Europe was wonderful this year, much more relaxed than past years...maybe we are just learning the ropes better! 

Got a cool song out of the tour...we were playing in Kotz, Germany and a woman who was a big country music fan and had been to Nashville, told me that a few years ago a woman swam the Danube River to raise awareness of the pollution!  It took her 3 months to swim to the Black Sea.  The woman who told us this lives on the Danube and held up a Tennessee flag when the woman swam by. They have become good friends.

SO...a couple daze later, a DJ friend took us to an amazing place called the Bluepot, it is a pond that is turquoise blue all the time and is incredibly deep with endless caves. There is a legend about a mermaid named Lau who had lived in the tiny lake for centuries. She was banished from the Black Sea because she would never laugh. The spell could not be broken till she would laugh and honest laugh...5 times. Then she could return home.

This was a match made in heaven...putting the two stories together... somehow. SO, I imagined that I was the Shonen Lau (Beautiful Lau) and the song spilled out. The reason Lau cannot smile and is SO sad (in MY version) is because she has the gift of prophesy and knows that the Blue Danube will be horribly polluted and it depresses her. When she hears of the young woman's amazing SWIM...it makes her smile again and thus she can return to the Black Sea.

I used the Blue Danube Waltz by Strauss as an interlude/cameo in the song and made it in 3/4 time...with a hint of Blue Danube melody.

I've written the 'swimmer' and told her about the song but have not heard back. My dream would be to do a cruise down the WHOLE Danube with Mimi 'the swimmer' and play the song and other environmental songs at every port!!!!!  Hmmmmmmmmmm.

Just a thought.  Build it and they will come! 

Donna

Wow...it is almost time for the Walnut Valley Festival again. We have been the Hosts of the New Songs Showcase for the past two years and are looking forward to this one. It gets better each year and we have added a new category...SONGS FOR A BETTER WORLD!

ALso this year we are bringing our wonderfully, talented friend Robin Rues to the festival to play the upright bass with us. It will be a BLAST. Hope to see you there. Our schedule is posted on Myspace.

Yipppeeee..
Donna and Kelly

Howdy....here is a SNEAK preview of my weird SONG ART and the song that goes with it.  I hope this works....supposedily if you click on this link you can see what will be on our May newsletter....also if it works, I can put it on our MYSPACE blog each month as well.   Appreciate comments. This is my therapy!!!

May 2007 Newsletter ~ Bang Bang

Donna
Still on the Hill

One of the perks of being a touring musician is getting to know amazing people. Kelly and I especially love folks that have lived their lives in these Ozark Hills. We have enough songs about such characters written now that we could fill 2 CD's full!

Last week we performed both our kid's program, Toucan Jam and Still on the Hill's Ozark Journey (for High School) at Lyons College in Batesville, AR. Our Ozark Journey program celebrates many of the characters I am referring to. The woman who booked us asked if we had ever heard of the MUG TREE LADY?

We hadn't...so she gave us directions and we headed over there as soon as we packed up.

Sure enough in a little yard surrounded by a little white picket fence was a big ole tree with a zillion coffee mugs nailed all up and down and around the trunk, up as far as a ladder could reach. 

A sweet, elderly woman named Clara came out to greet us and offered us to join her for a glass of iced tea. We obliged...I could feel a song brewing! (Here it is)