Fox Valley Folk Fest

I performed yesterday with Al Tauber at the Fox Valley Folk Festival in Geneva, Illinois. I haven't been there in a couple years, so it was good to be back and see people I hadn't seen in a while, Dan & Dona Benkert, the Joneses, the Murphy Roche folks, and others. Thanks to Dave Humphreys at Two Way Street for the invite!! Thanks also to those who came out to see us.

Al also performed a set with his 'other' Andi (as andi and i) at the festival.

I talked on stage about being a punk rocker at heart. While I usually state that for the comic irony of a punk rocker playing the dulcimer, it's true. Here's a link to a website I found that chronicles my "early years". I especially like the religious cult twist. Put's me in the same camp as Cat stevens, I think. If you don't know that story you'll have to ask me at a gig sometime.

But I've also been remembering those long gone days recently because Randy 'Biscuit' Turner, singer of The Big Boys, a great Austin punk bank in the eighties, just died a couple weeks ago. Going to a Big Boys show was incredible. By the end of the night you couldn't distinguish the audience from the band, because they worked hard at getting the whole crowd involved. And then at the end of the show they always implored the kids in the audience to go start their own band. That was a great influence on me as a teenager.

While, my music sounds pretty different now, I think punk rock and folk music share that common theme of getting everybody involved. I'm interested in finding new creative ways to do that in my music now. I used to do shows at cafe's where I would invite just about any musicians I knew. Whoever showed up would dictate what tunes we played. I've also seen audience members drawing and sketching during my shows. That might be interesting to facilitate that more intentionally. Maybe bring along a common sketch book to my shows and pass it around for anyone interested in adding something to it. It could become a sort of collective archive of audience creativity. Might be kind of cheezy though. Any ideas?

Here's a few more photos of Andi and Al, to demonstrate the many emotions of our favorite newly cropped crooner: