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 dedicated 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 […]

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 going 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!

Well, everything is sent off to the duplicators, we can all breathe a sigh of relief (we hope!) that our new CD, “An American Wake” will arrive just in time for our trip to Memphis and Dallas! But, in the meantime, our first concert of the year approaches…We are very excited to be the first artists to appear in our friends Rachel & Henry’s new concert space at their house. Space is very limited so if you want to go, be sure to email early (see our schedule page for details)

Whoopeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! We are closer and closer to the new cd. I’ll tell you what, childbirth isn’t as hard as making a CD! We will be at Airshow tomorrow (friday 1/26) mastering the cd with Charlie Pilzer, engineer extraordinaire and super musician in his own right (a Grammy winner, no less!) and then we’re just waiting for the lovely Amy to finish the cover…and we’re done! More or less. Thanks again to all of you who have contributed to this effort, we could not have done it without you! And no small thanks go to our various partners who have put up with vast amounts of &^@%$# while we were doing this!

Ok, you get the idea. It is going very well though…Rowan and Henry and Brooke have spent days now mixing (can you see the blood coming out of our ears?) and really, it all sounds quite nice Well, REALLY, it sounds GREAT! We are all very excited about it now that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Just keeping you posted!