Here's a blast from the past: Jennifer Culley (now Jennifer Culley Curtain) co-founder with Brooke of the group Clishmaclaver, has her first solo album out!  I am awaiting my copy with glee - order your own by going to her new website:
 
http://www.jenniferculleycurtin.com/index
 
or directly to CDBaby:
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/jenniferculleycurtin
 
Fans of Clishmaclaver won't want to miss this one!

well here we are in the new year, and let's all hope for better and better times ahead!  It's snowing quite hard here in rural Virginia as I type which I like a lot - I'm a big fan of winters and it's been several years since we really had one so this is great...bring it on!  We have some fun gigs coming up early in the year so check out the schedule and come see us

Hey y'al,
  We're on twitter now: http://twitter.com/TinsmithMusic. So, if you happen to be wondering what we plan on having for lunch, give us a follow. We'll follow you back, plus, we'll keep you up to date on upcoming shows and other Tinsmith news.
 Also, we'll keep the links to video of skateboarding dogs to a minimum...
 
The Tinsmith Gang

  This weekend will be the 16th annual Potomac Celtic Festival and we're very happy to be there once again.
 This year, the Festival has gone back to two days. Which is great for us, 'cause we get to play more. They're also giving us two shows on each day, which is cool, 'cause you get to see us more.
 But I'm sure you realize that there will be many other performers at Potomac this years that you're not gonna want to miss. For instance, a group that is interwined with the very roots of the festival, Iona, will be back this year.
 And one of our very favorite people in the world, Bruce Molsky, will also be bringing a touch of Appalachia to the show. Hopefully, he won't find our constant attention too stalky...

 Anyway, it's gonna be an awesome weekend. We'd hate you to miss out...

 6.13.09 & 06.14.09 @ 10:00am
16th Annual Potomac Celtic Festival

Morven Park Historic Green and Mansion
17263 Southern Planter Lane
Leesburg, VA 20176

866.771.7786

Price:
 At the Gate: Adult = $15; Seniors= $12; Child (6-12) = $7
 In Advance: Adult = $12; Seniors= $10; Child = $6.

Potomac Celtic Festival is very much like home for us. And we're always glad to be back again with folks that feel very much like family. Lot's of great music and plenty of Guinness and haggis for everyone!

Go to http: //www.potomaccelticfest.org/ for Advance tickets and more info

Hello All,
  This Friday night, we're playing the Folk & Blues Series at the Montpelier Arts Center in Laurel, MD. Not only is this a wonderful place to see a show, it's a great place to see amazing visual arts, meet local artisans, take classes, and learn about local history. Plus we'll be there... that's pretty good too, right?
 Anyway, we'd love it if you'd come out and see us play. Montpelier has had a lot of really awe-inspiring performers grace it's stage and we're quite proud to soon follow in such great footsteps.

 Cheers!
Tinsmith

Price: $20; $18/seniors & Montpelier members

Montpelier Arts Center
9652 Muirkirk Road
Laurel, MD 20708

http://www.pgparks.com/places/artsfac/mac.html
montpelier.arts@pgparks.com

301.377.7800, 410.792.0664; TTY: 301.490.2329

Well our sabbatical year was nice and restful and we're back in full force!  Lots of good shows coming up this spring (and we hope to see you all the the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival the first weekend in May - we are usually all there, though not playing).  First up is a great little Celtic Festival in Frederick Md with Maggie Sansone, and then we are lucky enough to be playing at beautiful Montpelier Arts Center in May.  Back to the Washington Folk Festival this year too - a venerable and wonderful show, as well as our happy favorite, the Potomac Celtic Festival.  See the Schedule page for details about all these gigs!

Here it is, almost summer again! We will be playing at the Potomac Celtic Festival again and I have already messed up our times in the email I sent out...we are playing at 10am and at 3pm (not 4pm which is what I think I wrote in the email)

Also, we've got a great house concert and jam coming up in Maryland the day after PCF- check out our schedule page for details!

So we (Brooke & Rowan) were planning to have a low key show at the
New Deal Cafe tonight. Sadly, though, we've been
informed that the Cafe will be closed for the next few weeks due to
renovations.
Since we like you, we thought we'd let you know so that you didn't
show up to a very closed venue and thus, be a bit cross with us.
Anyway, we'll keep you posted, but we're unsure when the New Deal
will be open again. If we get a make up date, either at the New Deal or elsewhere, we'll post it here and send out an email.

Thanks and sorry about that....
The Tinsmith Gang

As you may have noticed, the Tinsmith site has had some minor cosmetic changes, but the underlying structure has been rebuild from the ground up as well. We've also put in a new image gallery and are planning a few more changes for the weeks to come.

