Spring Greetings Friends, Family and Music Lovers!
We’ve had a bit of a break from playing music lately, not by choice, but due to a nasty pinched nerve in Michael’s shoulder which is aggravated more when he plays the guitar.Unfortunately, we have had to pass on some opportunities to play. He’s on the mend though and a little better each day!

We’re honored to have been asked to back up our dear friend and incredible songwriter Christopher Smith next Friday night, April 27th in Lafayette and again on June 1st in Larkspur. Hopefully Michael will be all better by then… but we’ll at least be able to sing with Christopher which we’re really looking forward to!

Check out Lafayette Concerts for more info about this coming Friday night.

We’re also hoping to keep all the Farmer’s Market gigs we have coming up and Calistoga’s
Art In The Park on June 23rd.

Also, we’re really excited about the wonderful opportunity to open for another dear friend, Stevie Coyle on June 30th in Pleasant Hill.

We’ll keep you posted about these dates as they get closer.

Best wishes, Peace and Love to all,
Lindalou and Michael

P.S. Here’s the info about Christopher’s Smith’s upcoming CD release party where we hope to see some of your smiling faces!

CHRISTOPHER SMITH

ANNOUNCES THE RELEASE OF

GRAVEDIGGER’S BOY

Friday, June 1st 2007
At the Historic
Larkspur Cafe Theater
500 Magnolia Avenue, Larkspur, CA

Doors open at 6:30, show starts at 8 p.m.
$20 admission, includes a CD

Dear Friends and Family~

At long last, I have completed my latest musical project, Gravedigger’s Boy, and am happy to invite you to our special CD release party. The songs on this CD have a rollicking string band sound: Lots of fiddle, guitar, mandolin, and yes, even banjo! These tunes were influenced by traditional American music, as well as such modern “roots” songwriters as Steve Earle and Gillian Welch. Train songs! Murder ballads! Gothic waltzes and assorted novelties! I think you will enjoy this particular blend of acoustic Americana. You can toddle on over to the website if you’d like to hear what a few of these tunes sound like. www.christophersmithmusic.com

In honor of the occasion, we are working on assembling a full band of stellar musicians and special guests. Warning! Both accordion and banjo will be played on the premises! Those with severe allergies may wish to wear protection!

If you were going to come to just one of my shows this year, this would be the one to come to. The theatre holds only 125 people, so it will be a big celebration in an intimate space. We are intent on selling this one out, so we hope you will buy your tickets early before we start roping in the general public.

There are two ways to order tickets in advance –
Write a check to the Larkspur Café Theatre for the number of tickets you want ($20 per ticket, includes CD) and send to:
Christopher Smith
Small Time Productions
PO Box 2712
San Anselmo, CA 94979

We will mail you your tickets.

Go to www.larkspurcafetheater.com and go to the calendar page. Click on “Click here to buy tickets online”. This will take you to a list of shows. Find and click on Christopher’s gig, which will take you to the ticket order form.

For more information, see the attached flyer and check out the website at www.christophersmithmuic.com

Please spread the word and forward this note to your friends.

We hope to see you all on June 1st!

Best,

Christopher and Sabrina

Seasons Greetings!
It’s been a bit of a rough year for many of us around the world, with far too many tragic losses, but I do want to say how grateful we are for so many things, especially our loving family and friends. This is what keeps us going and gives us reason to keep singing!

We have some fun gigs coming up. Calistoga is pretty festive this time of year. We’ve lived here for about 25 years now… Yikes! Are we that old already?! Anyway, we’re still getting to know our historic little town and especially now since I’ve recently been hired by the Calistoga Chamber Of Commerce to work in their new visitor center. They were actually contacting me to ask us to play music for their event… and I mentioned I needed a new job. The next day they hired me. Here I am pushing 50 and this is my first desk job!… It’s actually quite interesting as I’m not only getting to know our town better, but learning new computer skills… while meeting new people from all over the world… while helping to decorate their new digs, in between answering phones, giving directions, and running errands. It’s a busy little town. We live in the hills and have sort of avoided coming into town so much since our kids finished going to school here, so this is a radical change for me! I’m enjoying it so far.

We’ve been asked to be wandering minstrels playing in the stores and restaurants and up and down the main street, on Saturday December 9th and 16th from 4:00 until 6:00 (or as long as we feel like playing…) You can find us somewhere on Lincoln Avenue downtown Calistoga. (Weather permitting.)
Our friend Dan Brunetti will accompany us. We’ve also possibly got a New Years Eve gig in St. Helena which we’ll send an update on when we have more info about it.

