A good Labor Day to all of you from the Big Front Porch!
I confess that I’m ashamed to see that my last post was back during the spring, so I figure I owe you BFP fans some summertime catching up, in you’ll indulge me:)
The summer somehow, as summers seem to do, FLEW by, and we’re already two weeks into the fall semester…how did that happen? But the farmers are fully into the harvest and the sounds of football teams and high school bands fills the air on Friday nights, so it must be fall…..even if the actually temperature today in the Delta will hit 100 degrees!
A recap of this summer from the Big Front Porch includes a wonderful trip with friends to the Greenbrier in West Virginia in late May. Nice to be in the mountains again sitting on another beautiful big front porch talking about life and stuff…
Got down from the mountain in time to accompany the Ol’ Skool Revue band from the DMI for a performance at the Chicago Blues Festival in June. It was a fun adventure riding the City of New Orleans north through the night to the Windy City, a journey made by many Mississippi musicians over the years, altering the development of American music…nice to still be part of that.
Hopped off the train, took a day or two and then headed back up the road to Music City (Nashville) for the annual “Songs From The Heart” workshop/concert with cancer patients, caregivers, and professionals at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. Some of the participants this year really took ownership of their song as well as their performance. There’s a CD and a DVD in the works…songwriting at its purest. It is always a privilege and an honor to try and help put those feelings into words and music.
Late June brought me the opportunity to join my pals, Buddy Greene and Jeff Taylor, in a benefit concert on behalf of Faith Hospice in Michigan at Dr. John Mulder’s home on the banks of the Grand River. What a magical, beautiful evening, full of good music, good food, and good fellowship all for a good cause…it doesn’t get much better than that.
July 4? Vacation? What’s that?
The DMI Summer Camp for high school students interested in the music industry was held in mid-July, and we had a GREAT group of campers this year….some unexpected collaborations between unlikely pairing of students brought about some very original works, not to mention opportunities for getting to know each other in a way that shows we’re not so different after all…
Of course, there was the yearly summer gathering of the Ya Yas at the Alluvian in Greenwood for much needed R & R among old friends, but let’s just say what happens at the Alluvian stays at the Alluvian and leave it there…
The Big Front Porch had the opportunity to work on a very cool CD project with three of my favorite singer/songwriters: Kate Campbell, Tom Kimmel, and Pierce Pettis. They perform together as The New Agrarians, and they were looking for an opportunity to work on a recording project together. All the planets lined up to have them record in Studio B at the Delta Music Institute, and it was a BLAST! They’ll be finishing up the project in Nashville, but trust me…you’ll want to watch for this CD if you’re a fan of literate Southern storytelling in song….there’s some amazing work on this record.
And so that brought me to early August…a few days of re-grouping before the business of DMI kicked back in. I made a dash to the Coast and a dash to Secluseval and enjoyed the relatively uneventful days here on the Big Front Porch in the Delta. And now we’re in full swing again…harvest time.
I’ve got some new ideas in the pipeline for my next recording project so I’ll keep my nose to the grindstone and begin to flesh out characters and situations and histories and see where it leads…stay tuned.
I promise I’ll try and get on the Big Front Porch sooner than later…let me hear from you…we’ll sit awhile and catch up.
Pax,
Tricia