All our wandering sheep are coming back to the fold for a busy November! Rowan has returned from 6 weeks on tour with ILYAimy, Avril is back in town after much traveling on behalf of SEIU, Henry is working on rebuilding his life and house after the fire and Brooke is baking away...

Don't miss our great November gigs: 11/10 House concert at the Takoma Park Co-housing Project; 11/11 Old Brogue in Great Falls, Va - that's a dinner show, they have good food; 11/16 Knights of Columbus hall for a three hour show, they have cheap food and nice ambiance; 12/1 House concert in downtown Philly.

Hope to see you soon

Finally! We're just a week away from celebrating the release of our latest recording, "An American Wake". We're really proud of it, so we'd like to show it off a bit, and we can't think of a better place to do it than IMT. We'd be really pleased if you'd come and share it with us.

If you haven't heard the new CD yet, check out a few tracks here.

Here's the 411 on the show:

The Institute of Musical Traditions
Saint Mark Presbyterian Church
10701 Old Georgetown Rd.
Rockville, MD 20852

301.754.3611
http://www.imtfolk.org

NEWS FLASH!!!!!

Not only will you get to see Tinsmith at the Knights of Columbus hall on wednesday (6/13), but you can eat and drink too!

"Please note that the Knights of Columbus has food available from 6-9pm.
All are welcome to join us for Happy Hour 6-7pm."

Now that's a good gig

: )

see our schedule page for details...

For those of you planning to come to the Potomac Celtic Festival
please note that they had the wrong directions up on the website (til
about wednesday). They have fixed it now and the correct directions
are up, so double check!

In other news, Tinsmith will be appearing in College Park, Maryland
on Wednesday June 13! We'll be playing at the Knights of Columbus
hall on Cherry Hill Road (see our website for details:

http://www.tinsmith.net/schedule.html

If you get your tickets ahead of time, you can get the member price
of $5! ($10 at the door on Wednesday). This will be a really fun and
intimate gig, and a great chance to see us up close and personal.

Hope to see you there!

Very soon you will be able to buy digital downloads of "Jigsaw", "Here Be Dragons", and "We Are Everywhere" from CDBaby.com! Slowly but surely we are joining the 21st century...

Don't forget to mark your calendars: Potomac Celtic Festival is coming up. Remember, it is only one day this year, Saturday June 9th, and will be great. We'll be playing at noon and 3:30 with longer sets this year which will be nice too.

Some upcoming teasers...a house concert in Philly (no date yet), gigs in Southern Virginia, South Carolina and more

Do you host house concerts? Know someone who does? Let us know!

Well, it's official, we are now part of Azalea City Recordings, a musician's cooperative recording label - check out their website at http://www.azaleacityrecordings.com!

We are very excited about working with ACR and look forward to a great relationship with tons of gigs and stuff!

And now our beloved Kristi Medley has put up a snippet of video from a show we did in Maryland...check it out!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uLYPIhgqt8

The wonders of modern technology never cease to amaze...

Well, sometimes it is a very interesting exercise to look yourself up on the internet! For instance, if you look Tinsmith up on Amazon.com, you will find that you can buy a copy of Jigsaw for a mere $40! (btw - it's cheaper on our website!)

More to the point, if you look Tinsmith up on YouTube, you will find the video of our own Rowan Corbett jamming on bones with Dom Flemons of the Carolina Chocolate Drops...well worth the wait even if you have dial-up! They met in the corridor of the hotel at the Folk Alliance Convention this year and it was quite a meeting! Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLazWX8uxPU
We hope to be teaming up with CCD in the future, so stay tuned.

On the Rowan channel, he will be playing with Danny Knicely at IMT this Monday 2 April - don't miss it. Danny is a fabulous player (of many instruments) and he's the hot new property in the DC area.

To celebrate our new recording "An American Wake", we've redesigned our website! We hope you like it, but keep checking back 'cause we plan on adding more stuff in the near future.
If you have an suggestions of things you'd like to see, drop us a line through the Email Us link on the navigation bar.

Wow, we made it to our St. Patrick's Day gig - but only just. Apparently, since winter didn't happen during winter, we're going to have it in March. Rowan and I finally arrived after six hours of snow and traffic, in Manheim, Pennsylvania - where fortunately Avril had already arrived - just in time to set up and play at the beautiful Mt. Hope Mansion. REALLY beautiful. If you ever get a chance to come here, it's worth the trip.

