We’re excited to have been asked to provide some afternoon music for this family friendly gathering, and honored to be the opening act for some of our musical heroes! We’ve loved seeing/hearing Mamuse and the Fula Brothers perform at festivals. They’ve joined up as FulaMuse and they’ll get us all dancing!

We’ll be playing outside at 4pm before their concert in the main hall at 7pm. We hope to have our favorite bass player, great harmony singer and dear friend Ted Dutcher joining us!

This will be the first time since last year that we’ve played for an event that is open to the general public and we’re really looking forward to it!

For more information please check out the website: https://seb.org/the-gathering/


Meanwhile, we’ve been keeping really busy with regular elder care home gigs, a few weddings, parties and memorial services. Also working hard on trying to be as prepared as we can for another fire season.

At the end of February, we got snowed in with almost a foot of snow for the first time here! We lost many of our beloved trees that had been partially burned but had somehow survived the Glass fire in 2020. They couldn’t handle the weight of the snow though, so we’re still trying to clean up the broken and fallen trees on all sides. We’re so grateful to still be able to live here though! This Spring has been amazing with more abundant flowers blooming here than usual.

We’re trying to get back in the studio to finish recording the demos we were working on last fall. We’re hoping to have some new recordings to share soon.

Wishing everyone all the best!

With Love, Lindalou & Michael

Thanks to our dear friend Robin Latham, on November 20th we’re looking forward to providing background instrumental music for this great fundraiser where we’ll be playing at the VIP meet and greet with Isabel Allende and Michael Krasny and then we get to stay and enjoy their conversation at the main event later!

We haven’t posted anything on our website in quite some time but we’re still playing care facilities several times a week. We’ve also recently, sadly, played a couple of memorial services and then a joyful wedding as well.

We’ve also been really happy to be doing a bit of recording again with Darryl Webb who was our recording engineer at the Banquet Studios way back in 2003. Now he has his own really nice little studio where we’ve been enjoying working with him when we’re able to find time!

Life is never dull and we’re doing our best to stay healthy and happy in these weird uncertain times! We sure hope you are too!

In harmony,

Lindalou and Michael

Last month we got to spend 5 days at the last Kate Wolf Festival which was such a blast! We were on the Revival tent crew again for what may be the last time after many years. We were happy to see so many friends again and share meals and music and dips in the creek which was surprisingly clean and flowing. There was way more music scheduled than we could possibly fit into our days, but we especially enjoyed Tim O’Brien a couple times. Also AJ Lee and Blue Summit are some of our new favorites! We got to see Hot Tuna Acoustic, Don Henry with Tom Paxton, John Craigie, Keith Greeninger with Paul Kamm and Eleanore MacDonald and Nina Gerber. Chris Webster, Laurie Lewis, Ruth Moody and Lucy Kaplansky as well as many other inspiring musicians and great performances.

Next week we’re looking forward to the Redwood Ramble where we’ll also be on a crew so get to be there camping and jamming with friends from Wednesday until Monday.

We’re continuing to play at retirement homes regularly and have played for 5 groups since we got home from Kate fest and have 3 more lined up before the Ramble next week. Life is good and we’re just hoping to continue avoiding Covid while out playing and enjoying so much music this summer.

Be well all,

Lindalou and Michael

On June 18th 2022 we’re looking forward to playing with our friends at Moonlight Brewing company. We donated 2 hours of live music as an auction item for the Peace & Justice Center’s online auction a few months ago. Our friend and peace activist Linda Sartor bought it and decided to use it for another fund raiser for the Peace & Justice Center! How great that our donation can benefit them twice! Our friends Robin and Brian of Moonlight Brewing Company offered to host the event. Yay! lindalou-michael-and-friends-benefit-concert-4pjc.eventbrite.com

We’ll be playing with dear friends Ted Dutcher on bass and vocals and Susan Ballinger on fiddle and vocals. Ted’s partner Ellen Silver will sing a few with us and Susan’s partner Victor Ruesga will also join us for a few songs. We hope to see a lot of our friends at this event and we encourage folks to consider donating even if you can’t attend.

