Glimpses from S.E.A Summer Touring

Here are some photos of our Trio (S.E.A) from our Summer Touring:

Kentucky Music Week, Bardstown, Kentucky

Westwood House-KU Lutheran Campus Ministry, Lawrence, Kansas

Courtland Arts Center, Courtland, Kansas

And here is video of our performance at Kentucky Music Week



Ain't we got fun?!

Fiddle Whamdiddle Summer 2014

Vi and I have had some great gigs playing together this summer so far!

We had a fun night at Avogadro's number at the end of May, and then a terrific time at the Avery House for July 4th Independence Day Celebration.

Some different friends captured these moments as images to evoke that fun:

The tent was provided by Streetmosphere, Beet Street's summer music program. [Photo by Franklin Taggart]

This looks way too cheerful to be Blacktail Weasel and the Ground Squirrel Clan!  [Jim Frye Photo] Listen to that tune here.

Here are some nice close-ups while we play (which is musician for "work"!) [Pics by Pabo]

Views from the Road (Summer Tour 2014)

Nearly two weeks into my tour, here are some views from the road:

Nevada White Sand "dust devil"

First stop:  West Wendover, NV / Wendover, UT, where my clock couldn't figure out which time zone it was in.

Just past Salt Lake City, as I was nearing the Wyoming Border, I stopped at this scenic overlook beside a L-O-N-G Utah Lake.  This could be a panoramic photo, but I haven't stitched it together and it wouldn't fit this vertical web-based format, either:

Steve's Coast to Coast Summer Tour 2014

View my latest Newsletter here.

Steve's Coast to Coast Summer Tour 

May 25-July 24, 2014.  

Click here for the Schedule.

With stops in California, Colorado, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado and Michigan, Steve will be playing solo and teaching at week-end and week-long festivals and camps.  

He will also be performing with Vi Wickam as Fiddle Whamdiddle, and Erin and Amber Rogers as S.E.A (Steve, Erin and Amber).

S.E.A will also have California engagements in August.

Dulcimers, dulci-bro, banjammer and more will be coming to bring lively and thoughtful music to you.  

Come and join me!

Skier

He swings down like the flourish of a pen
Signing a signature in white on white.

The silence of his skis reciprocates
The silence of the world around him.

Wind is his one competitor
In the cool winding and unwinding down.

On incandescent feet he falls
Unfalling, trailing white foam, white fire.

--Robert Francis

from Room for Me and a Mountain Lion: Poetry of Open Space, selected by Nancy Larrick.

Open Mic Night at Freight and Salvage

It is an important acoustic and folk venue, and it is an historic Open Mic:  the longest-continually running one in the East Bay.

Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse on some alternate Tuesday nights is the host to the Open Mic.

Open Mics are part of how I got my start and developed my chops in Fort Collins:  Avo's, Lucky Joe's, The Canyon Open Mic in Masonville and more.

Signing up to play a new tune, or test one's stage presence as a performing artist, to get known in a new area, to meet other song-singers and song-writers are some of the reasons that men and women add their name to the list.

As a listener/observer, Open Mics are always hit-or-miss in:
the talent department,
or the ready-for-prime-time department,
or the stage-presence polish-department,
or trying-out-the-new-material department,

but that's exactly the point.

On a recent Tuesday, I threw my hat into the ring, bought the ticket to get in, hitched up my baritone mountain dulcimer and traveled the BART across the bay.  Important learning: Arriving 20 minutes before door opened almost didn't get me a spot to play.  There were several other hopefuls behind me in the line who DIDN'T get a slot to play that night.

Before I went, I thought I'd check in my with colleague, Kerry Patrick Clark, about which song to sing for my "Freight" debut.

I have a large repertoire, I play many instruments and when faced with a "one-song-set" am sometimes stymied by which one to choose.

"It's a no-brainer," he said, when I finally reached him on the telephone.

Then he named the perfect song, but it was one I had completely overlooked when trying to balance: instrument, style of song, goal of song in giving my debut performance on this stage.

"We need to move the audience to laugh, or to cry, to move them toward community," he noted.  "It's the stories that have the power."

Of course he was right, and I played the one he suggested.

I drew #26 out of a line-up of 28 performers and even though I waited for nearly 3 hours through all the preceding performers [and found myself really being moved by a third of them!] I had a blast!

And my sweethearts: (my spouse and my daughter) both came to smile and support me....
....and they said,

"you did good."

Off to California

Here I am in my new studio, with just a tiny sampling of my work behind me!

The physical transition was completed with my arrival in San Mateo last Saturday at 4 pm.

I can't even begin to describe the beauty I witnessed while crossing Utah and Nevada on I-80:  the colors of rock, the shades of tan, the raw umbers, burnt siennas-- I finally realized where Crayola got the names for some of the crayons that I used from my 64-color box.

The mountain peaks reaching up to scrape snow or rain out of the clouds, or was it the clouds leaning down to be scratched like Baloo the bear in Jungle Book?

The clouds hovering over the Great Salt Lake, the snow draped peaks with the deep blue-green of the tree lines in a band of color below, while the spring-yellow slope that rose to meet the tawny border that separates them all like the fancy parfait treats made by my mother.

The perspective I learned in art class in Junior High was demonstrated with the long road to infinity stretched ahead.

Towns every two hours apart, a family friend to visit in Reno, the foggy, snowy Sierras which gave way instantly to SPRING!  The bright orange of California poppies and the white bobbing heads of jonquils on springy green stems.

I didn't come close to hearing everything I'd planned to hear from my iPod, but instead kept repeating tracks over and over to sing with Holly Near, Sandy and Pat of Emma's Revolution, Jim Croce and more.

So now I am here, learning my way around, correcting forwarding errors at the post-office, finishing the fiscal transitions and sitting on my back porch, watching the planes in their final approach across the Bay to SFO.

Pinch me!