SPRING: Busiest Time of the Year!!

Our new CD, "Out on the Ocean", was delivered on December 11th, but we are just getting the word out on this great CD! We had a great initial CD Release Party at The Fifth String in mid-December; thanks to all who came to see us, and to those who helped out! Then we headed up the hill for a New Year's Eve show at our favorite pub in Reno, Ceol Irish Pub. A great time was had by all, there were no casualties and we didn't even have to use our chains!

We all survived the holiday season, which means we lived through all the visits with family, the stress and extra pounds from those wonderful meals and desserts (love my mom's lemon meringue pie!) We pretty much took the month of January off, and played a Contra Dance on Friday, February 5th, and now we're already ramping up to March....but we've got a few other exciting things coming up before that:

We've got a Fox & Goose show on Feb. 11th, but our big one will be on February 19th at The Center for the Arts in Grass Valley!! We'll have Annie O'Dea and Laurie DesJardin from KVMR Radio helping us out that night, and we're really excited about this one!! Tickets are only $15.00, and can be purchased from The Center for the Arts (in person or online), as well as from Briarpatch Market and Yabobo in Nevada City, and from Cherry Records in Auburn.

We'll post another blog after we are done with that show...we'll have a few days to decompress before heading into March, which is of course the busiest time of year for any self-respecting Irish band!!

Spring Hits N8i Hard!!

Spring usually hits pretty good here in northern California, and it's no different this year. We had a great month of March, a nice rainy April, and now it's May - and we're having a bit of Spring Fever...we're very excited about some of the things coming up this month and during the summer. First of all we are heading back into the studio to record our second CD...we are slaving hard on pre-production, with an initial recording date of 5/29, and have some really great tunes and arrangements, including four of my original tunes. We're not sure when the album will be completed, what with all the gigs we have coming up, but we're hoping for a release date in early fall 2009.

Nine-8ths Irish played our very first Renaissance Faire the weekend of May 9th & 10th in Auburn, where we joined the festivities at the Cain's Crossing Ren Faire. A great time was had by all, as evidenced by the pictures we took, a few of which can be viewed on our Facebook page at www.band.to/nine8thsirish.

We also are scheduled to go back to Reno, Nevada, on Saturday 5/16/09, where we'll play again at Ceol Irish Pub, with special guest Phil Herrold, one of our buddies from Chico, CA. He'll pull out the guitar as well as banjo, and help us entertain the masses and celebrate graduation weekend at UNR (University of Nevada, Reno). The music starts at 9pm, goes to about midnight, and there is never a cover charge at Ceol!!

At the end of May we'll play the Valhalla Renaissance Faire in South Lake Tahoe, CA. This great event puts us in the same venue as Tartanic, an exciting band from Houston, TX. See the Valhalla website for all the details: www.valhallafaire.com

The big event coming up this summer is our trip to Dayton, Ohio for CityFolk Festival....we'll have more information on that soon, including a very exciting announcement about an addition to the band...KEEP CHECKING BACK!!

Linda
(the fiddler)
www.nine8thsirish.com