We had a nice show tonight for some very dedcated people who came out in the snow to have a great meal and be entertained by some very funny guys (and us too). We're looking forward to tomorrow night's sold-out show too!

You can get it direct from CDBaby right now...and very soon we will have the link on our site. Til then:
http://cdbaby.com/cd/tinsmithmusic
cheers!

Well, Rowan and I have arrived safely home and Avril and Henry got home yesterday, so Tinsmith is all alive and well. The rather long drive did bring up a question for me though: We often hear the query "if you were stranded on a desert island, what five albums would you want to have with you?" When really, the more pertinent question is: "what the #$^&@ do you listen to on a 26 hour drive??"

To answer that question, in no particular order, here's some of what Rowan & Brooke listened to on the way home:

Solas - Reunion
A great (of course) album reuniting every member of Solas for one big concert - a surprising number of people - on a CD and a DVD. Haven't seen the DVD yet as I just got home, but as I'm still quivering from white line fever, I may just do that now!

The Carolina Chocolate Drops - Dona Got a Ramblin' Mind
Hard not to gush about these guys. As I said to Rowan, "we've only listened to it twice so far - let's have it again!". I will admit that they are even better live, but it's still a great CD

Donal Lunny - Journey
This is something of a retrospective of his career to date on two discs. Mostly it is great, though I had forgotten about that horrible 80s synth-in-folk thing which I'm not very fond of...but if you take out maybe three tracks you've still got 21 brilliant ones featuring Lunny and people like Aly Bain, Bothy Band, Coolfin, Sharon Shannon, Moving Hearts etc etc etc.

Great Big Sea - Road Rage
This is my very favorite GBS album. Truth be told, it's the only one I listen to regularly - it is a live album and it is really crazy and fun and great to keep you awake at 4am in East Tennessee.

Flook - Haven
I love Flook. They are great. Haven is the most recent album and I like it very much, though Flatfish is still my favorite.

John Doyle - Wayward Son
This is the best CD of any genre that I own, and I own quite a few. John Doyle is so classy. I also love In Play which is Liz Carroll and John Doyle just doing tunes. Liz is (in my opinion) one of the top three Irish fiddlers, they being: Liz Carroll, Kevin Burke, Eileen Ivers. Which leaves out any number of almost equally great fiddlers...but this is my list!

Tim O'Brien & Darrell Scott - Real Time
Avril turned me on to this album....WOW! It may rival Wayward Son as my favorite all time recording. It is just the two of them, no one else. It is all songs, and they play different instruments on every track. The sheer brilliance of it can't be overstated, especially the last cut, "the second mouse" which you have to hear to believe. We listened to this one...ummm....four times I think.

Round the House - Safe Home
These are our friends from Arizona and this is their greatest album so far! Really nice, open arrangements, superb playing and great choices of material, both tunes and songs...we miss them already!

That's about it....oh yeah, I listened to a commercial country station for a while. Made me remember why I love traditional music so much!

Here we are at the hotel for the 25th North Texas Irish Festival! Very exciting...made more exciting by the fact that I managed to lose our passes......but fortunately I found them again. I'm just a bear of very little brain.

It's been great to see old friends - and we haven't even left the hotel yet! Chuck Bloom is here again being the CD kingpin, and Connie Ener of course, herding the cats. We were really excited when we met our old friends "Round the House" from Tucson at the elevator! We were so saddened to hear of Mike Smith's untimely death, and our condolences go out to the Tucson community for this tragic loss.

Here's to old friends and new and to another great year at Fair Park!

Good Grief! What do you get when you put 2000 musicians in a one block area for 5 days? Mostly mahem as it turns out, but in a good way....We have played music with so many great people and heard so many super musicians that we couldn't tell you about them all in a week, BUT...here are two bands you should check out:

Dust Poets
www.dustpoets.com
it's hard to express how bizarre and fun these guys are and how great their music is

The Carolina Chocolate Drops http://www.sankofastrings.com/ccd/home.html
Traditional Black old-time string band music - great musicians, great performers (qualities not always found together!) amazing! And you should see Rowan and their bones player, Dom, play together...now that's something.

Here we are in Memphis, Tennessee...already sleep deprived and having a blast! There are tons of cool musicians here at Folk Alliance, both the known and the unknown and we are hearing lots of great music and jamming with fun people and making new friends (ok...that sounds like Mr. Rogers, but it's true). Our showcases are gonig well too and people seem to like our music here which always makes us happy...

But here's the real news:

The new CD is here! It arrived just in time for us to take it on tour with us (thanks DiscMakers!) and it will be available for sale on CDBaby in the next couple of days (www.cdbaby.com)

Check it out!