May 3rd-9th: Happy Cinco De Mayo!

This year’s Cinco festivities included more Corona-themed quarantine 😂😂 but seriously, what day is it again??

This week, I had 2 SHOWS, if you’d believe that. And they were both very entertaining! The first was with my pleasure able Pittsburgh friend Mark Steiner, who is part of a band called The Dimestore Preachers. He invited me to play a set of music with him via Instagram Live for his ‘Isolation Country Station’ sessions. It’s not the first time I’ve gotten to play with Mark, however-he has frequented bluegrass jams at times, and that’s where I first met him. It was a real treat to play back and forth with him, even if we weren’t in the same room together!

Thursday evening, I had my second show, on Virtual Music Happy Hour, hosted by Rob O’Friel of WYEP. Rob does a blues radio show on the actual station, and since quarantine has started he’s been doing a virtual happy hour online. My Nashville friend Angela Autumn, who is a folk-indie writer and singer of sad country girl songs, was also on the show! It’s been months since we had seen each other, and it was awesome to hear her play some new tunes she’s been working on! Rob allowed each of us to play a small handful of songs, and then he asked us some questions about our writing styles and musical tastes. It was so much fun, I’m secretly hoping that I can get invited back to the show sometime!!

Ive had a number of songwriting ideas for songs this week-nothing in particular sticks out yet though. More time in the woodshed is needed before any of them come to life.

Coming up next week, I’ll be back with Stephanie Green for our weekly jam session on Thursday; I also have another live event happening on Monday, where I’ll be gettin g back together with The Millbillys for an UNMASKED livestream show where we’ll be playing your country and roots favorites!! If you have a song you want to hear, drop it in the comments below! Lastly, there’s one more SUPRISE- due to the Coronavirus, the infamous Smoked Country Jam was cancelled for this year-BUT, the owner and creator, Ron Kodish, had a fantastic idea of having the bands of this year’s festival lineup to record 2 or 3 songs to send out and be compiled into one long video as a festival replacement package! What an AWESOME idea!?!?! Therefore, this week, both The Millbillys and We’ll Strung will be getting together to help Ron get the ball rolling! Keep an eye out for that fantastic video-coming soon!!

As always, stay 6 feet apart and don’t touch your face!! See you all next week!