Atkinson 
Family |
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Email: atkinsonfamily@twcny.rr.com |
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| Journal:
As I reflect over the past few months, I wonder where time has gone......... We performed for FolkUs Project in Syracuse, NY, have had a wonderful trip to Florida, and we played near Buffalo, NY where I was able to connect with my family from that area. We played for a wonderful little old opera house in Russell, NY and Sunday, July 6 we will play in our home town for the first time in a few years! We had a wonderful Tug Hill Bluegrass Festival at the Maple Ridge Center in Lowville, NY, met David Parmley and Continental Divide and Audie Blaylock and Redline. We met up with old friends like Rod and Ebby, Lisa and Darrell, Sandy and LeeAnn and we have good friends like Marcia and Lew, Aggie, Marvin and his family, Carey, Doug, Dottie, Dee and her husband and Bill Knowlton who help us at festivals with all the logistics of running the festival to helping us get ready for a show! Then there is the audience and all the people who come to listen and take part in the show. I probably have left someone out, but know that without all of you.......ALL OF YOU, we could not make things happen! The music, the festival, and all the pickin' that goes on later. THANK YOU!!!! THANK YOU!!!! Today is Independence Day, a time to reflect on our freedom and who we are as a people. Playing music, writing songs about our life and being able to say and think what we want is part of that freedom. We enjoy this life of performing music completely and hope this feeling reflects in our music. Tomorrow is spring! And we are sitting here in Northern New York with still about 1 foot of snow on the ground! Christmas is over and our oldest daughter is here visiting with her family. What an exciting busy time! Liza had her baby in August, and I have not told you about him yet! Liam was born in August without any complications!! Thank the good Lord for that. Laura, Adam's wife filled in for Liza during the whole month of August! She did one heck of a job to say the least. We had one bass player who filled in for the summer and now we welcome Mr. Jim Treat from Weedsport, NY as our new bass player. And we are putting the last minute touches on the new gospel CD, Angels Rejoice. Joe Lamay is doing our graphic work. Wait until you see it! Time has just flown by and the new year is upon us. We have an exciting Florida trip coming up in February. My New Year's promise is to be better at keeping things updated!!! Remind via email if I don't! It has been a while, but like so many of us, our time is always filled with "stuff". I pushed some of that "stuff" aside and had the pleasure of seeing John Cowan in concert at the Earlville Opera House, in central NY two days ago. After listening to him for approximately 30 years (I was saying 25 years, then realized time flies by.........) I had the opportunity for the very first time to hear him live at the IBMA convention in 2004. It was like something I could never have imagined! It was awesome! Since that time, I try to see him every chance I get. There are few people whom I would say I could listen to, and listen to, and listen to, and then listen to, again, and again, and again.....John Cowan is one of those people! I will never grow tired of listening to him. He renewed my passion for singing and song writing, and hopefully I will have a few more new songs soon. Keep singing John!!!
Shelene OK, some of you wanted the picture bigger..........how is this? Hey do you think I look happy?! Again a very long time since this has been updated. A lot of things going on. Laura, Adam's wife has been very ill, Liza is going to have another baby (she has to fill up that big house they just bought!), we went to SPBGMA, Shelene's last grandmother passed away, and many other numerous things. We have to have you listen to the the Live at the Bainbridge Opera House CD!!! You can get a sound clip on our MySpace account! We are so very excited about it!!! We are looking forward to spring and festival season, but as things go in upstate NY, it is still snowing! It has been a while since I sat down to let you all know what is happening with the Atkinson's! We were honored to be the featured band at the Ogdensburg Seaway Festival this year. We played many great festivals in August. Our first time at Pemi Valley NH! An awesome site, with a little covered bridge! We had a great time there. Our third year at Lake Champlain Bluegrass Festival. This year with Ralph Stanley and King Wilkie. What a great festival! Keep your eyes on this festival, it will prove to be one of THE festivals on the east coast! And near our home town, the Gouverneur Bluegrass Festival with Dan Paisley and the Southern Grass! We plan to keep this festival going and make it bigger and better every year! Then it was off to Long Lake for a one day festival right on top of a hill overlooking the lake. The Mannsville Public Library concert was a real treat! Nothing like a small home town atmosphere! Thank you for having us! Then to Otis Mountain where we played with the Fox Family and Phil Leadbetter. A great site for a festival and the audience was awesome! They really went crazy when Dave took a dobro solo! Of course he played it perfectly!! And FAST!!! We did a show at the Clayton Opera house! This was a beautiful venue. We shared the stage with the Gibson Brothers at a private party! And Leeann was on stage to play bass again! What a great time that was! Next came the Lowville Cream Cheese Festival! The world's largest cream cheese cake, which I never did get to taste! And another opera house in Bainbridge, NY. We did a live recording there and we are in the process of putting together a CD with this recording. Things have settled down a bit and we are in the studio doing a gospel CD and hopefully before spring we will do another CD. Concert Series in Massena, NY - Many thanks for having us in Massena again! What a great place to play! Then off to Stone Church in Ogdensburg, NY - WOW! What a beautiful historic old site! The audience here was very appreciative! THANK YOU! MANY THANKS TO LEEANN