Our pals in the great band Bohemian Highway will be playing from 3:00 to 5pm and we’ll play from 6:00 til 8:30pm (or until somebody calls the cops…) There will be great beer of course, yummy organic Comet Corn and a food truck.

We’ve been back to work, playing regularly at multiple care facilities while still trying to be careful to avoid Covid…which too many of our friends and loved ones have tested positive for lately, even after being fully vaccinated. Such strange, uncertain times, what with the ongoing virus, dreadful war and senseless mass murders. The unpredictable day to day worries can make it hard to even function. Music keeps us going though. We’re keeping really busy, between music and taking care of our place, still cleaning up burnt trees after the 2020 Glass fire and preparing for another scary fire season. It was in the 90’s yesterday, hot and windy for several days and today is really cold and windy here. Crazy climate change…it actually snowed a bit and hailed on my 65th birthday last week which was bizarre. I’ve never even seen it rain on my birthday before!

We’ve been pretty involved with our Diamond Mountain Firesafe Council and have been connecting with our neighboring Upper Mark West FSC as well as this group: Taking Action for Living Systems. Lots of zoom meetings. There will be a Town Hall meeting at Pepperwood Preserve on June 9th to hopefully get more community involvement around the idea of cross county landscape scale fire preparedness. Michael has been asked to speak on behalf of our fire safe council along with our friend Lynn Garric from the UMW FSC. Supervisors from both Napa and Sonoma Counties will also be speaking and then there will be a presentation from Vibrant Planet. People can register to attend in person through this link: https://www.livingsystemsalliance.org/landowner

Or you can watch the live stream at 5:30 on June 9th here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvAM7U3e-Ew

We hope to see a bunch of our (hopefully masked!) friends and their friends at both Moonlight Brewing and possibly at Pepperwood soon!

Stay well everyone. Keep on singing and dancing, like 90 year old Edna, who was inspired to get up and dance when we played in a memory care facility the other day!

Much love,

Lindalou and Michael

Our website disappeared back in 2018 and we kind of thought it was gone forever. Our son finally found time and was able to painstakingly recover and restore all the old archives! It was a very old neglected site and needed a lot of updating anyway. It seems to finally be working again and looks like a brand new site now but has all our old history on it which we’re grateful to have preserved. I’ve been checking and replacing broken links etc. and adding some new info.

In the meantime, while our site was down for so long, during the dreadful pandemic…I did finally learn to upload some old videos we had forgotten we even had… and I finally started a youtube channel. It hasn’t gotten much attention, which is not surprising, but I’m glad to have preserved a record of a few of our performances. Our friend Chris Govea took video of a couple of concerts we did and convinced us early in the pandemic to let him post our whole gratitude concert from back in 2016. Since then, (after we were fully vaccinated, and before the Delta variant became a concern…) we were so happy to get to open for our friends “The Musers” at a backyard concert. Chris kindly also recorded the whole thing for us. Eventually we’ll figure out how to edit and post some of those newer songs.

Over the past 4 years, besides being evacuated 3 times when the fires came too close…we’ve continued writing songs together and are still playing regularly, mostly at retirement homes (except during the pandemic, up until we were vaccinated.) We’ve also played too many memorial services in the past few months after losing a few dear friends who sadly left us all too soon.

We’ve really missed being with friends, going to music festivals and have still been reluctant to go to indoor parties with this damn virus and the variants still a threat. We’ve been meeting with a group of dear musician friends on Zoom, visiting and playing our songs for each other, which we’re grateful for, but you really can’t jam on Zoom and we long for the days when we’ll all feel safe singing together in close proximity!