Wishing you all well, happy holidays and hope for peace.
Lindalou and Michael

Here’s Calistoga’s flyer for December events. This was made by local Calistogan Christy Fitzpatrick who has recently started a business here called Exposures of Calistoga. You can check it out at www.ExposuresCalistoga.com
I told the Chamber of Commerce I could send this out with my music newsletter. Hope to see some of you in town!

Happy Fall to you all, friends and music lovers!
Thanks and welcome to the new folks who have recently signed our mailing list. Our radio show and house concert a couple of weeks ago both went well. We’ve had some nice feedback from a few folks who tuned in, and some who just happened to turn on the radio in time to hear us, not knowing we’d be on. Live radio can be a bit nerve wracking… but we managed to pull off the interview and some songs without too many major embarrassing mistakes! Thanks to Steve DeLap, Robin Pressman and KRCB for inviting us to be on “Our Roots are Showing,” a show we’ve enjoyed listening to for years. Thanks to Randy Villa, Michelle and Tim Konrad of Santa Rosa House Concerts, and to all of you who support independent musicians!

We’ve got a couple of music dates coming up if the weather permits.
This coming weekend we’ll be back at the Pumpkin Farm…This is the 2nd year they’ve asked us to play and they say it could be an annual October gig for us.

Sunday Oct. 22 from 2:00 to 5:00
Adobe Pumpkin Farm
2478 E Washington Street
Petaluma, CA 94954-3903

Here’s a Google map

We’ll be playing with our friends, Terry Ann Gillette on fiddle and mandolin, Dan Brunetti on lead guitar (and a little banjo…) and David Chapman on drums. We’ll be on the lawn in the picnic area where they have tables and shady places to sit and eat, and room to dance. They have food and drink for sale, and lots of activities for kids throughout the farm.

The following weekend we’ll be playing at the
Calistoga Farmers Market
Oct. 28th from 9:00am to 12:30pm
This is the last market this year. Let’s hope the weather holds up!

Later that same day we’ll be heading back down to Petaluma to play again at the
Adobe Pumpkin Farm
from 2:30 to 5:30

We hope to see some of you there!

Love, Lindalou and Michael

Dear friends,
We sure hope all is well with you and yours.
Due to some major life changes in our family, we’ve recently made some changes in our plans. Normally we spend Labor Day weekend at the Strawberry Music Festival, which has been our tradition for over 10 years now, but this year we decided to sell our tickets to some friends. We really felt the need to have some time at home with our family.

Back in July I sent out some dates for gigs we had lined up.Those dates have been changed.We’re still playing at The Santa Rosa House Concert but not on the 16th. Thanks to Randy Villa for being so accommodating and understanding. He had already sold out the show and was afraid we’d lose half our audience if we changed it. Fortunately that didn’t happen. There were only a few people who couldn’t make it on the new date. Thanks so much to all of those folks for being so flexible and supportive! There are still a few seats left if anyone else would like to come.

Santa Rosa House Concert
September 23rd– doors open at 5:30, potluck dinner at 6:00, music starts at 7:00.
Admission is $15.00. Reservations required.
Call Randy at 707-538-1215 for details or email him at houseconcerts@monitor.net

We’ve also got a radio interview that same day in Santa Rosa. We’ll be playing a few songs live on KRCB 91.1 at 2:00pm. For those of you far away, if you want to listen, it will stream live on the web at KRCB.org

We had been scheduled to play at the Calistoga Farmer’s Market on Sept.9th but that has also been changed. Dan Brunetti and David Chapman will join us on guitar,vocals and drums and we’re hoping Terry Ann Gillette will be available that day to accompany us with her wonderful fiddle. She’s in demand by several bands these days!

Calistoga Farmers Market
Sept. 30th from 9:00am to 12:30.
and again October 28th (same time.)
Call Karen at 707-942-8892 for details.

We hope to see some of you out enjoying yourselves! Be safe and always remember to let your family and friends know you love them while you have them around.
Peace,
Lindalou and Michael

We hope you’re all enjoying the summer. We’ve been playing music with a lot of good friends and enjoying several music festivals and great parties the past few weeks. Between work and kids and all this playing, we’ve been burning the candle at both ends… having way too much fun and way too little sleep!

I’m sending this out to our whole list just to say hello to you all near and far, and to welcome the new folks on our mailing list. I know many of you are too far away to come hear us play but we like to stay in touch anyway. Please let me know if you’d rather not receive these updates. On the other hand… if you enjoy hearing what we’re up to, it’s always nice to hear back from you too!

This coming Saturday July 15th at 9:15 am until noon we’ll be playing at the Calistoga Farmers Market.
Hope to see some of your smiling faces there! We’ll be accompanied by Dan Brunetti and hopefully Terry Ann Gillette and David Chapman.

