Dan & Faith

Hello, and Happy New Year!

We had a beautiful white Christmas, followed by enough rain to wash away all the snow again. We had intended to get on the road for our Florida tour right about now, but the weather reports convinced us to move up our schedule to avoid ice, snow, and bitter cold. So we got on the road on New Year’s Eve! Traveling in a camper van in winter takes some extra planning around weather events. We tend to avoid things like ice and snow as much as possible, and the cold impacts whether or not we can have water in the camper water system. It’s still rather cold for this time of year along the coast, but it’s not so cold we have to flush with antifreeze! And thankfully we have a great heating system on board. Now we just hope that we can find ourselves some warm weather out here as we work our way south.

We’re kicking off our musical year at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville in Jacksonville, FL on Sunday, January 12th. We’ll be playing music for the morning service, starting at 10:45am. The UU Church is diverse in faith, ethnicity, history and spirituality, but aligned in their desire to make a difference for the good. They have a track record of standing on the side of love, justice, and peace. We are happy to be sharing our music with this congregation!

While we’re in Jacksonville, FL, we’ll be playing a one-hour set around lunchtime on Tuesday, January 14th at the Southside Community Center. The exact time of the set has not yet been finalized. If you’re in the neighborhood and want to come, drop us an email by the day before and we’ll get you the details! We’ll also post the updated time on our website once we have it.

The Luna Star Cafe in North Miami, FL has become one of our favorite places around the country to play. The food is excellent, the ambiance is quirky, and the folks who come for the music are a great listening audience. We’ll be there this year on Friday, January 24th, with our friend Lou Dominguez opening. Music starts at 8pm. The cafe is cash only, with a $15 minimum on food and/or drinks, and there may be an additional cover charge.

We are excited to be back at the South Florida Folk & Acoustic Music Festival in Davie, FL again this year. The festival runs Friday, January 31st through Sunday, February 2nd at the Bergeron Rodeo Grounds. The performer lineup at the festival this year is spectacular! Plus there are jams, workshops, and this year’s songwriting contest finalists (which is what got us there last year). We’ll be hosting a jam session, “Telling Stories That Matter: Songs for our Times” at 3pm on Saturday in the jam tent, and will be playing a set on the Gator Stage (the main stage!) at 2:30pm on Sunday. There’s camping on site (with late night song circles) for tents and RVs, too. Festival tickets are available here.

While we’re off touring around Florida, we would like to share a bit of our home with you. This newly-released lyric video for Faith’s song Twilight Time In The Meadow includes Dan’s photography from around our property and from our front porch. Enjoy!

Our albums Who We Are, 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, follow us on Patreon. For more frequent news updates and information, check out our Facebook fan page.

We wish you and yours a happy, healthy, and peaceful new year!
Dan & Faith

Hello!

We’re sitting here, still somewhat stuffed from our wonderful Thanksgiving dinner, and admiring the snow outside. A week or so ago, we started seeing the ski trails on Mount Okemo as the weather got cold enough for snowmaking. Now our back yard is as white as those trails! We had a quiet Thanksgiving, just the two of us, as we watched all that snow fall. Dinner was full of our own produce (butternut squash, apples, potatoes) and more produce local to us (salad greens, Brussels sprouts, blueberries, root vegetables). Our harvest is done; the fridge is full of apples and pears, and the freezer is full of zucchini, kale, yellow squash, and celery. This is the time of year when the garden takes a deep breath and settles in for its winter nap.

While the garden naps, we’re out and about. We’re looking forward to trekking over to Concord, NH to talk with Kate McNally about our new album on NHPR’s The Folk Show on Sunday, December 8th. Kate has been hosting The Folk Show for almost 30 years! Her show runs 7-10pm Eastern. If you’re in New Hampshire, tune in on your local New Hampshire Public Radio station. Or you can listen online at NHPR.org. If you miss it, you can listen to the entire show online here for up to a week after the broadcast.

One of our annual traditions is a trip to Worcester, MA to play on DJ Nick Noble’s The Folk Revival holiday show at WICN FM. Nick invites local musicians from around the area to play live in the studio for this show with the understanding that each act must play at least one holiday song. This year, the show is Thursday, December 12th. We’ll play Dan’s song Solstice (which he wrote specifically for Nick’s holiday show in 2014), and then we’ll see what else we offer up! The music runs 7-10pm Eastern, and it’s always a ton of fun. Listen in the Worcester area on 90.5FM, or online at WICN.org (click where it says “Listen Live”).

Every few months, we like to play Open Mic America, a national online open mic that showcases 6 to 8 performers in any musical genre per show. They also celebrate local open mics across the country. Tune in Sunday, December 15th from 8-10pm Eastern on their YouTube channel. If you miss the show, the YouTube video will stay up for you to enjoy at a later time.

It has always amused us that our birthdays are two days apart. Dan’s is December 29th, Faith’s is December 31st. Over the years, we have gotten in the habit of celebrating on the day between. For the last several years, one of our favorite elements of our celebration is sharing it with you! Join us again this year as we celebrate our joint birthdays with an online concert on Monday, December 30th. We’ll play whatever strikes our fancy, and if you have any requests, we’ll try to fit those in, too. You can tune in either via YouTube or Facebook. We’ll start at 7:30pm Eastern and go for an hour or so. Stop in and join the festivities!

This coming Friday, December 6th, is Bandcamp Friday! All our in-print albums and singles are available via Bandcamp, including our newest album, Who We Are. Several months of the year, Bandcamp declares the first Friday of the month to be a Bandcamp Friday, where Bandcamp waives their revenue share for music purchases, and gives that money directly to the artists. You can stream or download from there in any format, or you can order the physical CD, your choice! With the holidays coming up, what better gift is there than the gift of music? And if you order on Bandcamp Friday, that allows plenty of time for you to receive the albums before the holidays. Though we’re happy to have you shop through Bandcamp at any time!

December can be tough for those of us who love daylight. It’s easy to understand how primitive humans could believe the sun was going out as we got to the winter solstice each year, and how they would consider the returning of the light to be a cause for celebration. Chase away darkness, join in our song. Hand in hand, our voices are strong! Chase away darkness, sing to the sky. Celebrate Solstice tonight! Help us celebrate the returning of the light with Dan’s song, Solstice.

Our albums Who We Are, 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, follow us on Patreon. For more frequent news updates and information, check out our Facebook fan page.

We wish you the very best during the holiday season!

Dan & Faith