Dear friends and music lovers,
It’s been a long time again since we’ve posted anything here or updated our website, but we have been playing quite a bit, mostly for folks in elder care homes, farmer’s markets and private parties. We’ve also been writing new songs together mostly inspired by events in our lives. It’s such a joy when even the difficult times inspire songs! That being said, we’ve all had our ups and downs but things are mostly going well for us and we’re grateful for that every day!

We’re getting ready to play our annual DCWC benefit concert in memory of my Dad, Ken Harris. My brother in law Steve Gross met and befriended a man named Akka Llama while trekking in Nepal a few years ago. Akka had started DCWC to help poor women and children in rural villages in Nepal. He was building schools in these remote villages and then built a small hospital in the Rajbash, Kavre District. My sister Jeanette went with Steve the next time he went to Nepal and they offered to help DCWC raise money for the hospital. We offered to do a house concert to help out and decided to schedule it around our Dad’s birthday and make it an annual event.

This past February we had to postpone the concert due to Jeanette dealing with breast cancer. Thankfully she made it through that ordeal and we’re very happy to say she is doing well now!

After the big earthquake in Nepal last year we did a special concert in October to help DCWC raise funds to build temporary shelters for countless people who had lost their homes. This concert was a huge success and we want to thank those of you who have come to our concerts or made donations over the past four years. Jeanette tells us that our concerts have been their biggest fundraisers for DCWC and the humanitarian work they continue to do. It feels great to know we can help so many people by playing music. It would make our Dad really happy too!

We hope all of you who read this are well and we hope to see you at Jeanette and Steve’s house on February 27th. The details are in the flyer below, and you can contact us for more information.

In harmony,
Lindalou and Michael

Here is the flyer that Jeanette made:HouseConcertFlyer2016

We haven’t updated our website in many moons, but we have been playing a bit and we’ve also been writing some new songs!

We’ve got a couple of things coming up very soon. We’re excited to have been asked to open for Karl Kummerle and his friend Karla Mi Lugo at the Arlene Francis Center.
The show is this coming Thursday night, Oct 15th from 7:30 to 10pm.

Karla Mi Lugo is an eccentric traveling performance artist who specializes in accordion improvisation, vibrato laden whistling, and Billy Holiday impersonation. She also runs the Faith Faucet Talent Agency, an organization that empowers artists and talented individuals to constructively cultivate art for positive social change. Come see her one of a kind homemade instrument; the Whisolin!

Karl Kummerle is a songwriting violinist and pianist. His goal to spread the joy of song and music everywhere has taken him to 17 countries, most recently China and Vietnam. Each new travel adds to the collection of folk music styles that Karl employs in his music.

Together Karl and Karla will present melodies, storytelling, comedy, original songs and fiddle/whisolin duets!

We will open for Karl and Karla and might also be accompanied by them!

The following weekend we’ll be playing a benefit house concert in Oakland. This is a benefit for the earthquake victims in Nepal where my sister and brother in law, Jeanette and Steve Gross have become good friends with some local people there and are very involved with this organization who my sister made the US website for: http://www.dcwcnepal-us.org/
We’ve done a benefit house concert the past few years in February around my late Dad’s birthday and we’ve managed to help raise some extremely generous donations to help build a hospital which was finally completed but then severely damaged in the earthquake. We will do another benefit concert in February to help repair the hospital, but this upcoming concert will help to build shelters for people who have been homeless since the earthquake.

House Concert — DCWC Nepal Earthquake Relief
Sunday, October 18th from 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Nanci & Tom Clifton’s House 6125 Pinewood Road, Oakland, CA

If you’re interested in coming to this house concert or making a donation please let us know or you can also RSVP to my sister Jeanette at: jeanetteg2@mac.com

Our hearts also go out to all the victim’s of the recent local fires, who lost their homes. You can still make donations to directly help the Valley fire victims through the Redwood Credit Union – Press Democrat fund.

Be well!
Lindalou and Michael

P.S. On a lighter note, we’ll also be playing the Calistoga Farmer’s market again on Halloween! Oct 31st from 9am to 1pm.