We don’t have much else lined up right now except off in the distance… a couple more farmers markets in Calistoga– one on Sept. 9th and the next not until Oct. 28th… but the one big thing we have coming up is a gig we’ve been offered at Carnegie Hall! No wait… that’s Randy Villa’s Santa Rosa House Concert… which is kind of a big deal to us! It’s a great venue and we’ve seen, heard and met many of our favorite musicians on Randy’s stage over the past several years. We’re really honored to be offered our own concert there. It’s not until Sept. 16th, but Randy tells us it’s almost sold out already. He only has 30 seats and every show’s been sold out for all the years he’s been doing this. If you’re interested contact Randy at houseconcerts@monitor.net or 707-538-1215

In the meantime, we hope you’re all well and enjoying life. Drop us a note if you get the notion, we’d love to hear from you!
Peace, Lindalou and Michael

Hi folks,
Hope you’re all well and soaking up the spring after what seemed like an endless winter. Sure dried out fast here once the rains finally stopped. Here in Calistoga it feels a bit like summer came on before spring had much of a chance! We’re still busy cleaning up after all the storms that changed part of our landscape (forever!)

We’re packing up to head off to the Spring Strawberry Festival, but before that we’ve been asked to sing a few songs at the Calistoga Education Foundation auction. Our youngest son, Ian is about to graduate! This is our last year with a kid in the school here so we decided to change the other (music) plans we’d made and participate! They have kind of a cowboy theme this year so we’ve been practicing up some of the songs we’ve played around the campfire at the horse camp gigs we sometimes play.

The auction is tomorrow Saturday May 20th at the Napa County Fairgrounds.
1435 North Oak Street in Calistoga.
The silent auction is from 4 to 6 pm
Live auction from 6:30 to 9:30
We’ll be coming up during the live auction with a song here and there between all the other shenanigans. After the auction our friend Mick Loveland’s great band “The Echoes” will get everyone dancing. For more info or tickets call 707-942-4703. All proceeds benefit the kids in the Calistoga Schools.

After we return from The Strawberry Music Fest we’ll be heading off to The Wild Iris Folk Festival in Boonville the following weekend.
This is the last Wild Iris fest,which is really sad. It’s been a really wonderful festival that we’ve enjoyed since 1997. Thanks to the folks at KZYX in Philo for keeping it going as long as they did!

We’ll be playing at the Calistoga Farmers Market on June 10th from 9am until noon
Hope to see some of you there!
Happy Spring to you all near and far.
Love,
Lindalou and Michael

Hi Folks,
Just want to let you all know about our latest musical adventures.We played last month at the Calistoga Bookstore for a going away/closing party for the owners Reece and Jeannie Baswell. This was supposed to be private, but word soon got out, and quite a crowd showed up to bid them farewell. We were playing with Dan Brunetti and Terry Ann Gillette,and eventually had folks dancing. Great party for a sad occasion.

Former Paul McCartney impersonator Robert Bataille was there and heard us play. He asked us to play with him at Ana’s Cantina in St. Helena. He set up a series of 6 Wednesday night gigs and has kind of embarrassed us with the posters he made and his press release…. but hey, a gig is a gig… and we do love to play! Didn’t want to turn down an opportunity to play with new people, and this will be fun playing with bass and drums!

We’ll be playing some of our own songs as well as a lot of Beatle songs and other old favorites with Robert B playing bass and guitar. He will also do his own sets and some originals and covers of a lot of oldies, including Elvis,who he also likes to impersonate……..(we told him we can’t help out much there, but our pal Dan Brunetti plays great lead guitar!) David Chapman will play drums. We’ll be playing several short sets between us, and on some of the dates local guest musicians Tim Pinney and another singer songwriter Dawn Rose will perform with her trio.

The series starts on March15th from 8:00 to 11:00
and will be ongoing on Wednesday nights through April 19th
at Ana’s Cantina 1205 Main Street St. Helena
For more info call Robert 707 965-3480

We hope to see some of you there!

Hope you’re all well and enjoying this cold weather. It’s been snowing sideways at our house (again!) and looking like the Sierra. Quite a sight! Here’s a link to some pictures we took recently if you’d like to see how beautiful it’s been here.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ryge/sets/72057594080080055/
Enjoy!
Love, Lindalou and Michael

Happy New Year!
Hope all of you are safe and dry. We are, but we won’t be going to town any time soon since part of our road has become a most beautiful raging river. Our son Ian barely made it home on the 30th before the landscape changed radically and part of our road just disappeared under mud and boulders and logs. Fortunately it was late at night and no one else was on the road, but Ian said it was pretty terrifying driving up the Mtn. that night. From his description it sounds like the slide may have just been starting as he drove home.
The next day we went down to check it out and Ian took some great pictures!
In the meantime we’ve been cozy at home eating well and playing music. Michael has been baking bread and making soup and enjoying some time off! Several trees have fallen around our house but so far we’ve been safe!

