Hi folks,

We’re playing the Calistoga Farmer’s Market tomorrow,
Saturday June 12th from 9am to noon at the Sharpsteen Museum Plaza on Washington Street, downtown Calistoga.
We’ll be accompanied by our good friends Dan Brunetti and David Chapman. We had hoped to have Duncan Draper and be billed as The 3 D’s… but Duncan can’t make it this time. We’ll miss him tomorrow!

We had a wonderful time at the Strawberry Music Fest over Memorial Day weekend. It started off cold and wet and even snowed on Thursday night, but the weather cleared up and the mud dried out and it was a beautiful weekend. We had a a chance to play with our friends Ginger Parish and Velvy Appleton, “Two at Most” of  “Three at Last.” Anita Sandwina is a school teacher and couldn’t get away for the festival. She was missed, but the 3 of them are currently on tour doing a series of house concerts on the East Coast. They’re all 3 great songwriters and we’d encourage you all to check them out if you get a chance!

We have a few other farmer’s markets scheduled as well as some private gigs this summer.

Sunday, July 4th Windsor Farmer’s Market 10am to 1pm.
This is a special event with a Grand old Flag Quilt and Flower Show. It takes place on the Windsor Town Green.

Saturday, July 31st  Calistoga Farmer’s Market 9am to noon.

Saturday, August 21st  we’ll be playing at The Cur-ville Folk Festival in Kenwood. This is a very fun, small festival put on by our friends Dale and Laura. Three at Last will also play, as well as several other great bands.

Sunday, August 29th  Windsor Farmer’s Market from 10am. to 1pm.

Saturday, Sept. 18th We’ll play Calistoga’s Relay For Life

Saturday, Sept.25th Calistoga Farmer’s Market again

Sunday, Oct. 10th Windsor Farmer’s Market

Saturday, Oct. 23rd  Our last Calistoga Farmer’s Market of the year.

We’re looking forward to the Kate Wolf Music Festival at the end of June, where we’ll camp out and play with family and friends all weekend.

We hope we get to see you at one of our upcoming gigs!

Be well,

Lindalou and Michael

Greetings!

We’ve been asked to open the wonderful Windsor Farmer’s Market this coming Sunday!
May 9th from 10am to 1:00
We look forward to playing as a duo on this Mother’s Day morning.

May 12th- 6:30pm to 8:00  We’ll play at Calistoga Gardens Care Facility.
This is an open house celebrating Volunteers and National Nursing Home Week. We play there as a duo once a month and mostly play old familiar songs which really sparks folks memories and cheers them up. There will be wine and cheese and singing along encouraged at this event. The public is welcome!

May 13th at 8pm  We’ll be at Aubergine in Sebastopol.
The harmonious “Festival of Friends” will be putting on a concert and celebrating their beautiful singer/violin player, Susan Ballinger’s birthday. They’ve invited us and a few other friends to play a bit as well.
Aubergine is located at 755 Petaluma Blvd. Sebastopol.

We hope you’re all well and enjoying the sunshine!

Love, Lindalou and Michael

May 1st  from 9am to noon or so…
We play the opening day of the Calistoga Farmer’s Market! We’re going to stick around for awhile after the market and play all the Mexican songs we know for Calistoga’s Tamale Festival. After that we’ll be heading up to Beehaven where our friends Alan and Barbara are putting on a music party to celebrate their 1st wedding anniversary and we’ll be celebrating our 30th which was on April 27th…our real anniversary was on the 28th though. We celebrate the first time we kissed 37 years ago back in 1973! Yikes…time sure flies!

We’ll be playing music at Beehaven all weekend. We haven’t invited everyone we know since it’s not at our home… but if you read this and are interested, feel free to call us at 539-2698 if you’d like to join us!

It’s April already and it’s pouring sideways here at our house today. Yesterday I enjoyed working in the garden in the sunshine, but the day before we had almost blizzard conditions, by Northern California standards, turning the forest around our house completely white. The beautiful snow stuck around for several hours before it started raining again and melted it all quickly.

So far this year, we’ve mostly been playing our music in retirement homes and care facilities. We used to volunteer to do that from time to time, but now they actually call and offer to hire us. Some of them have us come on a regular basis. It’s so rewarding to see how the music effects people who may not even be able to do much anymore but sit there in their wheelchairs. Some of them can’t speak or communicate but the music perks them right up and really seems to get through to them. It makes folks smile and sometimes they sort of dance in their chairs. Feels good!

