First of all, we have added a singer to our lineup: Brady McKay, renowned jazz vocalist, is now the lead singer for our band!! We are very excited about Brady, and she seems to be enjoying us as well!! Our first show with Brady was the Valhalla Renaissance Faire up in South Lake Tahoe on May 30th. We were very well taken care of, met some amazing people, got to share the stage with the fabulously entertaining "TARTANIC", and just had a great time!! We're hoping to have an opportunity to work with Marti and everyone from Valhalla again...
Then came the pinnacle of the summer: July 4th weekend, we travelled to Dayton, Ohio to be part of the annual CityFolk Festival!! They flew us out to Ohio and treated us like rock stars!! We had our own "Tour Guides", who made sure we were on time, fed well, had water when we needed it, arranged our rides back and forth, and were just wonderful to us all weekend!! On Friday July 3rd, we played on the Main Stage, where the photo here was taken by Alicia Fidler (an intern with the Dayton Daily News.) Later that weekend we were part of a Workshop with the amazing Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper, demonstrating the close relationship of Irish and bluegrass music. We got to see Bela Fleck with Oumou Sangare, Ralph Stanley, The Duhks, Feufollet (Cajun), Chicago Samba and more!! We were honored to be a part of this great musical weekend, and had one of the best experiences we could possibly have!!On July 11 we travelled to Reno to take part in the HiRish Festival, which is the "Highest Elevation Irish Festival in the World"!! And it was: it took place at the Sky Tavern area outside of Reno, at over 7,000 feet up!! Besides being an absolutely gorgeous place, the guys from Ceol Irish Pub always treat us like kings!! Though we got rained out and had to do our last set acoustically inside the lodge, we had a great time!! We, along with Autumn and Glen from San Franciso, as well as Johnny Connolly and the members of Skelpin, and all adjourned back to the pub for a great night of sessioning!!
After that we found ourselves (quite by accident) at the same bar in the Circus Circus casino as all the gang again, where we drank and laughed till nearly 3am....and even won a bit of money playing slots!! It was a great time, we look forward to heading back to Reno soon...And finally as many of you know, we started recording tracks for our second CD in late May, at Paradise Studios here in Sacramento. Craig Long, the owner and fabulous engineer at Paradise, had been recommended by Kathy, our guitar player, who had worked with Craig on another project. Mind you, this is after we had recorded our first album in Kathy's living room...so we were very excited about the prospect of recording in an Actual Professional Recording Studio!!
So we went in, met Craig, and immediately settled into the process of tracking....usually fiddle and guitar together, then whistle and bodhran coming in after.....THEN we started really having fun!! We brought Brady in to sing a few songs, Craig had some really amazing ideas, and we are SO excited about what we've got that we can barely contain ourselves!!
We've got all sorts of harmonies, some really great songs, a few production surprises, and overall, an album that we are extremely happy with, and it's not actually completed yet!! We're really hoping for a late October release date, but it could be mid-November....we're really wanting to do this right this time!! The new album will be titled "Out on the Ocean", and it's again going to be on the FGM Records label...check the website for details as the project reaches completion. We've already got some rough mixes posted on the website, which leads to another bit of news -
THE REDESIGNED WEBSITE WAS SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHED!! Check out the streamlined website at www.nine8thsirish.com - we've got rough mixes from the new CD, new photos with Brady, and a nice, easy to read Schedule.So that's been our summer in a long, rambling nutshell....we're heading out to Grass Valley for the KVMR Celtic Festival the first weekend in October, where we will be hosting an Open Session on Saturday afternoon, enjoying the entertainment of Dervish, Dougie MacLean, The Elders, and more....we're planning on late night sessions, many photos, and perhaps even some advance copies of the CD, if we can swing it!!
