Dan & Faith

Hello, and Happy New Year!

We had a quiet January finishing up recording our tracks for our upcoming album and getting ourselves packed up to get on the road again. Mother Nature finally gifted us with a bit of snow to remind us that we live in New England, followed by a round of single-digit temperatures to punctuate that message. But then again, she gifted half the country with freezing temperatures at the same time, so we can’t claim special status there! The deer have left tracks all over the hayfields, and have figured out that the few lonely kale plants left in the garden are surrounded by a solar battery powered electric fence that hasn’t been charging up to full charge in these dark winter days. That, and the fence is low enough to jump. Ah well, we still have a bunch of kale in the freezer, so we don’t begrudge them a bit of a winter treat! And if it keeps them from nibbling the fruit trees, it’s OK by us.

This newsletter is out a few days early because we’re headed for the South Florida Folk And Acoustic Music Festival (SFFAMF) in Davie, FL which runs Friday-Sunday, February 2nd through 4th, and we’re focused on travel and rehearsal time between now and then. As we mentioned last month, Faith has been selected as a Finalist in the SFFAMF 2024 Singer Songwriter Contest! We’ll be performing her two entry songs, My Name Is George and Gator Gator, on the main stage of the festival along with the other nine finalists on Saturday, February 3rd from 10-11:40am. This is a huge honor, and we’re very excited about this opportunity! After that performance, three winners will be chosen to do an in-the-round performance on the main stage the following day, Sunday, February 4th, from 2:30-3:20pm. If you’re coming to the festival, please come by on Saturday morning and support all the finalists! Festival tickets can be purchased in advance from the festival website (scroll down for pricing) or at the gate.

The following Saturday, February 10th, we’re headed back to the Luna Star Cafe in North Miami, FL. We played an opening set at the Luna Star Cafe last March and fell in love with the place. Excellent food; good listening audience; and Alexis and Keith, the owners, are good people who support the local music scene. Music starts at 8pm.

We finish up the month at a new-to-us venue that we had originally been scheduled to play in December, 2020. Story & Song Center for Arts & Culture in Fernandina Beach, FL has been running their regular concert series since 2005. Their mission is to be a gathering place for the community, offering programs that enrich our lives, books that broaden our world, and delicious food that connects us. Sounds like our kind of place! Our show is Saturday, February 17th from 5-7pm. Tickets are $25 each, and can be purchased online here.

Ten years ago today, January 27th, Pete Seeger’s banjo fell silent. And yet it really didn’t, in that the music he played, and the encouragement and support he and his wife Toshi passed on to so many of us, live on. By a set of unlikely circumstances, Dan found himself in Beacon, New York during the summer of 1980 and went sailing on a ship called the Woody Guthrie, which Pete had named after his friend. Dan had sailed on Hudson River Sloop Clearwater many times as a school kid, and had a background in sailing. He had gone to Beacon to go sailing, but it turned into so much more. This past February, Dan was working on a song (he doesn’t even know which one now), and wasn’t getting far, so he took a nap. He woke up with this song. Thanks Pete. Thanks Toshi. Thanks for the memories.

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).

During this month of love, take your loved ones to hear live local music.

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