We do have a couple of public gigs coming up this month where we hope to see some of your familiar faces!

April 17th  2:00 to 3:30pm  At Pioneer Park in Calistoga,
we’ll be playing with the 3 D’s (no glasses required) Dan Brunetti, David Chapman and Duncan Draper.
This is for a part of  Calistoga’s Community week long Earth Day Celebration.

April 24th 7:30 to 10pm  At Calistoga’s Napa County Fairgrounds,
Also with the 3 D’s. This will be our 2nd annual Mountain Volunteer Fire Department fund raiser dinner.
We’re honored they’ve asked us to be their regular Fire House Band! This fund raiser is a great Italian Dinner and auction. It’s had a bigger turn out every year, so they’ve moved it to a larger venue in the Tubbs building. We don’t generally play much Italian music…but we learned a few songs for the occasion last year, which we’re dusting off again. Last year we had a great response and had folks dancing after dinner. If you’d like more information, or if you’d like to buy tickets for this worthy cause, please call Jan at 707-942-5002.

We hope 2010 has been going well for you all so far. We’re doing our best here to keep making music while figuring out how to pay the bills! If you or anyone you know needs music for a wedding, party, memorial service, or any kind of event please pass on our info. We’re also putting the word out that we’re available for elder care, helping folks with all kinds of things they just can’t do on their own anymore. We don’t have professional training for this but have had plenty of hands on experience with our own loved ones and old friends. Please keep us in mind if there’s a need for this kind of help. Thanks!

Many of you have seen this, but I’m posting the link again to the video of my dear old Dad, who we really miss.  We video taped him singing just one week before he died last November. He would love to know people are enjoying this gift he left us!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEy8n8We5HY
If you didn’t get a chance to watch this before, it’s only about 3 minutes long and you can see my Dad’s sweet smile. Enjoy!

Have a wonderful Spring!
Love, Lindalou and Michael

Greetings all,
Is it getting too late to wish you all a Happy New Year?… 2009 was a bit rough for much of the world and we have hopes that 2010 will be better for all of us…It’s gotten off to a rough start for many though. Our hearts go out to the people of Haiti who seriously need a break from all the heartache.

We wanted to thank everyone who responded to our last music newsletter. We had an overwhelming response to the news of my Dad’s passing and an especially positive response to the video we took of him singing one week before he died. When my sister Jeanette posted it on youtube we had no idea how many people would be touched by it.  The countless cards and emails with heartfelt condolences have been very comforting. We’ve tried to respond to many of them individually, but haven’t managed to keep up with them all. If you haven’t heard back from us please know we appreciate your kind words! If you didn’t get a chance to click the link before and wonder what I’m talking about, here it is again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEy8n8We5HY

We’ve been playing music as much as we can between the more mundane jobs:-) We’ve played at several wonderful parties, and we’re also playing for appreciative elderly folks in assisted living/ care facilities. We’re lining up some regular gigs like this and it’s rewarding to make ’em smile, tap their toes and many of them love to sing along. We’re excited about the next one we’ll be playing in the auditorium at the Redwoods Retirement home in Mill Valley. This is a private concert for the residents and their families, but it’s a small auditorium where Pete Seeger played recently.  Joan Baez played a private concert there for the residents this month. So we’re honored to be asked to play there on the same stage as some of our musical heros! A hard act to follow… but we’ve been practicing up a lot of old familiar folk songs and we get a good response to the occasional original songs we play for them as well.

We don’t have any public gigs lined up right now, except a series of Farmer’s Markets beginning in May, but we wanted to send you all greetings anyway. If you or anyone you know might be looking for music for any event, we’re available for weddings, parties, house concerts, even memorial services…which we’ve been playing for loved ones as well as complete strangers more and more often it seems.

We hope all of you are well and enjoying the new year so far.
We love hearing from any of you who might actually read this! Thanks again for all your kind messages last month.
Wishing you all the best in 2010!
Peace and Love,
Lindalou and Michael

Dear Friends and Music Lovers,

Tomorrow night, December 3rd,  between 7 and 9pm.
We’ll be playing some songs at Ace in the Hole Pub with Festival of Friends, a great group of musician friends of ours from Sonoma County. Ace in the Hole Pub will be closing at the end of December. If you’ve never been there, now is the time to come enjoy the place while you still have the chance!

