{"id":217,"date":"2008-03-08T22:53:07","date_gmt":"2008-03-09T03:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsmithmusic.com\/?p=217"},"modified":"2019-04-17T11:18:49","modified_gmt":"2019-04-17T16:18:49","slug":"newsletter-march-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tomsmithmusic.com\/?p=217","title":{"rendered":"Newsletter, March 2008 &#8211; The Kitchen Musician"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hello Friends!<\/p>\n<p>Welcome to the March 2008 issue of <strong><em>The Kitchen Musician<\/em><\/strong>, my folk music newsletter, featuring my new song <em>A Song for Ellen<\/em>, written in honor of my good friend and patron of folk music, Ellen Schmidt.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><strong>Upcoming Shows<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tomsmithmusic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/03\/tom_tcan_2008_01_21.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-220\" \/>At The Center for the Arts, Natick, MA<br \/>\nPhoto by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.trishandphil-music.com\/\" title=\"Phil Knudsen\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Phil Knudsen<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>March 11<\/strong>, Tuesday, 8:00 pm at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sweet-bites.com\/\" title=\"Sweet Bites\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sweet Bites Bakery &amp; Cafe<\/a>, 5A Spruce St. West Acton, MA. As the  co-feature performer, I will play a 30 minute set followed by 30 minutes from the very talented blues musician, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lloydthayer.com\/\" title=\"Lloyd Thayer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Lloyd Thayer<\/a>. Open mikers start at 6:30 pm. Admission is $5 plus &#8220;pass the hat&#8221; for the feature performers.  <a href=\"http:\/\/tomsmithmusic.com\/?p=181\" title=\"Tom at Sweet Bites\">Click for directions<\/a>. If you come, make sure you save yourself for dessert (yum!).<\/p>\n<p><strong>March 18<\/strong>, Private recording session for the <em><strong>Acoustic Music TV<\/strong><\/em> show, Norwood Cable Access. I will let you know the broadcast date.<\/p>\n<p><strong>March 24<\/strong>, Monday, 9:00 pm. I am the feature performer at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.natickarts.org\/\" title=\"The Center for the Arts at Natick\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Center for the Arts at Natick<\/a>. Doors open at 7:30 for those of you who would like to sign up to sing a song or two. Admission is $5 plus &#8220;pass the hat&#8221; for the feature performer. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.natickarts.org\/tcan_directions.php\" title=\"Directions to TCAN\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Click for directions<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Click for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tomsmithmusic.com\/?page_id=56\" title=\"Tom Smith's upcoming shows\">more upcoming shows<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><HR><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><strong> Recent News<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In addition to recording an upcoming broadcast for Norwood Cable TV, I have made the playlist for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weru.org\/\" title=\"WERU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">WERU<\/a>, community radio for Bangor and Blue Hill Maine. Several of their shows have been playing my &#8220;Talking Post-Trauma Blues&#8221;, which is approaching 37,000 hits on <a href=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=JdEJB7UPmUc\" title=\"Talking Post-Trauma Blues\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">YouTube<\/a> and continues to get frequent plays on Neil Young&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.neilyoung.com\/lwwtoday\/index.html\" title=\"Living With War Today\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Living With War Today<\/a> web site. This barrage of media attention  is making it very difficult for me to remain humble. So far I have avoided getting sunglasses and an electric guitar, but it is a struggle.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"ellen\" name=\"ellen\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><HR><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><strong>This Month&#8217;s Song<\/strong><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><strong>A Song for Ellen<\/strong><br \/>\n\u00a9 2008, Tom Smith<\/p>\n<p align=center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/N2G6aoOeD90?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This song is the result of an imagined interchange between my friend of 34 years, Ellen Schmidt and the producers of National Public Radio&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=4538138\" title=\"This I Believe\">This I Believe<\/a>, where &#8220;Americans from all walks of life share the personal philosophies and core values that guide their daily lives.&#8221; Of course, in my imagination Ellen replied to their request with a song. I think I can be forgiven that my song puts words in Ellen&#8217;s mouth, especially since a fair number of them came from, or were inspired by the lyrics of her own songs. I would sum up Ellen&#8217;s personal philosophy with the phrase, &#8220;You are what you sing&#8221;. Ellen says of her music, &#8220;I want my songs to help people find the best in themselves.