   And now that we're all connected by the internet tubes you can stream WNCW all day long, as well as listen with your phone.  (PSA: any politician that even thinks about de-funding NPR should be voted out of office immediately...and then flogged.  NPR stations work to spread knowledge about the world and raise the wisdom and consciousness of the public, which is why it is a threat to so many politicians on a certain side of the aisle.) 

WNCW plays really great music, and when we made the first album, "To The Mountain," we were aware that our ultimate litmus test was whether or not WNCW played it.   We didn't talk about this much, but we all knew.   We can have 100 people tell us the album is great and we can have 40 random magazines review it and say it's great, but we wouldn't rest easy until WNCW gave the "thumbs up."  And they did (whew)--they liked it, a lot,  and they put it on regular rotation.  Our sense of relief was immense and we could start breathing again. 

This was our second "Studio B" appearance and it went great.   We were interviewed by Martin Anderson, the program director, which is always a very easy and laid back interview.  Martin has a really fantastic sense of humor and makes everyone feel very comfortable.  And thanks to our archivist Travis Viars we have a link to the session!



After the WNCW session we went back to the house of Steve "Little King" Metcalf for the afternoon.  Of all the people that have helped us get where we are, Steve is at the top of the list.  For me personally, his confidence in us gave me the confidence to go "all in."  He's the executive producer for our last two albums which helps us tremendously, but his friendship is worth just as much.  Steve is legendary in the southeast music scene and ran the infamous Green Acres Music Hall for years.  Bela Fleck said that Green Acres was his favorite venue for many years.  Here's a great Flecktones show with Sam Bush recorded there. 

Very fittingly it was at Steve's house that Daniel showed us a new song that he's just written.  I'm pretty good at knowing right away if a song will be big for us, and I feel pretty strongly about this one.   Here's a "sneak peek" for all you Love Bussers.

We then headed up to Pisgah Brewery and played with local band The Broadcast.   The turnout was lighter than we hoped for, but Asheville is a tough market.  Always 100 different things going on.

Friday, Sept 9: Ziggy's!  Wow! What can I say?  This night surpassed every high expectation we had placed on it.    Me and the guys from Breakin' Jimmy's Martin had been learning Jim Lauderdale songs all week and had no idea what to expect.  This could have been a huge trainwreck and we were all aware of it.  But Jim got there and we went over the songs several times and I think it went pretty great.  I could tell Jim was happy with it after the show.  Playing bluegrass on-stage with Jim Lauderdale is a dream come true for all of us.  

And the night just kept getting better.  To put it in context, BDL's  biggest night ever  for Winston was around 200 people, and we had well over 500 people come to this show.   We were blown away.  Musically we were all on.   Hell, it's hard not to be when you have such an amazing crowd giving us tons of energy.    Another potential train-wreck of the night was the new instrumental "Mid-Summer's Dream" transitioning into "Dreamwalker."   We wanted to re-create what we did in the studio into the live show, and we brought in the amazing percussionist Shawn Roberts from Appalachian State, as well as the great fiddler Merle Johnson to help us with it.     We had never played this live before and we didn't even get to rehearse it during soundcheck.   We had an idea of what we wanted but nobody knew how it was going to turn out.   It was better than we expected and Joey even joked that if we had rehearsed it we wouldn't have pulled it off as good as we did.   I guess I can say that this night was the top performing experience that any of us have ever had.   You can listen to the whole show here.

Photo by Jenny L. Viars, Dancing Lemur Photography

Saturday, Sept 10: We were back at the Deep River Music Festival in Franklinville, NC.   As a young band, we've played a lot of these small community festivals and we've learned that you meet the best people in the world at them.  These are the people that will drive all over the state to support their favorite band, and they're also the people that will get up in the middle of the night to help a friend or neighbor in need.   We are always thankful to be invited to them.   We met a really great young band from Boone, NC (my old stomping grounds) called Troubel.   Also on the bill were Holy Ghost Tent Revival and our good friend Ralph Roddenberry.

Here's one of my very favorite Ralph songs, "Pushin' on a Pull Door"

I hope everyone has enjoyed the first edition of our travel blog.   We are looking forward to posting fun stuff each weekend.

Thanks for everyone's support.  We will see you on the road!

Brian and BDL
Lonesome Banjo Chronicles