This post could go on and on if I wrote about all the crazy things that have happened over the past few years, but I don’t want to spend that long on this update. I do want to make note of the successful neck surgery Michael had right before the lock downs in Spring 2020. He had such bad pinched nerves it was getting really tough to play the guitar as his right arm had atrophied. We’re so grateful that all went well with that. He had a long time at home to get his strength back and he’s doing so much better now! We had cancelled all our recurring gigs at retirement homes for him to heal for a couple months but then due to Covid they were all cancelled indefinitely anyway until we were able to finally start up again in July 2021.

Back in the fall of 2020, we were evacuated for the 3rd time on Sept 27th, (in the midst of the pandemic!) when the Glass fire came so close that it burned all the way around our house and came within a few feet. We still can’t believe our house was saved, unlike so many of our friends who sadly lost everything. We still have a bit of survivor’s guilt from that. We’ve gotten very involved with our neighborhood fire safe council and are trying to help all of us to be more prepared for future fires.

We lost our water system, pg&e, phone, internet, our fence and storage container, countless trees and we couldn’t live here for a couple of months. Our good friends (who weren’t in the path of the fire,) took really good care of us and our dogs and provided a comfortable place to stay. When we finally got to come home we felt so fortunate to still have our house! There were still smoldering trees and spot fires from burning roots even after 3 inches of rain!

We’ve worked hard cleaning up debris around our place, which is ongoing. Several new songs were inspired by all those changes and the abundant wildflowers coming up everywhere thru the burnt ground last Spring. Someday we’ll get those songs all posted here.

We don’t know who will read this or if it’s just for our own records of events in our lives, but I’m glad to finally have our website and my “blog” back!

No one knows what the future holds with the pandemic and the new Omicron variant but we sure hope we can all be safe and stay healthy. We look forward to the day we can safely make music with our friends in person again. For now, we’re playing as a duo, mostly outside on these sunny winter days, for countless very elderly people, who respond so well to music. It’s really gratifying to see them light up and sing along.

With love and gratitude,

Lindalou (and Michael)

Holiday greetings!
We’ve been ignoring our website again for most of the year! So many things have happened and it’s hard to believe 2018 has almost passed us by already. With heavy hearts I want to post here that we recently lost our very dear friend Duncan Draper who left us all too suddenly after a very brief illness. We were so grateful to know him and his beautiful family for many years. Duncan played with us many times over the years. Sometimes with our little band “Lindalou and Michael and the 3 D’s”, which included Duncan, Danny Brunetti and the late David Chapman who also left us too soon a few years ago. Like David, Duncan is already missed by so many. One more reminder that we should never take life for granted and really need to try and make the most of each day we’re fortunate enough to get!

We are still playing regularly at retirement homes but are very excited to be asked to open again for our dear friend Ira Echo (aka Karl Kummerle!) This Friday December 14th at Monnet’s house in Sebastopol. I have copied his invitation below:

hi friend! I want to invite you to my show this Dec 14th, friday, in beautiful Sebastopol. It’s my first time back in the bay area for an entire year and I’m really grateful to be able to share my new music with you. I’ll be making looped soundscapes and playing new compositions inspired by New Orleans’s contact improv dance scene! It will be an intimate evening where you can relax and bathe amidst sweet string music! love Ira.

Please join me this Friday for the first showing of my solo looping compositions at: 7:00 pm, 7415 Hayden Ave, Sebastopol, 95472.
There will be a $15-20 cover and no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Possible special surprise guest opening act! Hope to see you there!

So, spoiler alert; we just found out we get to be his “surprise” opening act! We will also be dedicating some of our songs to our dear Duncan who we always loved playing with. We’re still reeling from his sudden departure.

We are honored to be asked to open for Ira again as we’ve enjoyed doing a few times over the past several years. He’s asked us to play our original songs doing a 30 to 45 minute set before he plays his solo show. This is short notice and we know it’s a really busy time but we’d love to see you there.

Hope you’re all well and enjoying the holiday season.