for the GREAT BASS PLAYING!!! Norwich Family Bluegrass Festival - This couldn't have been more fun and exciting! It was good to be back down in Norwich again, where a few years ago Liza was asked to perform Red Clay Halo with Ms. Valerie Smith. Our hosts, Mike and Maryann Tirella were great! The guitar raffle went extremely well, thanks to the great audience! Tug Hill Bluegrass Festival - Rain, rain go away! Cold and rain, cold and rain.........What a "great" weekend for a bluegrass festival. Despite the very cold temps and all the rain, it was a great festival!! The people who braved the weather said they had a good time. Thankfully this site is such a great site, we were able to put the festival in one of the many large barns. We had a portable heater going to make it a little toasty and we listened to some great music by the Lyndsey Family, Lost Time and the Lost Boys! And us too! The volunteers who helped were awesome! Many thanks to you all!! SO, COME RAIN OR SHINE, SLEET OR SNOW, NEXT YEAR THE SHOW WILL GO ON AGAIN!!! MARK YOUR CALENDARS FOR SATURDAY OF FATHER'S DAY WEEKEND! It has been a while since I have updated this journal. The private party we performed at in May was great! Mr. Smith and his party were very accommodating and the food was awesome! Then we were at the Beaver Camp auction in Lowville, which again had great food! Lewis County Historical Society, Lowville, NY - It was great to see so many people there! And what a pleasure to play in such a great room and for one of the most appreciative audiences we have!! We were able to tell everyone there of the new festival, Tug Hill Bluegrass Festival coming up at the Maple Ridge Center in Lowville on June 10 and the response was awesome! We hope to see you there. And as always, Lisa is a great hostess! Thanks for the support and the great snacks afterward! Alexandria Bay High School, Alex Bay, NY - Again, what a great crowd!! It was good to see Bill Knowlton from Syracuse, NY and Dee Skellington from Oswego, NY there! They have been long time DJ's and supporters of bluegrass music! And it was good to see Anne Ritcher and Brian Ashley from WWNY TV Channel 7, Watertown, NY. They also are Atkinson Family followers! It was great to see some old friends and some people from our town of Harrisville! Thanks for coming and supporting us! One more thing - THANKS CHAD!!! We love having you sit in with us and you are a welcomed addition!! Canton High School, Canton, NY - What a great crowd!!! It was great to play for the Class of 2006 and especially good to see the students out on the dance floor in front of the stage dancing to bluegrass!! And thank you Chad for coming with us! First, I want to thank Chad for coming along with us! He not only is a great musician, but a lot of fun! We hope to play more with Chad and that dobro! It was also good to have Doug back up on stage with us playing the heck out of that fiddle! Our first jobs of the year and everything went very well!! Except.......the trip to Bainbridge was a bit scary to say the least. All winter we have had fairly nice weather, but this weekend, northern NY was hit hard with one of the worst snow storms. We traveled very slow, with limited visibility until we reached south of Utica. Then things cleared up and we were able to make it to the Bainbridge Town Hall Theatre on time. We played to a very appreciative full house! It was good to see George and Etta Crawford, Lisa and Darrell, who traveled from Chilson, the Tupper Lake girls, who traveled down from Tupper Lake in that snow storm, and Jim, the sweet corn guy from the summer! We met some new people, Gary and Mary who drove up from Long Island! We had a great time and what a pleasure playing in the Opera House! The acoustics were awesome! Thank you folks for having us and we will be back October 25, 2006. We spent the night in Sidney and drove to Saratoga Springs the next day. Walking into the Parting Glass you see photos of all the entertainers who have performed there over the years. It was an honor to play there! Again we had a full house and the audience was very appreciative. It was good to see Dr. Mike and MaryAnn, Tammy, Georgia, and the other folks of the Adirondack Bluegrass League. And I finally got to meet our friend Lew's friend, Rick! He drove up from NJ, near Philadelphia, PA to hear us! Afterwards we settled down and ordered some food, which by the way was great! We hope to be back there soon!
As the year comes to an end, I am thinking about all the wonderful times we had and places we went to last year. First in April 2005, we witnessed the birth of two more grandbabies, Nadia and Evelyn. Second, the bus we purchased last fall was to be ready for the road in June. We took our first trip to Vermont in the bus! If you want to learn how to drive a bus, go to Vermont and lose your way! You learn real quickly how to maneuver the back roads of Vermont and how to back up! We were privileged to spend many weekends on the bus at many festivals across the northeast USA. We made our second trip to Alburg, VT to the Champlain Valley Bluegrass Festival, where we performed along side of the Del McCoury band! We traveled to Thomas Point Beach in Maine, where we had won the band contest in 2004 and were invited back in 2005 for a performance! The audience gave us a standing ovation on Sunday morning! We traveled to the IBMA Trade Show and Fan Fest in Nashville, TN for our third time. Not in the bus, but in a van and we strapped the bass on top, along with our luggage. You should have seen the looks we got from the other motorist on the highway. We performed in many showcases there and were able to attend the awards show in the Ryman Auditorium! And I was able to see Mr. John Cowan perform in the Pinecastle Showcase! Which by the way, was an awesome show. The following weekend we traveled to Syracuse, NY and Somerset, KY for performances. Doug our fiddle player was unable to travel, so a friend Chad traveled with us and played dobro! We had a great time with Chad and he is a great musician! Thanks Chad! A big thank you for your continued support of the Atkinson Family! Shelene Atkinson |
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July 4, 2008