&#8221; &#8230; a target she never fails to hit.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tomsmithmusic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/03\/ellenschmidt.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"269\" height=\"222\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-219\" \/>Last month I had the honor of joining a wonderful collection of musicians to perform at a surprise birthday party for Ellen. A musical fixture here in New England, she has been writing and performing music since Old Joe Clark was new. Ellen and her musical collaborator Jake Kensinger, host frequent open mikes throughout the Boston area. She has been instrumental (no pun intended) in a great many of us finding our musical voices. I have heard <a href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/chrispahud\">Chris Pahud<\/a> say that the majority of Boston area folkies owe their first or second gig to Ellen. I don&#8217;t doubt it.<\/p>\n<p align=center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.tomsmithmusic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/03\/24show.jpg\" alt=\"Two for the Show\" \/><br \/>\nEllen Schmidt, Jake Kensinger, Steve Sadler at Club Passim<\/p?\n\nEllen is also a great talent. In addition to performing on the recordings of others, she has recorded four albums of her original music,  plus a new one to be released next month. She has performed at prestigious venues like the Kerrville Folk Festival, Falcon Ridge Festival, and Club Passsim, as well as countless local venues including coffee houses, bakeries, restaurants, and yes even Crosby's, the local super market. In addition to her solo performances, Ellen has been performing with Jake Kensinger for eighteen years as the duo, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ellenschmidt.com\/24tshow.html\" title=\"Two for the Show\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Two for the Show<\/em><\/a>.  It is not possible to go to a <em>Two for the Show<\/em> performance and leave feeling low down. Highly recommended.<\/p>\n<p>My first memory of Ellen was when I was just learning how to play the mandolin.  We were at a singing party of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fssgb.org\/\" title=\"FSSGB\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Folk Song Society of Greater Boston<\/a>, of which she was the president. She heard my plunking and clunking in a remote corner of the room. Undeterred by my obvious struggles, our conversation went something like this, &#8220;Hey, we are pulling together a group to perform a tribute to Woody Guthrie. It is called <em>Bound for Glory<\/em> after the title of his book. We need someone to play <em>Woody&#8217;s Rag<\/em> on mandolin, and you&#8217;d be perfect. What do you say?&#8221; What I said was &#8220;&lt;gulp&gt; er&#8230; OK&#8221;. How could I not? In two months, I was on stage at the Fox Hollow Folk Festival, singing and playing for hundreds of Woody Guthrie fans.<\/p>\n<p>Ellen&#8217;s new CD, entitled <em><strong>Joy<\/strong><\/em>, will be released next month. She is celebrating with a CD release party on April 6th at the Trinitarian Church in Concord, MA. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ellenschmidt.com\" title=\"Ellen Schmidt\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Click here<\/a> for details.  With Ellen&#8217;s permission, I have included below a preview of one of her songs that will be on the new CD.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\".\/audio\/Will_There_Ever_Be_Peace.mp3\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Will There Ever Be Peace<\/a><br \/>\n\u00a9 2008 Ellen Schmidt <em>(Click to play audio)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Ellen and Jake are hosting the open mike at Sweet Bites Bakery and Cafe, where <a href=\"http:\/\/tomsmithmusic.com\/?m=20080311&#038;cat=8\">I will be featuring on Tuesday, March 11<\/a>. Come on down. This will be fun. And if you get there by 6:30, I think you can bet on Ellen encouraging you to sign up to sing a song.<\/p>\n<p>Wishing you peace and music,<\/p>\n<p>~ Tom<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hello Friends! Welcome to the March 2008 issue of The Kitchen Musician, my folk music newsletter, featuring my new song A Song for Ellen, written&#8230;<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":219,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"location":[],"class_list":["post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsletter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomsmithmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomsmithmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomsmithmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomsmithmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomsmithmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomsmithmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5190,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomsmithmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions\/5190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomsmithmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomsmithmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomsmithmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomsmithmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=217"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomsmithmusic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Flocation&post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}