With Love,
Lindalou and Michael

Here is more detailed info about the show:

Ripples and Waves Musical Panoply
Featuring Ira Echo!
Fiddler virtuoso Ira Echo will delight us by playing Devotional Tunes to greet the Solstice Light and Improvisational Splendor to bring in the New Year!
7 PM Friday, December 14th Monnet’s house, 7415 Hayden, Sebastopol $20 suggested donation at the door.

Ira Echo aka Karl Kummerle is a violinist, dancer, street performer and music composer based in New Orleans, LA. They began their study of musicality in the loving hands of Sonoma county musicians and songwriters. Ira’s path of performance then took him to New Orleans where they practice, perform and play funny jazz and freely improvised music for dancers. Ira’s music marries jazz, Transylvanian, Appalachian, Scandinavian, classical and folk styles.

Ripples and Waves is Ira’s new collection of compositions written with the movement of improvisational dancers in mind. The pieces can be performed solo on violin, voice & piano, or with accompanying musicians. Their structure embodies the natural dynamic and energetic flow of a group of dancers meeting one another in creative spontaneous physical dialogue. This work is inspired by Contact Improvisational dance culture and the compatibility improvisational music and dance share. With Contact Improvisation, dancers work to cultivate alertness in an energetic state of physical disorientation, trusting their physical survival instincts. Ripples and Waves is Ira’s attempt to cultivate alertness in a state of musical disorientation. iraecho.com

Greetings!
We’re playing the Calistoga Farmer’s Market again tomorrow!
July 28th – 9am to 1pm as a duo in the shade of the redwood trees.
On Washington Street downtown Calistoga beside the community center.
Hope to see your smiling faces there!

On Saturday, August 11th, we’ll be there again sitting in with some of our pals, great musicians Michael Bryant of the New Skye Band along with Ted Dutcher and Ed Randol, (The Ted ‘n Ed band as Michael has called them.) It’s really fun playing with those guys and we’re honored to be asked by Michael B to join them!

The next day, on Sunday August 12th, we get to play (as a duo) down in Napa at their “Music Crawl.”
We’ll be at the Mustard Seed Clothing Shop from 1pm to 4pm.
1227 1st St, Napa, CA 94559
Thank you to our dear friend and amazing singer/songwriter Michael McNevin for recommending us for this event!
We hope to see some of our friends there!

We’ve been really busy playing retirement homes and private parties. We also really enjoyed a couple of our favorite annual music festivals again this summer. First the Kate Wolf Music festival in Laytonville, camping, dancing and jamming with good friends and family, and then at our newest favorite festival the Redwood Ramble up in Navarro. We’re on a crew at both festivals so we get to arrive early and leave late, only having to work on Wednesday before it starts and Monday when it’s over. Always a joy to have 4 days to just enjoy so much incredible music with our friends!

Hopefully someone is still looking at our old rather outdated website from time to time…I wonder if anyone still enjoys my posts which are fewer and further between all the time, but I still try to post an update when we’ll be playing in public places. We’ve had an aversion to Facebook from the start and realize we’ve missed out on many connections we could have made there over the years…but we’re still (seemingly) among the last holdouts! Some people have given us a hard time about that but we just prefer to continue avoiding FB! We hope who ever might read this won’t hold that against us!

Be well and keep in touch!
Love,
Lindalou and Michael

It’s been a really long time again since we’ve posted anything but we continue playing music regularly, mostly at retirement homes these days.

Tomorrow June 16th, – 9am to 1pm we’ll be playing our favorite farmer’s market once again. We’ve been regulars there for many years and always enjoy playing there and seeing our Calistoga community. The weather will be beautiful! We’re also scheduled to play there July 28th and August 18th. We look forward to seeing some familiar smiling faces there!

