Dan & Faith

Hello!

The garden is mostly done for the season, with the exception of the kale plants. Kale is one of those vegetables where you can go out to the garden in sub-freezing temperatures, snap off a few frozen leaves, and it will cook up just as nicely as it does in mid-summer. The trees are bare, and we can see the snow on the Vermont ski slopes. The humidifier is running, keeping both us and our instruments from drying out. Yet, with all of these harbingers of winter, a week or so ago we had a robin land on the porch rail and peer in the window. And two of our neighborhood foxes were frolicking behind the barn, which gives us hope that we’ll have another batch of fox kits in the spring!

We have exciting news — Faith has been selected as a Finalist in the South Florida Folk Festival’s 2024 Singer Songwriter Contest! Only ten finalists were chosen out of all the entries received, so this is a huge honor. We will be performing her entry songs, My Name Is George and Gator Gator, on the main stage at the festival in Davie, FL the first Saturday in February 2024. After that performance, three winners will be chosen to do an in-the-round performance on the main stage the next day. We’ll have more details about the festival in next month’s newsletter!

Holiday traditions hold a lot of meaning. One of our traditions is our annual trek to Worcester, MA to join DJ Nick Noble for his annual Folk Revival holiday show on WICN radio. This year, Nick’s holiday show is Thursday, December 14th from 7-10pm Eastern time. Musicians from all around the Worcester area will be joining Nick to share some holiday cheer and at least one holiday song each! In the Worcester area, tune in to 90.5FM, or you can go to WICN.org and click on “Listen Live”.

Our friend Aaron Tornberg formed One Broadway Collaborative back in 2021 as a public performance space for all genres of music and comedy. On Friday and Saturday, December 15th and 16th, One Broadway is holding a pair of fundraiser concerts by multiple musicians and comedians at the Spicket River Brewery in Lawrence, MA. The funds raised will go toward continuing the collaborative’s programming. We’ll be performing in the Friday evening show, which runs 7-11pm. The Saturday show is 3-7pm. Join us for some great entertainment, information about what One Broadway Collaborative has coming up in 2024, and great local beer and food!  Tickets are $15, and can be purchased here in advance, or at the door. Any additional donation to the collaborative is welcome.

One of the fun facts about the two of us is that our birthdays are two days apart (though we were born in different years). We tend to do our major celebrating on the day between. That’s when the cake gets baked, and any fancy dinner happens. For the last couple of years, that’s also when we’ve thrown ourselves an online birthday bash. We’re in the mood to do it again this year, too. Tune in on our Facebook page or YouTube channel on Saturday, December 30th at 7pm Eastern time and help us celebrate! We’ll be singing songs and telling stories for an hour or so, and we’d love your company.

The holiday season is well underway, which means the Winter Solstice is coming up soon. There are so many Christmas songs out there, and a bunch of Hanukkah songs, too, but not that many Solstice songs. Dan decided to do something about that, and thus his song Solstice was born. Please enjoy our Solstice lyric video, or you can download the audio recording. Chase away darkness, join in our song!

Music makes a great holiday gift! You can order a physical CD or download in any format you choose from our Bandcamp page.

Our albums Then and Now, Seeking, and Simple Grace are available from us at shows and on our website, through Bandcamp, or you can find them at iTunes and most other online music stores. Our music is also available streaming on Spotify and Apple Music.

As always, you can find additional schedule information on our website. For additional content and stories from the road, follow us on Patreon. For more frequent news updates and information, check out our Facebook fan page and follow us on Twitter (@danandfaith).

As we close out 2023, we hope that whatever holiday you celebrate is joyous, and that you have a happy and healthy new year!

Dan & Faith