This is unusual for us to send out another newsletter so soon after the last two, but we’ve been offered another gig on short notice. If our road is found by then… we’ll be opening for our friend and wonderful musician/songwriter
Lisa Sangita Moskow, in San Rafael on Saturday January 7th, at 7:45 pm. (details below)
Hope to see some of you there if this wild weather calms down by then!

Here is a copy of the mailing Lisa Sangita sent out with all the info.

You are invited to the Just Do it Music Fest taking place
in the cottage behind my house. It will be an opportunity
to see a wide (and wild) assortment of really creative artists
in an intimate environment. This is a last-minute plan (due
to my cottage not being rented until Jan. 15th). I will keep
you updated as dates with other artists are arranged. I hope
to have a free jamming night—if you wish to participate in that
you can let me know your preferred dates(s).

Jan. 7th (Sat.) 7:45 pm
Lindalou and Michael Ryge are folk musicians who do
originals and tasteful selections from other musicians.
The love they have for each other and for their Music is
palpable. Words that come to mind: harmonious
synchronicity, union with the muse—well you get the idea.
They also play a bunch of instruments. Lovely.
They will open for me (Lisa Sangita). I will do original
songs: celebrations of sacred places and all kinds of
dieties from a number of cultures. I accompany myself
on electric sarod.

Directions: 2126 5th Ave. San Rafael CA 94901
From 580 (coming from East Bay and Richmond
Bridge) or from S.F. going north on 101. Take the
Central San Rafael exit. Go West (left) on 5th St.
from the exit street. The house is a little over a mile up
5th between K St. and California. The house in on
the right-hand side of the street, covered with a jungle
of foliage. Go down the driveway through the wooden
gate to the cottage in back. Please don’t talk loudly or
draw attention to yourselves—my neighbors are okay
and never complain about moderate-level music, but
they may feel disrespected by noise on the street and
may even feel some irritation by more cars parked on
the street than usual. You may want to bring your
own backjack just in case—I have a few cushions
and a number of chairs.

We ask for a $10 (or more) donation. You’re welcome to bring
drinks or snacks for post-concert schmoozing.
Music will not go past 10pm, but you are welcome to
hang out post-concert.

Contact number (Lisa Sangita) (415) 457-4754

Hi folks,
We normally only send out an email to all you music lovers once a month or so (if that! ) But the last one got us an offer to play in Fairfax. Our friend Gordy who works for KPIG -AM 1510 asked us to open a song writers circle at a “KPIG in Fairfax” event. We’ll have the honor of opening for our good friend
Christopher Smith as well as Joe New and Blackie Farrell.

We’ll be playing our homemade songs (as a duo) on Saturday, December 17, from around 8:00 until 8:45pm
at Cafe Amsterdam, 23 Broadway, Fairfax, CA.

We’ve also been asked back again to the Presbyterian Church in Calistoga to play a few songs the next day
Dec. 18th. at 10:30am

We had a great time playing in San Rafael last Sunday even though we were on the busiest street we’ve ever played on… our PA system helped us to be heard over the traffic! Quite a few of you folks on our mailing list showed up and it was great to see your smiling faces. Thanks to those who supported our friend Carolena’s new store “Gypsy Deva.” Also thanks to those who bought our CD and welcome to the new folks who signed our mailing list!

These emails go out to friends (and many folks who’ve signed our list) from all over the country and to loved ones in Denmark and England. We know it’s very unlikely that we’d ever see many of you at our local gigs but we just want to keep in touch and hope to get a chance to play closer to all of you someday! We wish you all the best.

Peace and Happy Holidays!
With Love,
Lindalou and Michael

Seasons Greetings!
We hope you all enjoyed Thanksgiving and that you’re all well. It’s December already… and time sure is flying by.

Our dear friend Carolena Kling has just opened a beautiful little store in San Rafael, and she’s asked us to play at her opening celebration this coming Sunday. Her store is called “Gypsy Deva.” It’s an eclectic, bohemian store full of international clothing, jewelery, lamps etc. A sort of global market place for seekers and free spirits. Located in San Rafael at 1410 2nd Street between D and E St. 415-457-4492 for more info. Parking lot on 2nd near E.

We’ll be there Sunday December 4th from 1:00 to 5:00 playing off and on throughout the day with our friends Dan Brunetti and and Terry Ann Gillette backing us up with guitar and fiddle and sweet harmonies.

Hope to see some of your smiling faces there!

Happy Harmonious Holidays to you all and may there one day be Peace for all beings!
With Love and Hope,
Lindalou and Michael