Saint Patrick's Day at Sango Elementary!

Three members of Red River Breeze spent several fun hours playing Irish tunes for two classes at Sango Elementary School in Clarksville, TN. Stephanie Taylor (hammered dulcimer), David Magers (guitar) and Melanie Beck (fiddle) performed first for Ms. Stratman's class first grade class (Melanie's daughter Eme is in this class) and then for Ms. Harrison's kindergarten class. We had a blast and the kids were all wonderful - they listened well, clapped like a drum through our peppy tunes and asked amazing questions every chance they got. And - both classes had gifts to give us when we were done - you can't ask for more than that! Here are some pictures of the classes and their terrific thank you gifts!

This is the three of us playing for Ms. Stratman's class. Someone should have told Stephanie she really looked silly in that green hat! Melanie and David refused to wear their's - and their's weren't as goofy looking!



We each got a beautiful card from Ms. Stratman's class!



This is the inside of the card. Very colorful and very creative work. They made three cards so it's impressive how much effort went into their signatures!



This is Ms. Harrison's class after we were finished playing for them. The very best question of the day came from one little girl who sounded like she is really about 5 going on 35 years old - and these children had lots of questions - was, "How did you get started in music?"... Wow!

From Ms. Harrison's class, we each got these cool gift bags with baked goods inside. Very yummy! Note the class's signatures!

Our thanks to both Ms. Stratman's class and Ms. Harrison's class for being so excited and receptive to our music. It made the day amazing for the three of us!

Our Schedule is Starting to Grow!

In the slow, dark days of winter, we look forward to spring and summer events to play our music at different venues and for more folks! Now it's March and our schedule is starting to get a bit fuller so here's hoping spring really is around the corner! CD sales of our new album, "Morgan's Song" are going well despite the slow winter months and we even sold our first CD on CDbaby..... And, we are working on a new set of "new" tunes - many with a good strong Irish flavor just in time for St. Patrick's Day. Keep checking our schedule for places to see us in the coming months and remember we can be found every Friday night at The Looking Glass on Warfield Blvd, in Clarksville, TN!

Our New CD, Morgan's Song, is available now on CDbaby!

Our new CD, Morgan's song, is now available on CDbaby! If you can't get to one of our performances to purchase the CD, it is available to see the track listing, listen to short snippets from each track and to purchase at: www.cdbaby.com/cd/RedRiverBreeze. We hope you enjoy the music on this CD!

News from January...

January is always a slow month in so many ways.... After the buildup to the Christmas holidays, everyone just needs to take a break for a bit in January. And besides that, in the south, January is one of the two yucky months - February being the other! At any rate, not too much is happening this month for Red River Breeze but we are playing every Friday night at The Looking Glass in Clarksville, TN on Warfield Blvd. Come out and hear some live traditional music if you're in town. You may even hear some of our brand new tunes - we have 39 new pieces we are working on and adding to our repetoire!

Our new CD, Morgan's Song, will be available for purchase on CDbaby very soon. Watch our webpage, http://www.redriverbreeze.com/, or our facebook page or this blog for more info. CDbaby will have snippets of the tunes on the CD available for you to hear, and will manage all of the stocking, shipping, and money stuff for online sales of the CD. The CD is available, of course, wherever we are playing so if you come to hear us, we have them for sale. We continue to get lots of nice comments about the CD....!

Sunday, January 31st, Austin Peay will be hosting a "Haiti Relief Effort for Visitation Hospital" telethon. Red River Breeze is one of a number of musical groups who are volunteering to perform during this telethon - we are tentatively scheduled to play starting at 7:30 or 8:00 pm for about an hour. When I know a specific time, I will post it. You can see the telethon several ways: at Austin Peay's web site (http://www.apsu.edu/), on Charter channel 99, on CDE/Lightband channel 9 and on WAPX-FM 91.9.

A Busy Sunday Evening for Red River Breeze!

Red River Breeze performed twice on Sunday evening, December 6th - first at the Macedonia Presbyterian Church at 5:00 PM and then dashing across town to play for Dilliard's VIP shopping night starting at 7:00 PM. So - we got several more opportunities to play Christmas Music and have our new CD available for purchase!

The first event, at Macedonia Presbyterian Church, was our 3rd year of being invited to perform as the music for the church's Lessons and Carols program. Our thanks to Rev. Kathy Fox and the wonderful folks at Macedonia Presbyterian. Unfortunately, since we were due across town shortly after the program to perform at Dilliards, we were unable to stay and share in the fellowship and wonderful food the church hasdafter the program. I can attest to the fact that it was very nice in the previous two years!

A quick dash across town, and we arrived at Dilliard's (amazingly before 7 PM) to be the music for their VIP shopping night. We played there until 8:45. This was our 2nd year to be the music for this event and I wasn't sure we were going to make this work, but some adjustment on the start time from the very kind Raymond Hicks, the store manager, and we were in! Our special thanks to Raymond Hicks as well as to all of the Dilliard's employees as well as the customers who stopped and chatted with us. Our thanks also to the employees carrying trays of food who found out we were starving (no time to eat between gigs!) and made sure they made frequent passes by us so we could munch in between tunes!

A very busy day for us as well as week - but a great way to start the Christmas holiday!

Stephanie performs at Madison Methodist Church for the Festival of Lessons and Carols

I was contacted by Rev. Jared Wilson 3 weeks ago asking me if I would be willing to perform a Malcolm Dalglish piece called Christmas Lullaby with the Madison Street Methodist Church Chancel Choir on Sunday, December 6th. I received a copy of the music on Wednesday, November the 18th and was intrigued to say the least - Malcolm Dalglish is well known in the hammered dulcimer community as a wonderful dulcimer player and as a composer of really wonderful choral pieces with dulcimer. And, this was a terrific opportunity for me to play as a solo artist and with singers... which I have never really done... The music - after I got to see it - was as beautiful AND as complex as I imagined.... I proceeded to get to work memorizing the piece - since that is the nature of hammered dulcimers. Two rehearsals and a dress rehearsal later, I performed the piece with the women of the Chancel Choir on Sunday morning. This was a terrifc albeit scary experience! The performance of the piece was the next to last piece on the program - which lasted over an hour and a half (so I had plenty of time to get really nervous) - and playing with a choir is something I have no experience with and definitely took some different skills than I have acquired. (Poor David M. - He was tasked with being my practice singer countless times over the 2 1/2 weeks I had to prepare as I worked on getting more comfortable with the tempo and timing of a choir as opposed to a string band! David used to sing in church choirs years ago but his vocal skills have gotten rusty so he was consequently hoarse more than a few times after rehearsing with me!) But, when the time came on Sunday, I played the piece well and the choir was magical in their rendition. The church sanctuary is amazing and I most definitely fell in love with the incredible pipe organ that I have heard so much about over the years! The picture at the top of this post shows just how small I felt performing this piece in this amazing space!

Close-up view of me playing Christmas Lullaby with the Choir.

Before the concert; the bell choir is practicing. I'd never heard or seen a bell choir so this was fascinating to me. Note the amazing pipe organ in front. When it was played, the sound was amazing.

Setting up before the program. I am not nervous yet!

My thanks to Rev. Jared Wilson, all of the members of the Chancel Choir and the folks of the Madison Street Methodist Church for allowing me this amazing opportunity and making me feel welcome in their day of music.

Performance at Downtown Artist's Coop, Thursday, Dec 3rd

Last night, 6 of us in Red River Breeze played for the Downtown Artist's Co-op, http://www.clarksvilleartists.net/, at 96 Franklin Street. This was their 9th annual Arts and Crafts Bazaar held every December and this was the third year we were asked to perform for them. We always enjoy participating in this event and this year the turnout was terrific and coincidently, this was the first real opportunity we have had to debut our new CD and we sold 15 of them! Off to a good start! Members in the band that participated were Steve, David M, Dixie, Melanie, Byron and me (Stephanie) and we were able to play Christmas music for the first time this season. We remain pretty busy the remainder of this week through Sunday - with our normal gig at The Looking Glass tonight, and two gigs on Sunday evening. We should be really good at playing Christmas music by the time we are through Sunday night!



This photograph was taken by Susan Bryant of the Downtown Artist's Coop last year but this is basically what we looked like and where we played this year with two exceptions - David E. couldn't make it this year - he had a nasty cold; and Byron was given the honor of playing in the storefront window to lure folks into the building - definitely a job he enjoyed doing....! Too bad we didn't get a picture of that!

Our thanks to Susan and the folks at the Downtown Artist's Coop for allowing us to share in this holiday event with them again!