Holiday shows and a NYE weekend festival in NC!

Howdy all you Big Bus Lovin' Daddios,

Upcoming shows this weekend;
Thursday: Newport News VA, Hoss's Deli
Friday: Baltimore MD, 8x10 Club
Saturday: Williamsport PA, Bullfrog Brewery. 

We've been really busy the last few weeks, with shows all over NC, SC, and Virginia, in addition to a run to OH and IN! That's too much to try to cover here, so instead we'll talk a little bit about our first Love Bus Costume Ball that we held on October 13. Love Bus in Wonderland was (obviously) Alice in Wonderland themed. It was also a book drive and fundraiser for the children and youth library at Winston-Salem Industries for the Blind. We had a great time dressing up and seeing all of the creative costumes you all came up with!

BDL in their Wonderland costumes

We want to take some time and let everyone know about our holiday plans this year.   Unfortunately (beyond our control)  we are unable to play our annual Thanksgiving show in Sparta, NC, but it is OK because we want everyone to come to our Ziggy's show the day before Thanksgiving (Wednesday, November 21st).  We will be recording and filming the show for a live album, and we want all our friends to be a part of it!  The one thing that we consistently hear the most is "We want an album with Scott singing!"  So we've decided that this is the perfect opportunity to make that happen. There are a few other big reasons why this show will be amazing: BIG SOMETHING and Winston-Salem favorite THE HERITAGE, featuring our very own Mr. Cass Copsey. AND the Ziggy's show will be a Love Bus event: a food drive for Second Harvest Food Bank. Bring canned food, soups, peanut butter or even toiletry items (such as shampoo or toothpaste). Help us fight hunger in Winston-Salem, especially in these colder months and the holidays. Here are details for the Ziggy's show on November 21st.

We LOVE playing Ziggy's!

A pic from our CD release party with Jim Lauderdale. 

We also have some great events coming up for the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve.  We start off by playing at two of our "home-away-from-home" markets:  Raleigh on Thursday, December 27th, and Rutherfordton on Friday, December 28th. Finally, we are hosting our very own New Year's Eve party at the Ten O One Club in Winston with our friends The Deluge!

On Saturday, December 29th, we are part of The NC Music and Arts Festival, which our favorite venue owners, Chris Phelps and Brittany Wilson, are putting on in Lexington, NC.   Check out this lineup, all for $30:  Holy Ghost Tent Revival, Big Something, New Familiars, BDL, and Barefoot Manner, and The Broadcast.  This mini-festival runs two nights, and you can get details and buy tickets here.  Come celebrate local NC musicians in the beautiful Edward C. Smith Auditorium. 

Here's some video from one of our shows at High Rock in Lexington NC

Would you like to be a part of our "street team" and help us put up flyers in your market for free tickets to shows?   Email us at bigdaddystreetteam@gmail.com.

We hope everyone is having a great week, and we hope to see you soon.

Thanks so much,
BDL

January 2012: when we see lots of hard work paying off!

UPCOMING SHOWS
02.16.12 - Buffalo's Cafe (Statesboro, GA)
02.17.12 - Stillwater Taproom (Augusta, GA)
02.18.12 - Encyclomedia (Atlanta, GA)


Hello, all you Big Love Bussin' Daddios!

It's been a few weeks since our last post, but trust me, we've been busy! Let me give some quick highlights of January, and then I'll talk about this past weekend (including Ziggy's and another charity event)!

January 14: The Pour House, Raleigh, NC
This was our first NC show since before Christmas, and it was great to be back!! The room was packed, and there was incredible energy all around.  We remember the days of playing the Pour house when 50 or 60 people would show up, but they believed in us and kept giving us gigs there, including our "River Runs Thursdays" where we played every Thursday in January 2010.  This is a perfect example of a venue and promoter supporting and growing a band, which is vital for everyone in the industry.  We smashed our record attendence there with 350 people! Listen to a great recording of the show by Travis Viars here.

