Birthdays This Month
Jessie Baker turns 20 in February. When someone asks you (for some bizarre reason) “Who put the 20 in 2011?” you’ll be ready to answer, “Why, Jessie Baker, of course.” Happy Birthday, Jessie!
Cryptic Message
A napkin discovered last week in Chehalis, Washington contained the following cryptic message:
“A lonesome Elvis loves Orleans. Wait! The Earth can’t find her waters.”
Sources at Rounder Records confirmed that each of the twelve words in the Twitter-length message corresponds to a word to be found in each of the twelve songs on the new Flamekeeper CD. “We’ve got a leak and we’re going to call a plumber” said spokesperson Daniel Winsford, speaking on condition of anonymity. Winsford refused to acknowledge receipt of additional messages stating, “Neither the new album’s instrumentals nor its purported tap-dancing and poetry reading segments are to be discussed at this time.”
Bluegrass Jamboree
Rainer Zellner was our gracious host on Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper’s 16-day “Bluegrass Jamboree” tour this past December. Billed as a movable “Festival of Bluegrass and Americana Music”, the tour took us to 14 venues in Germany plus one each in Switzerland and the Czech Republic. Each concert featured amazing performances by Nashville’s Jeff & Vida, Shotgun Party from Austin and a Finale with all three groups. The audiences were incredible; the folks just couldn’t get enough and each night somewhere around the six-minute mark of “Lee Highway Blues” Mike would hang a sharp right onto the Autobahn and the place would go nuts!
The tour started in southwest Germany in the city of Reutlingen on December 3rd. After fifteen days and 2,700 miles of traveling the countryside we played our final gig in Offenburg, near the French border. The weather for the trip? In a word: snow. It was snowing when we landed in Frankfurt Dec. 2nd, and it was snowing as some of us left for home on the 19th. One of us, a tenor-singing mandolinist, spent an extra couple of days in Europe waiting for the weather to clear before he could make it home for Christmas. Welcome back, Jesse Brock! With the cities and venues decorated for the Christmas holiday, the snowfall added to the beautiful winter scenery and most assuredly did not deter the concert-goers from their appointed rounds – one gentleman made an 8-hour drive from Italy to see the band!
Check out the images on Facebook provided by Katy Rose Cox of Shotgun Party here and here. Thanks to everyone for the photos! For more tour info or just to brush up on your German, visit the original tour site at www.bluegrassjamboree.de.
One of the many highlights of the tour was doing a workshop at a school in Munich for a class of music students. We demonstrated the role of each instrument in the band, demonstrated vocal harmonies, gave a brief history of bluegrass, and performed several songs for the enthusiastic students. They were a bit hesitant at first to ask questions but someone eventually broke the ice with “Have you ever been on MTV?”
Although no one from MTV interviewed us, Mike did tape a segment in Prague with the Czech Republic’s ‘most popular television interviewer’. (Forgive me for not recalling the host’s name at the time of this writing.) We had been traveling all day in the snow and arrived several hours late to the taping. Fortunately the host and crew waited for us and the interview will air sometime this spring. Mike played both fiddle and mandolin; the host was a guitar player and singer and I believe the crew may have captured some of the jamming that began when the formal interview had concluded.
We met so many terrific people on the tour, had such a wonderful time, enjoyed such exquisite food and drink – our traveling companions were delightful – Jeff, Vida, Jenny, Katy and Andrew – special thanks to Ille for keeping us on schedule, Werner for the great sound, Servais, king of the merch, and the amazing Deiter for driving and parking that tour bus in places where I’d have sworn a Honda Civic couldn’t go.
Coming Up
We’re heading to Nashville to crank up the Flamekeeper 2011 tour machine in mid-February. Our publicist, Kimberly Williams with East Public Relations, has lots of information for you about our upcoming shows. Until next time, be well and be sure to follow Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper on Facebook. Invite your friends to sign up for this newsletter and don’t miss the next edition of Typewriter Tom.
Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper has wrapped up the recording of their new CD to be released on Rounder Records this Spring and we’ll be sharing all kinds of details about the new project over the next couple of months. They’ll join Kyle Cantrell this month for a “Track By Track” taping as well a live concert for “Bluegrass Junction On Stage”. Both programs will air on Sirius XM in promotion of the new project. On February 17th, the band will perform for the new radio show, Nashville Traditions, which airs on WSM 650AM.
This show is taped before a live studio audience at the Texas Troubadour Theater on Music Valley Drive in Nashville. The taping starts at 6:00pm CST and tickets are available for purchase here.
February 17th Nashville, TN Nashville Traditions (Texas Troubadour Theater)
February 18th Nashville, TN Station Inn
February 19th Asheville, NC Bluegrass First Class
February 25th Shepherdsville, KY Shepherdsville Music Barn
February 26th Hamilton, OH Hamilton University