On December 16th,  from 6 to 9pm
The Calistoga Inn will have their 19th annual Pauper’s Feast.
We’ll be playing in the dining room with our friends, Dan Brunetti and David Chapman. We’ll play some holiday music interspersed with our regular repertoire. Hope to see you there!

Some of you have already seen this, but we just want to share it with everyone:

On Sunday Nov. 22nd, my dear 84 year old Dad, Ken Harris, passed away peacefully at home with his loving family after a short battle with lung cancer. He had a long wonderful music filled life. He maintained a great attitude and one of his last requests was for us to learn a couple of songs for him. One was a beautiful old song written in 1909 called “A Perfect Day.” He wanted us to sing it at his memorial service, which we did in Mill Valley last Sunday. He also wanted us to learn this song George Burns did called “Old Bones.” He asked Michael to back him up on it so he could sing it. I video taped him singing it exactly one week before he died. He could barely sing anymore but was determined to do it and wanted us to share it.

We have a large close family and we’re all missing our Dad and have shed many tears, but we’re at peace with his passing. We’re all grateful that he was able go gracefully, without too much suffering, and gave each of us a chance to say goodbye.

This video is such a treasure for us to have. My sister Jeanette has posted it on youtube and I thought you might enjoy it too.

Let’s all treasure our loved ones while we have them!
Love, Lindalou and Michael

Dear friends,
We’re playing tomorrow morning at the Windsor Farmer’s Market from 10am to 1pm. We hope to see some familiar faces there!

Change of plans….On October 25th    2:00 to 5:00
Unfortunately our Adobe Pumpkin Farm gig in Petaluma has just been canceled. They said due to the rain they’ve been too muddy to open to the public for several days the past 2 weeks. As a result they just can’t afford to hire a band this coming weekend. They said they hope to have us back next year.

On October 31st       9:00am to noon
The last Calistoga Farmer’s Market of the year
We’re practicing up some of our scariest songs for this Halloween morning gig…

We just got back from a quick but amazing 2 week trip, mostly in Denmark, visiting family. We hadn’t seen most of them in 12 years since we were last there with our kids in 1997. Since then kids have grown up, new babies have been born and some of the older relatives have passed on. Life goes on for the rest of us though and we were happy to reconnect and meet the newer members of the Ryge family. We had a great time! We especially enjoyed playing a little music with Michael’s cousins.

We took a quick trip to Germany where we finally met our wonderful new friends Sylvia and Daniel, who we had only communicated with through email before we went to stay with them. We had discovered each other’s music on Jamendo, a great music sharing site our son Leif had encouraged us to post our music on. He said if we give our songs away we’ll eventually get gigs in far away places. Well it worked and we were invited by Sylvia and Daniel to come play in Germany and Belgium. They set up 3 concerts for us. We played in Butgenbach, Belgium on Friday October 2nd opening for Sylvia and Daniel’s great band Syl’n’Dan. Had a good turnout and a great time. We even got to play a little with their band when they called us back up for their encore.  They have a virtuoso 6 string electric bass player, Werner, and an amazing drummer, Andreas, whose talents and drum kit include tablas, congas, cajon, and bongos, as well as western trap drums.
On Saturday we played in a little town called Nideggen in Germany and had a blast. We were so surprised and delighted to meet a sweet couple, Anja and Thomas who traveled 6 hours, all the way from Berlin just to hear us play! We were amazed and honored.

On Sunday we played at a house concert near Simmerath. Again we had an enthusiastic audience and really enjoyed playing for them. We met so many nice people and they encouraged us to come back soon and play again. We’d love to! What a wonderful experience.

We hope you’re all well and enjoying life too!

Love, Lindalou and Michael

We had a wonderful time at the Strawberry Music Festival. Four days of camping with friends, sharing meals, dancing, riding bikes, and best of all jamming and singing harmonies all night with old and new friends and the most amazing musicians. We’d love to stay there at least another week or more… but we’ve got a full plate at home before we leave the country in less than 2 weeks! Here’s where we’re playing next:

Tonight, Thursday, September 10th 6:00pm to 8:00pm
Pioneer Park on Cedar Street in Calistoga
The Calistoga Chamber of Commerce has been putting on free concerts for the community every Thursday evening. They’ve asked us to play with our band. Most folks bring a picnic dinner, maybe a bottle of wine and something to sit on. There’s also barbeque, beer and wine for sale there. We’ll be playing with the 3 D’s.