We’re playing at Elizabeth Spencer’s Rosé Release party tomorrow April 25th! This is the 5th year they’ve asked us to play this event. We’ll be accompanied by our fine fiddler friend Terry Ann Gillette again.
Sure hope it doesn’t rain! We’ll be playing in the court yard 11am to 2pm. I’d say hope to see you there but they tell us it is sold out!

You can come see us and hear us play the following weekend at the Calistoga Farmer’s Market, Saturday, May 2nd, 9am to 1pm accompanied by Dan Brunetti. Hope to see you there!

It’s been quite some time since I have updated our website or posted any news here. I’d like to be able to say we’ve been busy recording our long overdue 2nd CD but we still haven’t managed to find time or resources to get that project done…we’re both working a lot and playing music when we can. We’ve played quite a few farmer’s markets, a few care facilities and many parties since I last updated this back in November.

We’ve been dealing with a few health challenges in our family and have been a bit preoccupied, which has made our music much less of a priority than we’d like it to be! We’re just so grateful that we’re both still alive and after some time in the hospital in December Michael is doing pretty well now! Also so grateful that my sister Jeanette is going strong and almost half way through her chemo treatments.

We have some dates coming up where we’ve been asked to play, some private and some public places where we hope to see some familiar faces out enjoying our music!

On Saturday, April 11th, We’ve been asked to provide music again for the annual Hike and Hoot put on by Landpaths.
This info and photo of us below is from their latest newsletter:

Hike and Hoot Potluck
Date & Time: April 11th, 1:30pm-9:15pm
Location: Monan’s Rill
Leader: Members of Friends of Mark West Watershed Community
Registration is required for this event.
Click here for more information and to register

Please join us for the 11th annual “Hike and Hoot” at Monan’s Rill in partnership with The Friends of Mark West Watershed. Fun for the entire Family! Kid‘s Nature Walk, Plant Preserve Tour, Climate Change Talk, Pond Explorations, Live Owls! and of course… the Hooters Hike!

On Saturday, April 25th from 11am to 2pm We’ll be playing the annual Rosé Release party at Elizabeth Spencer Winery. We will be accompanied again this year by our great fiddler friend Terry Ann Gillette.

Both of these events in April require reservations so please plan ahead if you’d like to come.

We’ve been given a few dates at the Calistoga Farmer’s Market where we played last month and quite a few times since last year, but I failed to post those dates here before we played.

We’ll be there again on Saturday, May 2nd, 9am to 1pm, accompanied by our good friend Dan Brunetti.

We’ll also play there on July 25, August 29th, Sept 26th and again on Halloween. Those are the dates we’ve been given so far but we often get last minute calls to fill in when someone else cancels.

We’re looking forward to playing at the Cedars Care home in Calistoga on Easter. They had us play for Valentines and St. Patrick’s Day and will have us again for Cinco de Mayo. It’s always a joy to get the very elderly folks smiling and sometimes singing along when we play familiar songs for them!

All the best,
Lindalou and Michael

Today we got a phone call at 8:20am asking us to play the Calistoga Farmer’s Market. We’re not used to getting last minute calls to play except every now and then when someone cancels. It was pouring at our house this morning when the phone rang and very windy out too. Michael answered the phone and was confused by being asked to play this morning with such inclement weather! Karen, who runs the market said “it’s starting to clear up downtown and is supposed to be good weather by 10am.” So we went and had a great time playing unplugged and the sun came out. It was a beautiful day! We made a young woman and an old man cry again! We love to do that and to make so many people smile too!

We haven’t been playing as much music as we’d like lately, being too busy with work and dogs. After losing our old wonderful dog Hanna in July 2013 we were heartbroken and not ready to get another dog. In April our midwife Gwen Sue, who we’d gotten a great dog from when our first born son was a baby, emailed pictures of her Blue Heeler puppies telling us their mom Molly was the best dog she’d ever had. We were smitten and agreed to take the puppy Gwen chose for us. She had already named her Emma Goldman, (because “all her spots were on the left!”) We picked up Emma G on my 57th birthday in May. She’s amazingly intelligent and has been living up to her name. She’s quite the anarchist… we love her dearly but wonder what we were thinking getting a puppy! Then last week our eldest son came home from Berlin where he has been living the past couple of years. He warned us that he was bringing his puppy Rosa Luxemburg with him and staying for a month or so. We had a feeling he was bringing his puppy because he thought this would be a great home for her! Yikes, we tried to tell him we don’t want another puppy! Rosa is a Boxer Sharpei mix and almost a year old. Very wrinkled face but so ugly she’s adorable and she has a very sweet personality. We feel a bit like our lives have been hijacked by anarchist dogs right now…!

