Hey Y'all.  If you want, please check out the new song I wrote and hope to sing a lot while I go on the stump in Ohio for Obama  with Holly Near October 19-29.   I'd love to hear what you think of it.   Holly and I (along with a host of other fab musicians) are volunteering our time  and money to go to Ohio and try to influence folks to vote for Obama in November.  I'm excited to be doing something, anything to try to elect a president who might actually do good things and make intelligent decisions on issues that matter to me.  I hope to get on this myspace thing more in the coming weeks and months so that we can talk more about stuff.  Bye for now.

Laura

Hey y'all, thanks for the weekend of a lifetime.  For those of you who came to Wintergrass and supported a night of celebration of the Black roots of Bluegrass music--Holla!!!!  Wasn't that fun.  Egads,  how cool to get to see the Ebony Hillbillies and Ruthie Foster on one bill.  It's so good to get a group like the EH on stage and realize how rare and unique and doggone awesome it is to witness living history.  Those  guys are the real deal.  They've been making their living playing to people running to catch subways in NYC for their  many years and I,  for one, believe they deserve to have an audience who is there to hear them and to sit down and listen with intent and adoration, to what they have to say.   Did you find yourself crying (or at least wanting to) when Norris sang his opening song to a dear friend and  musical collaborator who had just died.    His voice, so fragile and quavery and gentle-heartbreakingly bidding his loved one goodbye.  Their visual presentation was arresting and powerful for its atavistic harkenings.  I'm not even sure what that means, except that  just looking at them evoked some sort of cellular memory and familiarity for something I have never actually lived through.  It's kind of like those monarchs that start out in someplace like the tip of South America and wind up in Santa Cruz, California many generations later.   Each successive generation knows the way because of some sort of freaky kind of inherited memory they're all born with.  Dang, that is cool.    For god's sake, some of their (Ebony Hillbillies) members are card carrying members of the Federation of Black Cowboys.  How many people can say that.  How about that Bill Salter, the EH  bass player.  Did you know that he co-wrote both "Where is the Love" and "Just the Two of Us".  This humble, kind, sweet, unassuming man  has two grammies to his credit, but you'd never know it by his demeanor.   I felt the same way seeing them as I did the first time I heard Ralph Stanley sing "Oh Death", and then I had the pleasure of singing with him on a gospel workshop at Strawberry Festival in California (or was it Merlefest?--CRS lately).  Anyway, it just shows to go you that Dubya and all is moron, cretin buddies in the Whitehouse do not represent us or the world we want to create and nurture and live in.  Contrary to the prevailing thought in his house (The Whitehouse), people of all different cutures, countries and paths really do want to get along more than they want to fight and kill each other.  Can you feel the change coming.  I haven't been this excited since the 60's.  Heck, even if my second choice for the Whitehouse (Hillary Clinton) wins, I'll be ecstatic.  Gotta say...I do like Obama though.  Oh well, enough about me--wull not quite enough.  Let me say too, how grateful I am that Festie-goer  seemed to embrace the idea of having Black Folks who play roots music and were hugely influential to guys like Bill Monroe (see Arnold Schultz) included in a Bluegrass festival.  Only in the Pacific Northwest huh?  Wouldn't it be kind of cool to see a whole festival devoted to the likes of the Ebony Hillbillies and Ruthie Foster and Otis Taylor, etc?  We could call the festival Black and Bluegrass huh?  What do you think.  Comments, questions, concerns? Until we speak again.  Thank you again for making my dream come true this weekend at Wintergrass and then at the Triple Door.  I and my HarpersFerry bandmates (Orville Johnson, Tory Trujillo, Turbo, Tanya Richardson and the dear Clifton Ervin-bones player) say thank you, thank you thank you thank you.  Now if I can figure out this dang myspace thing on my computer (I call it my thinkity-box) I'll upload a picture of the Ebony Hillbillies for y'all to enjoy. 

Love,

Laura Love

Hey y'all, thanks for the weekend of a lifetime.  For those of you who came to Wintergrass and supported a night of celebration of the Black roots of Bluegrass music--Holla!!!!  Wasn't that fun.  Egads,  how cool to get to see the Ebony Hillbillies and Ruthie Foster on one bill.  It's so good to get a group like the EH on stage and realize how rare and unique and doggone awesome it is to witness living history.  Those  guys are the real deal.  They've been making their living playing to people running to catch subways in NYC for their  many years and I,  for one, believe they deserve to have an audience who is there to hear them and to sit down and listen with intent and adoration, to what they have to say.   Did you find yourself crying (or at least wanting to) when Norris sang his opening song to a dear friend and  musical collaborator who had just died.    His voice, so fragile and quavery and gentle-heartbreakingly bidding his loved one goodbye.  Their visual presentation was arresting and powerful for its atavistic harkenings.  I'm not even sure what that means, except that  just looking at them evoked some sort of cellular memory and familiarity for something I have never actually lived through.  It's kind of like those monarchs that start out in someplace like the tip of South America and wind up in Santa Cruz, California many generations later.   Each successive generation knows the way because of some sort of freaky kind of inherited memory they're all born with.  Dang, that is cool.    For god's sake, some of their (Ebony Hillbillies) members are card carrying members of the Federation of Black Cowboys.  How many people can say that.  How about that Bill Salter, the EH  bass player.  Did you know that he co-wrote both "Where is the Love" and "Just the Two of Us".  This humble, kind, sweet, unassuming man  has two grammies to his credit, but you'd never know it by his demeanor.   I felt the same way seeing them as I did the first time I heard Ralph Stanley sing "Oh Death", and then I had the pleasure of singing with him on a gospel workshop at Strawberry Festival in California (or was it Merlefest?--CRS lately).  Anyway, it just shows to go you that Dubya and all is moron, cretin buddies in the Whitehouse do not represent us or the world we want to create and nurture and live in.  Contrary to the prevailing thought in his house (The Whitehouse), people of all different cutures, countries and paths really do want to get along more than they want to fight and kill each other.  Can you feel the change coming.  I haven't been this excited since the 60's.  Heck, even if my second choice for the Whitehouse (Hillary Clinton) wins, I'll be ecstatic.  Gotta say...I do like Obama though.  Oh well, enough about me--wull not quite enough.  Let me say too, how grateful I am that Festie-goer  seemed to embrace the idea of having Black Folks who play roots music and were hugely influential to guys like Bill Monroe (see Arnold Schultz) included in a Bluegrass festival.  Only in the Pacific Northwest huh?  Wouldn't it be kind of cool to see a whole festival devoted to the likes of the Ebony Hillbillies and Ruthie Foster and Otis Taylor, etc?  We could call the festival Black and Bluegrass huh?  What do you think.  Comments, questions, concerns? Until we speak again.  Thank you again for making my dream come true this weekend at Wintergrass and then at the Triple Door.  I and my HarpersFerry bandmates (Orville Johnson, Tory Trujillo, Turbo, Tanya Richardson and the dear Clifton Ervin-bones player) say thank you, thank you thank you thank you.  Now if I can figure out this dang myspace thing on my computer (I call it my thinkity-box) I'll upload a picture of the Ebony Hillbillies for y'all to enjoy. 

Love,

Laura Love