We never posted anything here after the trauma of the fires that countless people, including many of our dear friends, are still so devastated by. The whole dreadful experience seemed so surreal at the time. That Sunday night Oct 8th, we received a phone call from a neighbor at 11:45pm warning us about the approaching fire. We looked out our living room window to the west and saw the whole horizon in our beautiful view was aflame. It was terrifying and looked in the dark as if there were big flames through the forest right outside our window, but the fire was actually still over a mile away. We quickly put our dogs in one car and turned on our roof sprinkler. We loaded up our instruments and stuffed both cars with photo albums and laundry baskets full of a few essential belongings, and we fled quickly thinking it would be the last time we saw our beloved home. We were calling neighbors and honking on our way down the mountain, stopping to bang on doors to wake people up. We were sure it was coming our way and could be there in minutes.

We still can’t believe the wind took the fire the other way and our house survived! We were so fortunate and so grateful to have a place we take care of in town to stay until we were evacuated at 3:45 on Wednesday morning when Calistoga was being evacuated. We’re so grateful to our dear friends Sabrina and Christopher Smith and their son Nate who offered us a very comfortable place to stay at their house in San Anselmo with a fenced yard for our dogs. Eleven days after the fires started, there was still no power but it was finally safe for us to come home again unlike so many we know who were right in the path of the fire and lost their homes and everything they had filled them with. Such a heart breaking experience and we’re plagued with survivors guilt but trying to do what we can to help out.

We got another call from Karen Verzosa to play the Calistoga Farmer’s Market again this Saturday. We played there last month on the 21st, just a few days after we returned home and then on the 28th we were invited to join New Skye with Ted and Ed! Michael Bryant and Robin Pliskin are usually New Skye but Robin couldn’t be there that day so Ted Dutcher and Ed Randol were playing with Michael B. Ted called and invited us to come play a few. We had a blast being part of their great band for a while that day and got a great response. Hope to be able to play with them again soon! Hopefully Robin will be around next time!

This Saturday 9am to 1pm we’ll be playing as a duo at the Calistoga Farmer’s Market, unless some of our friends can join us at the last minute. We’ve also been playing regularly at retirement home gigs. We’ve been happy to be able to donate our music money to some of our friends who lost their homes in the fire. Seems like something we could keep doing for a long time…so many people lost so much. Our hearts are with our many friends who are starting over. Sending much love and compassion out to you all.

Peace,
Lindalou and Michael

Our posts on this website are becoming fewer and farther between… We have been busy playing and working though and just recently got back from an amazing adventure! We both turned 60 this year and our sons were extremely generous and gave us an incredible birthday gift. They treated us to a trip to Berlin and Denmark! We finally got to meet our son Leif’s community of good friends he has there and the 4 of us also got to visit all our relatives in Denmark. We weren’t focused on playing music over there but did get to play at some parties and a beautiful wedding of some dear friends. Had a great time and met so many good people!

When we got home we were asked to provide the sound system and open again for Dry Branch Fire Squad! This is our third year to do this and we’re really looking forward to it. It’s coming right up…tomorrow!

When: October 5, 2017 from 5:00PM to 8:30PM
Location: 801 Bantam Way, Petaluma, CA 94952

Brown Paper Tickets link: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2876456

Note: If you’d rather not use brownpapertickets, please RSVP with Amy – cell: 707.477.2759 – and pay at the door.

Check out the DBFS website. Ron Thomason is famous or perhaps infamous for his dry wit and rants. Their music is the real deal and it
promises to be a lovely evening. They will also be playing as usual the next day at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Fest.

Also, on October 21st from 9am. to 1pm. – We’ll be playing at the Calistoga Farmer’s Market.
We’re looking forward to being there again after many months. We were too busy this past summer with music festivals and traveling to schedule our monthly dates we have played there for many years. Now we’re getting back on their schedule and also getting calls to play at retirement homes a few times a month again.

We hope everyone and anyone who happens to read this, is doing well despite all the horrible things happening in the world and hope you make it out to hear and/or make some live music on a regular basis. With all the dreadful news we are bombarded with, music is what really helps keep us from falling into a deep despair over the state of this crazy world we live in. Our hearts go out to all the victims of hurricanes, earthquakes and the senseless gun violence that took so many lives in Las Vegas last week.

Peace,
Lindalou and Michael