Still we’re making music when we can and we look forward to playing again next weekend.
We’ll be at the Windsor Farmer’s Market
Sunday, November 30th, 10am to 1pm. Rain or shine.
If it rains we’ll play unplugged under a canopy (like we did today.)

Hope you are all well and have a very Happy Thanksgiving!
Best,
Lindalou and Michael

Our August schedule changed suddenly when we found out that a memorial service for our dearly departed friend Wardell Noel was planned the same time we were scheduled to play the Calistoga Farmer’s Market. We canceled our August 23rd market and won’t be back there until Sept 20th and then again on Nov 1st.

We were also scheduled to play at the Epicurian Connection Cafe on August 24th but due to a conflict with another event there they rescheduled us to play on Sunday, Oct 5th from 3pm to 5pm. We’ll be playing as a duo again at the Epicurian Connection Cafe in the town of Sonoma.

We just had some heartbreaking news this week about another dear friend, Greg Muck who died while backpacking in Kings Canyon last week. We have spent many a music festival camping with him and his beautiful family, his wife Shannon and 5 year old daughter Delphina. We’re devastated by this news and our hearts are with Shannon and Delphina. Life is so temporay and fragile and we’re all so vulnerable. Tomorrow we’ll be playing music for Wardell’s memorial celebration and next weekend for Greg at a camp out party that was already planned, where we expected to see him there with his family.

Just a reminder to anyone reading this, make the most of each day we have together. Life is short and our world can change so suddenly.
Be well,
Lindalou and Michael

We’ve been asked to play with our dear friend and amazing guitar player/ singer/songwriter Hank Levine at the Windsor Farmer’s Market for their annual Zucchini Festival. We’ll be there on Sunday, August 10th from 10am to 1pm. It’s always a joy to play with Hank!

On Saturday, Aug 16th we look forward to hearing lots of great music and playing on “the Goat stage” at the Rockin Heart Hoedown in Kenwood, (formerly known as the Cur-Ville festival.)

We’ve been to a couple of great music festivals this summer and played a bunch of fun private parties with our good friends.
Hope to see your smiling faces out enjoying some live music soon!

This coming Sunday, June 22nd, after an evening celebrating the Solstice and singing with old friends on Saturday night, we’ll be playing as a duo at a winery picnic, in a new venue where someone from Elizabeth Spencer Winery recommended us. We look forward to playing in their garden from 11am to 2pm at Maisonry Wine Tasting and Art Collective.

We’ve never been there and look forward to it. This one is a private picnic but we hope they might have us back in the future for one of their events open to the public!

We have two music festivals also coming up starting next week, where we’re not hired to play but really look forward to camping and jamming with friends 2 weekends in a row. First on the last weeknd of June we’ll be at the Kate Wolf Memorial Festival where we’re on our friend Alan’s crew. He sets up a beautiful venue for the “Revival stage” with his big festival tents, candle lit chandeliers, beautiful tapasties and rugs. We’re lucky to get to help out with that so we can enjoy the festival every year.

The following weekend we’ll be on another crew helping out at a new festival up in Navarro called the “Redwood Ramble” which was started last year when the Strawberry Festival was canceled due to the Rim fire. This is a very small festival in a beautiful place called Camp Navarro that used to be a boyscout camp right near some property Michael’s parents used to have where we spent many weekends camping out with our family over the years. We’re excited to be a part of a small music festival happening in our old stomping grounds!

We have a Calistoga Farmer’s Market coming up on July 12th where we look forward to playing with our good friend and music partner Dan Brunetti.