Saturday, September 12th 1:30pm to 3:30pm
Calistoga’s annual Relay for Life
At the Calistoga High School track on Lake Street
With the 3 D’s.

Sunday, September 13th
A private lunch for a Soroptimist Fundraiser in Calistoga

Saturday September 19th 9:00am to noon
Calistoga Farmer’s Market on Washington Street
with the 3 D’s again.

We’ve had to cancel a couple of farmers markets due to a sudden change of plans. We’re very excited to be leaving for a quick trip to visit family in Denmark on September 21st! We’ve also been invited to play some concerts in Germany and Belgium the first weekend of October! Thanks to our sons convincing us to give our music away online… we were delighted to be asked awhile back if we could come play in Germany, where, apparently people are enjoying our CD. You can read some reviews we’ve gotten from far away places here: http://tinyurl.com/mokz6p
We’ve gotten some good laughs from some of the computer translations!

When we were invited to come play in Germany we told them we couldn’t afford to get over there this year. Out of the blue Michael’s brothers and their wives have very generously offered to treat us to a trip to Denmark! They wanted all of us to be over there together and reunite with our Danish relatives who we haven’t seen since 1997.

Since Denmark is so close to Germany, we contacted the folks who had invited us to come play there.We’ve made friends with Daniel and Sylvia on line through our shared love of music and look forward to meeting them in person soon. They are also musicians who happen to play some of the same instruments we play. Check out their beautiful music here: http://www.syl-n-dan.de/index.php?id=43

They’re in the process of arranging 2 or 3 concerts for us to play in Belgium and Germany on October  2nd,  3rd and 4th. Needless to say we’re very excited about this! So if any of you happen to be in Belgium or Germany, please let us know and we’ll send you the details… we’d love to see you there.

We hope you’re all well and having a bountiful fall~
Love,
Lindalou and Michael

Dear friends and music lovers,
August is passing quickly and we’re keeping busy.

Saturday August 29th  9:00am to noon
We’ll be playing the Calistoga Farmer’s Market
with our fabulous band, The 3 D’s, Dan Brunetti, David Chapman and Duncan Draper.

September and October bring some surprising and exciting plans.  We’ll start September off camping at the Strawberry Music Festival. This is one of our favorite places to be every Labor Day weekend (and Memorial Day too when we can do both.) That’s no surprise, but when we return we’ve got a full plate for the weeks ahead!

Hi Folks,
Thanks and welcome to all the new people who have recently signed our mailing list!
In August we’re looking forward to a few public gigs and some private events too. We’ve been playing a lot lately and really appreciate when one gig leads to another. Thanks to everyone who has been so supportive of our music!
Here’s where we’ll be next:

Tonight, August 1st from 6:00 to 10:00pm
St. Helena Soroptimist Summerfest ~ An evening of Live Music, Dancing, Wine & Food under the stars!  Vineland Station Event Garden – Between Go Fish Restaurant & Tesoro Flower Shop.  Entrance to event at 633 Main Street, St. Helena, CA.
We’ll play with our band from 6pm to 8, opening for a rock band called “Four Shotz”  who will play from 8 to 10pm.
Tickets: $100.00 Benefiting St. Helena Soroptimist Local Charities for Women & Girls.  Contact: mffeet@aol.com or 707-322-8358
Bring your low concert chairs.

Saturday August 8th Playing private blackberry picking party in Sebastopol!

August 16th 10am to 1pm
Windsor Farmer’s Market
Downtown Windsor on the Town Green
We’ll play as a duo. Mmm…

August 22nd
We’ll be attending Cur-ville Dog Days Festival
We’re not scheduled to play this year but we’ll be jamming with friends in the evening and hope to be on the schedule next year.
There’s a great lineup of some of our favorite musicians. We’d encourage you to check out the website http://cur-ville.com/index.html and consider going!

August 29th 9am to noon
Calistoga Farmer’s Market
On Washington Street
with the 3 D’s
Dan Brunetti, David Chapman and Duncan Draper

After that we’re off to the Strawberry Music Festival to camp out and jam with good friends and family for 4 days! Yay!

Hope all of you are enjoying your summer~
Be well,
Lindalou and Michael