Pass the Song, Pass the Hat…

Greetings from Liberty, Tennessee, on the edge of the Cumberland Plateau. We are still alive and well and haven’t fallen off yet. This Thursday, April 2, I will be performing one song, along with eight other performers as part of an online virtual birthday celebration for Amber Black. I just met Amber online, and with her talents in communications and marketing, she is helping some of us begin to navigate the virtual concert world. She’s super cool. She is sister to my good friend, Craig Eastman, fiddler extraordinaire, whom I perform with on my West coast tours and have recorded with on numerous occasions. Craig plays all of the instruments minus my melodica on the tune “Harbor,” from my Another Life record.

In this time of virtualness, this will be the first birthday celebration I’ve participated in, where the music is serving the birthday girl, as well as the online community of folks and friends. I am grateful to be a part of it and hope that you can join in too. Amber says, ” art is a balm for the soul,” and I couldn’t agree more with her.

Amber has invited performers to, “play one song each and tell us about a project of theirs that they’re excited about.” When I put together my song lists for shows, I sometimes ponder for days about which songs and the sequence. You would think with such a short song list for the online virtual birthday celebration, it would be a cakewalk, but I’m just not sure about what song to do?

It would be fitting to give you what you want and need during these challenging, uncertain times. I certainly have a few favs, but what are yours? If you could send me three requests, in order of preference by Wednesday night, I’ll pick the most requested song, practice it during the day on Thursday and perform it that night at the birthday celebration.

The project that I am most excited about is the one I’m working on right now. My last blog mentioned seeing these social distancing times as an opportunity to put together an online only release, a collection of demos, that I recorded, some with my partner Sue, last September. The demos were recorded for Craig Eastman, so that he had more than just a musical key to go by for performances with me on my West coast tour that happened in Oct/Nov 2019. At the rehearsals with Craig, he mentioned how much he liked the recordings and that I should consider releasing them.

I have mixed four of the ten recordings, which I’m hoping to finish in the next couple of weeks. The working title for the record is, The Craig Demos. So, my project that I am most excited about is, The Craig Demos. Here is a link to one of the tunes, “Woodland Street,” I’ve mixed for the recording.

That’s all the news for now. Hope you can make it to Pass the Song, Pass the Hat, Thursday evening, April 2 at 8pm eastern time.

Wishing everyone good health and much happiness…

Billy

p.s. don’t forget to send your requests…