Hope you’re all well and have a great summer!
In harmony,
Lindalou and Michael

We played at the Elizabeth Spencer event yesterday with Terry Ann. Had a great time and they fed us delicious food, paid us well and gave us 2 cases of their excellent wine again! What a nice way to celebrate our anniversary the past 4 years! They said they’d like to have us back again next year.

Today is our 34th wedding anniversary (41 years together (tomorrow) and still in love!) We feel so grateful!

Next weekend we’ll play 2 gigs and then we have some private gigs as well as other farmer’s markets coming up.

Saturday, May 3rd, 9am to noon~
We’ll play the Calistoga Farmer’s Market with our good friend Dan Brunetti. We love playing in the shade of the redwood trees in our home town. Later that day we’ve been invited to play again at an annual St. Helena Road neighborhood event called the “Hike and Hoot.”

The following weekend on my birthday, May 10th, we’ll be playing a memorial celebration for an old friend in Novato. Then the next day we’ll be celebrating Mother’s Day with my family and will play for my dear old Mom and get her singing along.

Over Memorial Day weekend we look forward to camping out a few nights at our friend’s music party which was planned to make up for the Strawberry Festival not happening again this Spring, due to complications from the Rim fire as well as red tape with renewing the contract with the City of San Francisco who owns Camp Mather where the festival takes place. If you read this and have any interest in seeing the festival continue please read this message and write letters to help save the festival! Thanks!

On Sunday, June 22nd, 10am to 1pm~
We’ll play as a duo at the Windsor Farmer’s Market.

We have two music festivals also coming up in June and July where we’re not hired to play but really look forward to camping and jamming with friends 2 weekends in a row. First on the last weeknd of June we’ll be at the Kate Wolf Memorial Festival where we’re on our friend Alan’s crew. He sets up a beautiful venue for the “Revival stage” with his big festival tents, candle lit chandeliers, beautiful tapasties and rugs. We’re lucky to get to help out with that so we can enjoy the festival every year.

The following weekend we’ll be on another crew helping out at a new festival up in Navarro called the “Redwood Ramble” which was started last year when the Strawberry Festival was canceled due to the fire. This is a very small festival in a beautiful place called Camp Navarro that used to be a boyscout camp right near some property Michael’s parents used to have where we spent many weekends camping out with our family over the years. We’re excited to be a part of a small music festival happening in our old stomping grounds!

We have more farmer’s markets scheduled which I’ll post later.
We hope you’re all enjoying Spring. Hope to see you out enjoying some live music soon!
Be well,
Lindalou and Michael

Greetings friends and music lovers,
Our Wisteria is in full bloom but our Lilacs are still asleep. Usually they bloom at the same time here. It was an odd Winter though, with not enough rain, but we’re grateful for what we got.

We’ve got some nice gigs coming up. Our last one in February was a big success. We played the 3rd annual benefit house concert in memory of my Dad’s birthday and raised almost $4000 for DCWC’s hospital in Nepal! Thanks to all who came and made that happen. Your generosity is extremely appreciated and will really make a difference.
Thank you also to new folks who signed our mailing list.

On Sunday, April 6th from 1pm to 3pm
We’ll be playing as a duo at the Epicurean Connection in Sonoma.
This is a new venue for us and we’re happy to have been asked to play by Josh Windmiller of North Bay Hootenanny. Thank you to Dale Geist of the Cur-ville Dog Days Fest for making that connection for us.

On Saturday, April 26th from 11am to 2pm
We’ll be playing at Elizabeth Spencer Tasting Room in Rutherford.
They’ve invited us back to play for their annual Rosé Release party for the past 4 years. This is always a fun event with great food and wine. We’ll be accompanied by our fantastic fiddler friend Terry Ann Gillette.

On Saturday, May 3rd from 9am to noon
We’ll be back at our hometown Calistoga Farmer’s Market.
Our old friend and great guitar player Dan Brunetti will join us.

Happy Spring and lets hope for more rain during the week and sunshine on the weekends while we’re playing outside! :~)
We hope to see you somewhere along the way!
Lindalou and Michael