January 26-28: Durham, Charlotte, Asheville
It's always fun to do the NC tours, and this weekend was no exception. Great to see all of you out there dancing! A highlight of this weekend was our friend Nicky Sanders from the Steep Canyon Rangers playing the whole show with us in Asheville.  He's the fiddle player on our new album, and there's even rumor that he'll be sitting in with us on Sunday at Floyd Fest!  (wink wink)

Nicky with SCR and Steve Martin at the recent Grammy Awards

February 2-4: Virginia Beach, Fredricksburg, and Richmond
Our weekend up in VA was fantastic.  The first two venues both had record numbers for BDL shows.  Both Doc Taylor's and The Otter House had been decent gigs for us with around 30 people showing up each time we played there, but for some reason the word got out and we had well over 100 people at each show singing the words and dancing.  Just like in Raleigh it felt really great to see our growth rate jump by such large numbers.   All of us have played music in a lot of different bands before, but none of us have ever experienced anything like this.   It's amazing. 

We try to eat fairly healthy on the road, but I do make the guys stop at McD's for coffee in the morning.  I'll always choose a local coffee shop if I can find one, but I've found that McD's has the best coffee for the price. Gas Station coffee is terrible and Starbuck's is too expensive...it's one of those things you learn from a few years on the road.  Oh, and you always travel with a travel coffee mug with a top that seals.  That's a big one too.   

The Otter House has tons of great bands that come through and play their venue, but they only put up certain posters on the downstairs walls of the restaurant, and we found out that we are one of the posters they've framed and put up.   Now that doesn't seem like much of a big deal until you see all the great bands that didn't make it.  They really like us up there!  

Now that we're somewhat caught up...


February 10: Ziggy's, Winston-Salem, NC
After our fantastic experience at our CD Release Party at Ziggy's in September, we were thrilled to be back there this weekend. Ziggy's is a local institution, especially for those of us who remember the "old Ziggy's;" it's an honor to be up on that stage. Local rock band Wafer Thin opened up for us this time. We had another great turnout of over 300 people, and had a great time sharing the stage with special guests James Bernabe from Breakin' Jimmy's Martin on mandolin and Brent Buckner from Possum Jenkins on harmonica.

View from the back of the room, with Brent on stage

The show was also a Love Bus event: 2nd Annual LoveFest: The Good Morning Sunshine Breakfast Drive. We asked everyone to bring cereal and/or juice for Crisis Control Ministry in Winston-Salem, and you all supported in full force! Over $260 in monetary donations and 100 items of cereal, juices, and even grits and
cocoa, poured into Ziggy’s in the hands of fans and friends of Big Daddy Love. Thanks to YOUR DONATIONS of cereals and juices, many kids in need will be eating breakfasts provided by the wonderful team at Crisis Control Ministry, Inc. in Winston-Salem. A big thanks to the entire team at Crisis Control that worked with us to arrange this event, send out a press release to spread the word, and handled donations during the show, especially Judie and Corey! If you’d like to get their news about more events, how to volunteer, or donate, please visit their website at: www.crisiscontrol.org/

The Love Bus donation table. And this was early in the evening!

We had almost as much fun backstage as out on stage (...almost). Always good music going on, and good friends to hang out with.

Feeling the love in the green room.

February 11: Fat Frogg, Elon, NC
We always have a great time playing at the Fat Frogg, and this show was no exception. In the second set, our friend Jesse Hensley from Big Something joined us on guitar for several tunes, including "Franklin's Tower" Led Zeppelin's "Lemon Song" and "The Wall."

Jesse and Joey onstage at Fat Frogg

The beginning of 2012 has shown us that all the hard work has paid off.  We are seeing record numbers at all types of venues and we can't thank everyone enough for it.  We couldn't do this if all of you didn't talk about us to your friends, and share our music, and bring new people to shows.   We are always saying "Thank you" and there's a big reason for that: we know we couldn't do it without all of you.   See you soon!

Brian and Big Daddy Love
Lonesome Banjo Chronicles




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.

02.16.12 - Buffalo's Cafe (Statesboro, GA)
02.17.12 - Stillwater Taproom (Augusta, GA)
02.18.12 - Encyclomedia (Atlanta, GA)
02.23.12 - High Rock Outfitters (Lexington, NC)
02.24.12 - Murphy's (Boone, NC)
02.25.12 - Main Cellar City Club (Hickory, NC)
03.02.12 - Martin's Downtown Bar & Grill (Roanoke, VA)
03.03.12 - Dante's Bar (Frostburg, MD)
03.09.12 - The Double Door (Charlotte, NC)

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