Hi Everybody!

Summer is in full swing and I hope you’re having a great one full of good times and tons of music! For us, summer has always been about about getting away from the city and camping out, spending time with buddies and playing tunes! What else ya gonna do?

We’re all up in Port Townsend, Washington at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, an amazing week full of performances, instruction, and dancing of all kinds of traditions, not only American. We’ve been coming up here since 2003 and keep coming back. Fiddle Tunes is a week to not only expand your own musicality but also your knowledge of other musical traditions and the ingredients that make good music. It has very little to do with what kind of strings you use or the thickness of your pick… It’s an amazing week that fills your year with stories and inspiration! See you here next summer!

Last week, Caleb organized a benefit show to help our favorite Portland bar that has a dance floor, the Spare Room, improve their sound system. Wow, what a night!! Five local bands tore it up, bringing in friends and fans, Nadine and I made gumbo for everybody, and damn, was there dancing!! It’s so great to see so many folks coming out and shakin’ it on the dance floor and supporting a cool bar and venue. The bands were the Pickups, the Mighty Ghosts, the Pete Krebs Band, the Portland Country Underground, and of course, the Caleb Klauder Country Band! Next time Foghorn plays there we’re going get at least four squares raging on that dance floor…

The Foghorn Trio (along with Caleb’s son Elijah) kicked off the summer by teaching a camp in Grass Valley, California that was put on by the California Bluegrass Association. It’s a camp that happens the week leading up to their festival that happens there over Father’s Day weekend. Besides meeting all the nice students and enjoying amazing meal after meal, highlights were Caleb and Mike Compton tearing it up on double mandolins, playing fiddles and hanging with Matt Combs and hearing Alice Gerrard and Nadine singing and playing together. Wow!

From California we headed to the Martin Hotel in Winnemucca, Nevada to play a show put on by an organization called the Great Basin Arts and Entertainment. The Reverend P.T. Grover Jr. even made the treck on his motorcycle all the way from Portland to hang out! We’ve been playing there about once a year since 2002 and always look forward to it. Thanks to Bill and everyone else there for always having us back and supporting our music. The food is amazing, traditional Basque food served family style followed by their famous cocktail, the “Picon”. But, as we’ve warned you in the past, remember, “one, two, three, FLOOR!!”

From there we headed North to Weiser, Idaho for the the National Old Time Fiddler’s Contest. We go every year and camp out in Stickerville and play non-stop for about a week. Sound fun? My good buddy growing up, Andy Rick came down from Bellingham, P.T. continued on up and Brian “Snakes” Bagdonas came out from Portland too. We got to camp with Laurel Bliss, Reeb Wilms and the rest of the Bellingham crew and had a blast. You never knew what you were gonna hear or play!! I had a blast playing a bunch too with Riley from Seattle and  Elijah, Caleb’s son. Those guys rock!

Coming up this month we’ll be playing at the first annual Farmer Social, put on by Reeb Wilms of Bellingham, Washington. It will be July 15-17 in her hometown of Farmer, Washington. We’re all so pumped for this this! Reeb will also be playing guitar with Foghorn for two festivals in August, the Sioux River Folk Festival in Canton, South Dakota and The MBOTMA Festival in Richmond, Minnesota. The last two weekends of July the Foghorn Trio will be playing with our buddy Dirk Powell as the “Dirk Powell Band” at the Mission Folk Festival in Mission, British Columbia and at the Floyd Festival in Floyd, Virginia.

We hope to cross paths with you and share a tune sometime soon!!

Sammy